Come on all you emerging church thinkers… what is it?

Its a serious question that arose after a conversation with a good mate today.

What is the opposite of incarnational?…

Its not often that I experience self doubt in relation to what we are doing here in Brighton, but I have had a little the last few days.

At the Baptist Pastors Conference we were hearing about how the American Churches of the West have seen phenomenal growth in their movement as they have adopted an aggressive church planting strategy with a strong results orientation and high levels of accountability. They have seen many many people ‘cross the line’ to use John Kaiser’s terminology.

The closest they have to an emerging missional church plant is a more funky church service that does reflect the surrounding culture.

What strikes me and causes me to question is the fact they seem to be effective. They appear to be growing churches rapidly and seeing many unchurched people come thru the door.

I am results oriented.

What we are doing is going to be very slow in the early days especially and it will be difficult to measure results. I am tempted to jetison it for a pumped up version of normal church – church on steroids / pig with lipstick – whatever you want to call it.

Maybe we will fail in what we attempt here – maybe we will not see people come to faith at all? Maybe we can do a better job of the attractional beast and see discipleship occur?

The thing is I don’t want to go back. Its just that sometimes when the weight of opinion sways against you and what you are involved with is unproven (OK the ’emerging’ church in China is fairly proven!) you just wish you could hop on the bandwagon and be ‘one of the boys’ again.fat albert dvdrip

I have always felt that Easter Sunday is the big day on the Christian calendar – kind of like AFL Grand final day, but knowing that every year you come from behind to snatch victory.

This year we are looking to have a local celebration for our own church community and our neighbours – probably in our backyard.

Danelle and I are pondering this at the moment – what would embrace the true essence of the ressurection – communicate something of Jesus and also capture the imaginations of local people who may have little concern for the whole Easter thing?

Yes – we could run a ‘church service’, but I’m not sure that would be a form my neighbours would feel at home in.

Currently words like informal, party, beer, laughter are running through my mind as well as truth, lens, piercing, emotive…

I’m open to ideas…

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In coming to Brighton we have always been very keen for the Christian community we are shaping to be open and inclusive.

By that, I mean everyone is welcome and everyone is accepted – wherever they are at.

Now follow me on this, because sometimes when our beliefs and values are tested we discover that we have some growing to do…

Currently we have 3 different community meetings on a 4 week cycle.

1. Focus – closed ‘missionary team’ meeting. Only those who are committed to being missionaries in Brighton and are on the journey with us are invited to that meeting.

2. Primary Communities – open ‘everyone welcome’ meeting. These are our primary church communities – the forums where we ‘do church’ together in a gathering sense.

3. Big Gigs – another open everybody welcome meeting. I am sensing these could be as a simple as a barbecue, a party, a backyard blitz.

Now here’s what I discovered last week.

We had our second ‘prim comm’ gathering and some new folks (a local Christian family) came along for the first time. I didn’t know they were coming, but another family in the group invited them along – understanding us to be an open community.

Fair enough? Absolutely…

But, what I discovered was that my first reaction was one of ‘hey I didn’t expect this’. I felt some discomfort at new people in the group. (They were great people!)

Now logically that doesn’t make sense if we are genuine about being an ‘open community’, but there was an obvious dissonance between what I said I valued and what I felt.

I took a few days to reflect on it and ask the questions of myself – why did I feel like I did and in a chat with Bruce royal scandal a divx online (no longer blogging – but on an exciting journey) some things became clearer.

What I started to realise is that while we are speaking about PC’s as our primary gathering experience (ala what we used to know as ‘church service’) I was unconsciously seeing the group as more of a ‘home group’ or a ‘small group’ in the more traditional language where there was some level of openness but only as the group allowed it.

In my previous experience all of the home groups I have been part of have been relatively closed groups. We have spoken of the need for trust to develop, of the change that occurs every time a new face appears, shared journey etc. (You probably know the drill!)

But here we are now with PC’s – not home groups – not closed groups, but my brain and emotions are still wired for these beasts. I didn’t think that was the case, but the dissonance between my words and my feelings showed that last week.

This is a new part of the journey again – new learning – how not to be a ‘home group’ but to be a ‘primary community’ where all people are welcome. While it is a new experience, I’m looking forward to learning how to function and grow in this environment.

It occurred to me the other day that in the home group setting we often see the group as the place where we can share our deepest stuff – or we try to make it that. And sometimes I have seen that happen and sometimes even had stuff to say (most often I don’t!).

But it does create some serious tension also. I have been part of groups where some have been concerned that the sharing isn’t deep enough – and asked people to open up more. Or maybe people have been kept out of the group because it will ‘upset the level of trust’. I have always felt uneasy with pushing people into ‘intimate trust relationships’. It occurs to me that maybe our PC’s can be these places, but don’t need to be.

Maybe the best place to do the ‘stuff dump’ is one to one with a trusted friend or two – either in the prim community or not. Of course we do need safe places.

But – If we allow it to develop naturally then maybe we will see lives opened and shared – if we try to give it a shove then maybe it will always feel contrived rather than normal.

I’m sitting well with this now and have enjoyed the learning experience as we have been coming to grips with the fact that we are creating something new. I sense I will need to ‘practise this’ more regularly to become more comfortable with it.

It doesn’t mean close relationships aren’t valuable – but it does say if we are going to value openness in our communities then we need to put our money where our mouth is!

Anyone else had similar experiences on the journey?…

I Stand by the Door

by Sam Shoemaker

I stand by the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world-
It is the door through which people walk when they find God.
There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind people,
With outstretched, groping hands.
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it …
So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for people to find that door–the door to God.
The most important thing any person can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch–the latch that only clicks
And opens to the person’s own touch.
People die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter-
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it–live because they have not found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him …
So I stand by the door.

