Today I met with Graham Johnson the senior pastor of Subiaco Church of Christ, one of our big local churches.

Graham is a fantastic supporter of Forge and while he is not called to do what I do, he is able to appreciate the value and offer encouragement. Graham’s church was homebase for saint gaz and still seeks to support him as he plants Myriad.

I actually use the Subi website quite regularly as a source for good online sermons while on the treadmill. This is the kind of post I much prefer to make and the kind of relationship I prefer to have with other Christian leaders.

Two blokes who can love, support and respect each other as they serve in very different ways May there be much more of it.

Thanks Graham!

It seems there is a quite a move out there to try and bring the so called ’emerging church’ movement into disrepute and possibly even stamp it out.

jungle 2 jungle dvdrip I had heard of Don Carson’s 3 talk series, but hadn’t taken much notice. However today I downloaded all three MP3’s to actually check out what he says. I haven’t done it yet, but I will give my thoughts when I have. I am fine with decent critique – it is always appreciated. However it seems that what is happening is not earthed in solid fact.

TSK

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has done a decent review of the recently printed Baptist Press article here download little fish dvdrip and I won’t reinvent the wheel as he responds to it very well. In case you haven’t come across it this is the opening paragraph:

A recently developed way of envisioning church known as the "Emerging Church Movement" deals carelessly with Scripture and compromises the Gospel, according to a prominent evangelical scholar and a Southern Baptist seminary president.

I don’t think you could see them as anything but fighting words…

Add this and you have some fairly serious accusations:

"The worldview of postmodernism — complete with an epistemology that denies the possibility of or need for propositional truth — affords the movement an opportunity to hop, skip and jump throughout the Bible and the history Christian thought in order to take whatever pieces they want from one theology and attach them, like doctrinal post-it notes, to whatever picture they would want to draw."

Kinda makes me feel like a naughty kid who just got smacked!

The funny thing is that I reckon I’ve done more reading and theologising in the last 5 years than I ever have and these kinds of comments are both ill founded charicatures but also hurtful and offensive.

If you’ve read this blog for a while you’d know that I actually prefer not to use the term ’emerging church’ much because it does lack definition – it means whatever you think it means. That is probably an indication that there is no ‘official movement’ as such, however there are a group of people aligning around some common themes. I prefer to simply think of ourselves as missionaries (and yes that has some baggage too).

It seems the fundy crew are concerned that ‘ec’ers’ are abandoning the scriptures to accommodate the culture while the bigger church guys are seeing it as undermining what they have spent the best part of their lives creating.

And yet… all the time I find myself asking who are these ’emerging church straw men’ who get lifted up, kicked and beaten and thrown on the scrap heap?

I see some of myself in this article but I also see much that does not apply to me – or to those I know who are on the similar track. No doubt there are wackos in the emerging church scene… butttttt… how may fruit loops are there in normal evangelical churches? How many control freaks are there masquerading as shepherds? How many people who say they take the Bible seriously, but don’t show evidence in their life?

I have been reading a blog this weekend that labels emerging church people as ‘heretics’. (I won’t give you the link as I have already wasted too much time in discussion with these very aggressive antagonists)

However… these are fighting words.

It’d be great to be able to sit down with those who make the critique and let them see that they don’t just throw mud at an amorphous ‘movement’. They actually attack people.

I’m afraid I don’t take that kind of crap real well.

Better stop there before I say what I really think.

Keep in mind that this book was first written in 1927 for those engaged in foreign missions… (and as such is probably very relevant for a post-christian context)

Allen asks how can the gospel spread (in foreign countries) if there is always presupposed to be a need for paid missionaries, buildings and infrastructure? The gospel that we desire to see spread is actually hindered by these things because they communicate a mode of operation that is not possible by locals.

As I read Allen today he saying that the greatest hindrance to the gospel being the penetrating force it could be in society are overly controlling leaders who refuse to believe that the Christian faith can spread spontaneously without falling into disorder. He argues that there is natural order about the spreading of gospel seed and it is our egos and desire for control that prevent its effectiveness.

