Re-Emerging Church
April 7, 2008 by Jonathan Brink
I love the church. Not the building, mind you, but the beautiful reflection of Jesus that occurs when I see love within the local body of believers. A dignity restored, a life transformed from oppression to hope, these are the expressions that move me. She is beautiful and always leaves me with a realization of why I choose to gather in the fellowship of believers in the first place. We have the capacity to transform and restore the world around us in such a unique way. And this desire for restoration is why I find myself drawn to the emerging expression of the church.
But it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I was just frustrated at what I saw within the church.
The Dissonance
If you read enough blog posts on the emerging church, it is highly likely that you’ll get a distinct impression of the dissonance that exists within those who identify with the emerging church. We’re always deconstructing something, asking questions and wondering what is wrong within the body that we are part of. But we do so because there are so few alternatives. You see most people don’t go to an emerging church. We go to a traditional church because this is all that is around us. And so we engage the community, hoping to discover something deeper, something we hope the church can be.
At some point in the process, if we’re looking to follow Jesus in an active, missional way, we encounter a dissonance in the process that is striking. We encounter what Willow Creek recently found in their Reveal campaign. The church we are part of is not really structured to develop us in a deeper way. Discipleship is something most church organizations just haven’t figured out. The deeper restoration Jesus engaged in seems distant and removed.
Church is primarily structured to bring people into a building and participate in church related activities. Our primary activity resembles an entertainment medium. We all arrive at the same time, sing a few songs and sit in the same direction while listening to someone speak for an hour. If we’re entertained, we leave a little something to say thank you. We learn primarily what to believe, how to live right, and receive a challenge each week to believe it.
We learn that mission is for people on the other side of the world. We even give them money so we don’t have to go. Rarely do we encounter any kind of mentorship, or process for restoring our hearts, for learning forgiveness and reconciliation, or for restoring the world around us. Without mission, we learn to serve as an usher and in the nursery because this is where the needs are.
As Willow found, those who have been there for a while are the one’s most likely to leave. We don’t really want to leave but at some point we begin to recognize that there has to be more to what we’re doing. We begin to ask our self if this is what Jesus really meant when we said, “Come follow me.”
The Question Of Leaving
The idea of leaving the church is actually a dramatic and even life altering decision. We ask ourselves what it would mean to leave the local community we have been part of for how ever long? What would it mean to separate our selves from the relationships we have established? Because it is likely not the people we relate to, but the structure of the community that creates the dissonance in the first place. At some point we realize we are no longer growing.
It is easy to some extent to just blame the pastor for the problem. He is, after all, the leader. He is the one who stands at the front and supposedly leads the charge. But to blame the pastor is to miss the bigger picture. The pastor is likely following what he has learned over the years, at seminary, at conferences and from his fellow pastors. This is the way its been done forever, hasn’t it?
And as we sit in the pew and contemplate the questions our minds will not forget, we often realize there is a deeper question to leaving. Am I saying the church is broken? Am I saying something is not quite right? What does it all mean? These questions haunt us because we know in our souls that God is real and what we currently are experiencing is not the fullest expression of what is possible.
Permission
To leave requires permission. We have to come to a place where the dissonance outweighs the fruit of what we are experiencing. This moment of coming to a place where we give ourselves permission is often a long enduring process. We hold out hope amidst the questions, and yet the problem proves it will not resolve it self. And so we wake up one morning and realize that we must give our selves permission to say no.
Just saying the word is weird and wonderful. It feels strangely empowering, as if we’re taking part in our own restoration. We need more for our own hearts. We need to know that the many hours spent enduring the dissonance were not for naught. We need to know that the there has to be more. We just can’t settle anymore.
The first morning we wake up and it feels strange. The patterns that we have lived for most of our life have, and the stories that have gone with it, are now left behind. And we almost don’t know what to do with ourselves. By nine AM we should be showered and sitting down for breakfast, yet we’re still in our pajamas. At ten AM we should be walking down the aisle to our traditional seat, yet were walking to the frig for another glass of juice. By ten-thirty we should be singing a worship song, yet we’re wondering if it’s okay to turn on the television set and watch something. These are the emotions and they don’t sit well at first. By noon the feelings pass as we recognize we can now settle back into our traditional patterns. By the fourth week, we’re sitting on our porch reading the Sunday paper and enjoying our favorite Arabica bean coffee.