Go in, great saints, go all the way in–
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics–
It is a vast roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms.
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture in a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening …
So I stand by the door.

There is another reason why I stand there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them
For God is so very great, and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia,
And want to get out. “Let me out!” they cry,
And the people way inside only terrify, them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
For the old life, they have seen too much:
Once taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving–preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would like to run away. So for them, too,
I stand by the door.

I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not, yet even found the door,
Or the people who want to run away again from God,
You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long,
And forget the people outside the door.

As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear Him, and know He is there,
But not so far from people as not to hear them,
And remember they are there, too.
Where? Outside the door–
Thousands of them, millions of them.
But–more important for me–
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
“I had rather be a door-keeper …”
So I stand by the door.

Sam Shoemaker, founder of Faith At Work at Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City, in 1926, was also one of the spiritual leaders who helped draft the 12 Steps of A.A.

That poem echoes what I feel – I want to stand by the door.

“Near enough to God to hear him, and know he is there, but not so far from men as not to hear them, and remember they are there, too”

I know there will be people more ‘godly’ and more ‘spiritual’ than me – who think deeper and meditate longer, but if being that means that I don’t get to stand by the door then I’ll take the door every time.

Over the last year or so I have met a number people who when I ask about the church community they are involved with tell me ‘Oh I just attend Impressive & Funky Baptist Church. We don’t actually get involved – we just go on Sundays. Its very good’.

I’m getting close to asking someone ‘so when did just attending

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become an option you could choose?…’

These conversations have sparked me to write an article that is a critique of the way we have done church and the inherent weaknesses in the system. It is still in process but I’ll throw it up here when its done

Those of you who know me would realise that even though I am taking an ’emerging/incarnational’ approach to our own situation I am not (and never have been) hostile towards the established church. I believe we need many kinds of churches and that there is a place for different expressions of the body. I am a product of the established church and I am grateful for my experiences that have shaped me to this point.

But we are on a different journey because we believe there are some significant flaws in the system.

I have never articulated them before, but this one issue has started my motor and rather than just look at the ‘passive consumer’ problem in isolation I thought I’d take a shot at the whole system. I am not up for defining ourselves by ‘who we aren’t’ but maybe these things need to be said…

Its a little way from completion, but when it is I’ll throw it up on here and wait to be crucified!

In my reading today I was looking at ‘church leadership structures’ in the gospels and Acts.

Yes I realise ‘the church’ didn’t exist in the gospels but surely if Jesus was concerned for our church leaderships in the days after he was gone, he would have given some guidelines – right?…

Apparently not…

He does speak of how we are to treat one another and the place of greatness etc but he doesn’t tell us how we are to organise ourselves as churches to be effective. And yet we spend a lot of time on this issue.

What does that say?…

Obviously he had some kind of plan and system within the apostolic group. And he was the primary / focal leader

For all the talk of ‘flat leadership structures’ that I hear there is no question that Jesus was leading the apostles. In the early church unless I am blinded by my upbrigning it would seem that Peter, James and John played major ‘structural/positional’ leadership roles.

To be crass they were at the top of the apostolic food chain…

A heirarchy? Hmmm… another naughty word in Emerging Church circles! But is a heirarchy bad? Really?…

Abuse is bad – and heirarchies do hold the potential for abuse – but so do ‘unled’ groups where the loudest or most dominant or most manipulative voice can often set the agenda.

Sometimes I think that in our efforts to be ‘biblical’ we have simply framed our culturally biased pendulum swings in some biblical proof texts.

This Sunday we have a ‘focus meeting’ – our monthly team meeting where we come together to share stories, pray, and be equipped and inspired for the road ahead.

I realised when I was chatting with James download training day movie the other day that we are in need of talking about leadership as a group.

He asked me how we ‘did leadership’.

I wrote: ‘Sometimes the whole group leads and sometimes I lead. One is usually unproductive and the other is foolish’. As I wrote that I realised we are not in a healthy place with leadership. This morning Herdo and I chatted about it and agreed we need to put the question on the table…

‘How should we ‘do leadership’ at this point in our life as a community?’

It doesn’t assume we will always do it the same way, but it does say we need to find a way that works for us now.

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I wrote this article a few months ago – ripped the guts of the idea of a nice bloke called Mark Sayers…

Actually Mark has changed tack with his presentation on this topic.

He presents the first 4 stages of the em church movement kind of like I have written them, but then finishes with a question:

“Is the emerging church simply an incarnation among ‘cultural creatives’?”

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Justin is still chasing metaphors for ‘pastor’ in the em church scene. It seems every word has connotations – some good and some bad – such is the limitation of language.

‘Coach’ gels well with me. I have had many good experiences with coaches and with coaching. A coach can be a friend, but at the end of the day the coach is expected to help you get in shape for the game. He equips, encouarges, inspires, has been there before you and can share learning.

There are different forms of coaches too. In sport I always liked the role of coaching from the bench (basketball), but in church I feel we need playing coaches – people who are in there figuring it out with us, not yelling orders from the bench.

I guess many of the ‘issues’ with leadership often stem from people’s bad experiences. The funny thing is that for me, after 13 years in est churches I was almost always treated with kindness and respect by my leaders, so I am less concerned for the dangers of positional leadership.

When people say that leaders in positons of power become ‘abusers’ I get very toey for those leaders. Chances are most leaders are people trying to do the right thing who occasionally get off track. At least that is what I would see…

Perhaps all this just goes to show how much our experience shapes our beliefs!