We as leaders in our desire for control actually circumvent what we say we hope to achieve.

A few quotes:

P. 12 "Many of our missionaries welcome spontaneous zeal provided there is not too much of it for their restrictions"

P. 13 "We instinctively think of something we cannot control as tending to disorder"

P. 14 "That we often ascribe absence of missionary zeal to the incapacity of our converts rather than to that restraining influence is sufficent proof of our blindness. That we at once pray for the manifestations of zeal on the part of our converts and instinctively shrink from steps which may tend to realise it is rather sad and surprising. The force indeed is so strong as to be alarming".

Much of what Allen says falls in line with Hirsch’s ideas on the role of the apostolic leader being that of creating the field for others to operate in – being the one who gives permission for the spontaneous expansion rather than being  the bottleneck thru whom others must pass.

One of his compelling arguments is that we actually stifle the passion of new Christians by seeking to molly coddle them and keep them safe – by not really believing that they are quite competent to ‘propagate the faith’. He writes of the missionary method of bringing in teachers to educate the new converts – teachers who often had none of the zeal of the first missionary and by the time the deadpan ‘teacher’ is finished with them these  new converts a) believe evangelism is for experts b) no longer care because they are bored shirtless.

I have to say that as a leader I would love to see spontaneous expansion – the gospel out of control like a wildfire but I am one of those who is anxious about losing control over where it goes.

Why?

Maybe because then what happens won’t bring kudos to me or ‘my church’…

Bloody pathetic hey?

I can only say that sounds and feels a lot like sin.

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How can the EMC and the Established church co-exist?

Actually a prelim question actually relates to what we see the EMC as being. There is so much divergence on this one issue that to answer the original question might be tricky.

Anyway here are my thoughts as to how we can work together:

• Recognise we are all kicking the ball the same direction – we are actually on the same team… this is critical if we are to see any kind of synergy.

• Accept that everyone will not see the world way we do and that does not make them an ‘inferior’ being or someone who lacks an understanding of scripture. This cuts both ways. Emergent folk can be pretty harsh on est church people and est church people can be very dismissive of EMCers. Lets not judge each other simply because we have different opinions of scripture. Who’s to say my/your opinion is the right one?…

• There has to be more open dialogue. In a sense the EMC are those without power ie. they lack resources, numbers, identity etc. However EMC folks actually hold an incredibly powerful position in this whole scenario because they are the new ‘cool’ (whether they like it or not) and in our world ‘cool’ always trumps ‘established’… Unless we talk and keep good lines of communication I can see us in danger of wielding our respective powers to smack each other around a bit. That’d be very sad.

• I believe the Est church needs to seek to resource the EMC and set leaders free to experiment with new projects. This will mean $$$ and risk. But investing in the R&D folks will send a very strong message that there is some level of belief in both the project and them. In return the EMCers will need to adjust unneccessarily adversarial rhetoric, not to compromise their own beliefs, but to accept that there is a place for some of the est church.

That’ll do for now!

Seems the emerging missional scene cops a bit of a hiding from John Piper’s crew. The issues seem to relate to open theism and taking a narrative approach to theology. They give Stan Grenz and Brian McClaren a bit of stick.

You can listen to the interview on the topic here and see the book here. Its worth the effort. Its always worth listening to your critics – someone once said ‘your critics are often your best critics’. Good thought hey? People who like you are often too nice to tell the truth.

Thanks to Justin for the tip off.

This has been my journey with developing Forge here in W.A. At the end of the intensive this week Stuart gave us the task of describing an experience without words.

See if you can make sense of it! Leave your interpretation in the comments.

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It was great to get to the end of Forge today – they don’t call them intensives for nothing!

It was a brilliant time full of quality input and real challenge. I feel disturbed on a number of fronts. I can only imagine how people feel who rolled up there for the first time. I remember that experience – its as if the rug gets swept from under the feet. Disorienting, disturbing, and yet incredibly exciting. What now?…

I have already reflected on my main experiences, however there was one more today that was also significant.