Over the weeks and months that follow, we feel like a long lost family member that has chosen to miss Christmas dinner. We wonder what it would be like but have grown accustomed to our alternative choice. This emotional journey, like a peculiar treadmill that starts and stops, fades over time.
A New Responsibility
This strange sense of wilderness has a way of clarifying the entire process. Not having to endure the dissonance feels good in a “just got off a long, bad flight” kind of way. With our feet on the ground we can now begin to listen to God on our own, without a denominational, transactional filter. We can listen to His voice. But this freedom also comes with a responsibility to stand on our own two feet. We must chart our own course and get real in our faith. We read new books and listen to new voices, ones that challenge and push us to think outside the box we’ve left.
We learn the words discipleship and authentic community, journey and trust. And it all feels so ridiculously good. We have three hour conversations with people we run into at the bookstore about seeing God in the simplest of things. Our faith isn’t manufacturing on stand up, sit down pew dances but real intimate encounters with Jesus in the margins.
We begin to realize that our conversations between our next door neighbor are just as empowering as the ones we had at church. We now know his name because we’re not at a church functional three nights a week and twice on Sunday. This new chunk of time allows us to be present to those around us. These new meetings, which are more about loving our neighbor, feel quite stirring. And then it hits us. We’re not called to be part of the local church. We’re called to be part of His church. And the pastor isn’t our leader. The Holy Spirit is.
Coming Back
And as we begin to listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit, we begin to listen to where He’s calling us. We begin to connect to a mission, instead of a program. We begin to see that within the four walls of our traditional church are individuals who are just like us, struggling with the same questions we had a long the way. And that’s when we realize that God is likely calling us to be love within the body of Christ.
Yet how could we return? Will it be much the same? Maybe. But we won’t be the same people.
The idea of returning takes about as long as it did to leave. But we’re not returning to solve any problem, but to be a different solution: to love. The moment we do enter, it is into His church. It’s a broken, beautiful, messy, amazing, sloppy, hope for the world. Our expectations are different. Our hopes are different, because now we realize that it is not us who will transform the world, but God himself through us. We’re no longer expecting the church to be everything for us. All we’re looking for is to meet God where He’s already working.
——————————————————-
This post is part of the Revolutionary’s Synchroblog. List of participants:
Alan Knox: A Revolutionary? Who? Me?
Erin Word: Are We There Yet, Papa Smurf?
Jane: Onward Christian Soldier
Jeff Greathouse: So, You Want To Change
Jeff McQuilken: The Great Shift–and My Unwitting Part In It
[...] Jonathan Brink: Re-Emerging Church Kathy Escobar: Surviving Spiritual Vertigo [...]
thanks for the great thoughts, jonathan. the “real intimate encounters with Jesus in the margins”….it’s scary and beautiful but no place i’d rather be.
Jonathan ~
That was a beautiful description of the process that so many of us have been going through!
“We begin to realize that our conversations between our next door neighbor are just as empowering as the ones we had at church. We now know his name because we’re not at a church functional three nights a week and twice on.”
You describe the difference between going to church and being the church.
Thanks!
[...] Jonathan Brink: Re-Emerging Church Kathy Escobar: Surviving Spiritual Vertigo [...]
Well, I haven’t got to the “going back part” but I loved what you said about how saying the words is so empowering. I hadn’t really realized that, not consciously, but you are so very right.
as one who is struggling with the tension of having an emerging mind and an emerging ethos/theology but operating and participating in a traditional context, this post is beautiful. although i haven’t officially “left” yet (though i have in spirit), you put into words what i’m feeling.
thanks for sharing.
interesting post. a great read.
my only question is this: is it possible to reach all generations within a postmodern context?
too often, i visit “emerging” churches and it is all…mostly 20-somethings. is it truly a healthy church if everyone is relatively the same age, if everyone thinks the same?
All, thank you for your kinds words.
Tyler, I don’t think the postmodern context is for everyone. My wife’s parents are patently against any expression that is not what they are used to and it would be foolish to expect them to fit in to what we are doing.