Read on if you dare…

At Forge we are careful to affirm that church as we know it caters for one section of the population – somewhere between 7-15% of Aussies actually like the typical Sunday gig. I have always tried to be a ‘both / and’ person rather than an ‘either / or’. I don’t mind a fight if I need to have one, but I have always felt we need many kinds of churches and I love my brothers in the established churches. I will avoid fighting with them as much as I can.

Here’s the problem though… As Steve McAlpine presented today on the whole idea of how much we value ‘cool’ in our society – so much that churches doing attractional stuff are actually trying to be ‘cool/funky/relevant’, Dave asked the question, ‘if we the way we attract people to church is by being cooler than the church down the street then have we actually compromised the gospel? Christianity is not about being cool – we do not follow Jesus to be cool. But if we are trying to make church a cool place to be then are we subverting the very gospel we call people to?’

I think he is on to something…

But… Then… by implication are ‘attractional’ churches with an emphasis on bigger and better actually a contradiction to the gospel?

And if so then is there a place for the attractional church?…

That’s a different question to asking ‘is there a place for the established (and boring) church?’ Because its asking should we seek to ‘cool up’ our church services to pull the punters or is that actually a form of syncretism?

I reckon Dave was onto something. I am not sure what to do with it, but we can’t have it both ways.

Today at Forge we had a fantastic time.

Geoff Westlake did two presentations on his mission in Banksia Grove and offered some excellent biblical insights into what a Christian community ought to look like. I hadn’t heard Geoff do these presentations previously, and I loved the way he earthed his thinking in the biblical text.

Alan was very passionate and lucid about the need for us to explore other ways of being church. To use one of his favourite Ed De Bono quotes he says ‘if you want to dig a hole over here, you don’t do it by digging the same hole deeper over there’. Application = if you want to reach people who do not currently come to church you don’t do it by schmicking up the attractional gig.

Scotty Vawser,our ‘local hero’ for the day, (a 30 min spot we give to those who are ‘having a go’) told some great stories as he shared his own journey into new ways of thinking about church and misson and the tension of doing that in an established and large church.

I took a session entitled ‘A Good Look in The Mirror’ that looked at both the history of the emerging church using this article and then did a critique both of the established church and the emerging. The question I was seeking to grapple with was ‘if we are going to have a go at a new way are we actually doing any better than the old way?’ We had some great discussion but ran out of time…

Tonight Al is telling the story of his time at South Melbourne… and obviously I am not there! Danelle is there tonight while I stay home with the kids. I have heard the south story about 9 times now so I reckon its better Danelle hears once than me hear it again.

Tomorrow AM Neale Fong is up for sharing a theology of work along the theme of ‘9-5 faith in a dualistic world’. Should be great!

Tonight was a great time with over 90 people coming out to the ‘postcards’ event. Well done Scott and Steve and crew who pulled it together. The turnout exceeded all of our expectations and made for some great vibe.

I think the intensity of my day caught up with me tonight. Five ‘one to one’ appointments left Hamo the introvert a tad drained so as I sat there and listened to people’s comments and questions I found myself struggling to keep pace. I normally think pretty well on my feet, but tonight my brain felt like it was squashed under my butt!

Well done to the guys who pulled tonight together. It was a gracious conversation and one that can be developed in future gatherings. I sense we all wanted to affirm each other and maybe next time we can get into some more rigourous debate on some of the differences we may hold… if we are game…

Forge starts tomorrow – 2 verrry long days coming up, but it will be fun!

I’m off to the unique monastery town of New Norcia this afternoon to give a short Forgey talk to the a.com students.

Its a great little town and one of our unique WA treasures just 100kms north of us.

Sadly it means I’ll miss church tonight and hanging out with the crew.

The big question is which car to take… the beast (4WD) is well prepared for any roos I might encounter on the way home and has the added advantage of a stereo. The Telstar drives much more smoothly and quickly, but has no roo bar or stereo…

Neither is comprehensively insured so it might have to be the beast…