I would describe health within the context of elders that understand the journey towards faith, hope, and love. AND the development of those who are new to the journey. It’s inward AND outward.
Too often I see church that try and be all things to all people. It’s just not healthy.
In my context, I left a church that is fairly immature. My calling back was to lead those in the journey toward wholeness.
I think I painted myself as someone anti-emerging, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Within a strong theological position, I support everything “emerging”. My problem is just that I think greater are those who can have an emerging service but also bridge a gap of generations. I see too many young people who simply ignore an older generation because they aren’t like them. This is the response that troubles me.
Thanks for this, an increasingly common story told really well, I’ve linked to it from my Blog.
Tyler, I get you but I would suggest that history reveals those in control are the one’s less likely to change or adopt the “new”. It is up to those within leadership to create appropriate responses to those following. If they don’t, we shouldn’t be surprised by what emerges.
Johnathan, I really appreciate your testimony and have struggled many years with “leaving” myself. Like you, I love the believers but can’t stand the institution, which I view as the greatest obstacle to the maturing of the believer.
It is only when we as members of the body have a touch with the Lord, an outlet for ministry and living relationships with other believers that we mature. So I’m not sure if we are emerging or not but I doubt that the old wineskin can be fixed. What do you all think?
Ecellent. These are the reasons that I love to com and read you; great words, once again.
Jeff, thank you for your kind words.
[...] even though I only saw most of them at church. But it seems odd. So I related to a post I found at Missio Deo which I found via American Digest. The Question Of [...]
Jonathan:
I need a new keyboard, I am glad you could read my comment
Johathan, this really resonated with me. Thanks for writing it. I’ve just started reading your posts and each has provided some much needed insight for me.
I never really physically left the church, but I did leave one that I was at for 17 years to go to another believing from what I saw on the outside that it was different. However, once inside, I found much of the same and ran into the same dissonance.
Right now, I keep making this circle:
- Feeling that ache inside that things aren’t right
- Checking out (not physically, but in other ways)
- Running into something (I’d have to say it is God each time). Sometimes being cornered by God with an additude issues, sometimes having someone speak something that wakens me up again. This time it happens to have been reading your blogs.
- Feeling a new sense of what I should be doing as “The Church” in and outside of the walls.
- Flowing in that, encountering people, building relationships, seeing Jesus change lives, finding God in all sorts of places.
- Then I run into something. Something which takes me back to the beginning of the cycle.
Each time I am thru the cycle, I feel hopeful that this will be IT when I catch that insight/find that groove/feel God around me. I do feel that somehow I am making progress toward something each time thru. Thank God for that.
If you’ve got any advice or further insight I’m all ears.
Also, for Tyler, I guess I don’t consider myself of the older generation, but I am 40 something and have friends who are 50 something walking thru this with me. So I would say this emergent thing may be new, but it doesn’t have anything to do with age.
Jim, I wish I had an answer but I don’t. Maybe look at what “run into something” looks like and how to avoid or listen to that.
Jonathan thanks for the information that Rob Bell has also come to understand Matthew 18 in a different light. Do you happen to have a copy of his sermon on the subject? I came to this realization in a small study group meditating on the passage. It went against every commentary that I have in my library. Only The Message paraphrase followed this thinking. I’m curious and heartened to hear others have the same view. thanks
Trucker Frank
Frank, nice to have you stop by. I looked at some of my notes and cant’ find which message or date it was. I do know that he came to exactly the same conclusion you did.
A lot of interesting information here, thank you!
We are doing what God requires of us and during this time people have said that we are what emerging church is.
I had no clue what they were talking about as I had never heard of emerging church before!
I was curious and have hunted all over the web for what this emerging church thing is - this is the first site that I have seen that gives good explanations and from here I also found re-dreaming the dream site.
All very interesting and encouraging as it affirms what I have been going thru here in South Africa.
Cheers!
Thanks for your kind words Pops.
Hi Jonothan!
One question please:
Why “Emerging Church”?
To me it is more a case of “Returning Church” as we return to what we see in Scripture.
Just a thought - your comments?
Lots of love!
Pops, what I see in the emerging church IS yes a return to really, really, really old church, but in new forms. God is always doing something fresh in our midst.