The reason the whole emergent/ing or just anti-modern/institutional church... whatever words you use to describe it, the reason it started is because people were becoming disgusted with the church. We had ceased to be the church and the church had become its own monster.
Most criticism of the emergent movement includes some mention of how it is just another movement to cater to the newest generation and their fads. This thought process alone makes me sick. The church is not an institution to be molded and changed. The church is people, it is us. The emergent movement is not even a retranslation of church, it is God's body changing. We are changed, therefore the church changes with us. The church is constantly morphing and looking at it as a controllable entity is the problem in the first place.
The emergent movement seeks to affect people, to make faith alive to them, to journey with them. In this way the church never stops changing. This is not just the newest way of looking at church, but a restructuring, yes even a deconstruction of the church.
We have become tired of the christian political right which claims religion as its base but acts often without it. I am not saying that the left is right, I'm just saying we shouldn't claim religion in an attempt to organize political thought.
Along the same lines we have become a religion of finger pointing. Never happy with ourselves, and always pointing out the weakness of others. Rob Bell speaks on the subject. He talks about christians picketing at an abortion clinic and responds to this "Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn't as bright as it could be." (velvet elvis)
How true! We are not the new jerusalem, we are not the city on a hill. Christian people are, the US govt is not. I am tired of christian mores and values being laid upon our nation. In Romans Paul says we should not burden new believers with many rules. He comes up with 4. And yet we have no problem expecting someone who doesn't give Christ any authority in their life to submit to a crazy list of rules that we have extracted, without context, out of scripture.
Why can't we spend our energies focusing on making the light as bright as possible, then our influence can spread farther and farther. If we just keep yelling at the dark to shape up and brighten itself, we aren't going to get very far.
3 comments:
i like the retorts to the assumption that the new church is another fad. the emergent church/modern church or whatever nominclature you assign it is not this years pink or last years black. it is as you described it an adaption to what we as christians see as necessary to evolve each of our own relationships with god. those "frozen chosen" as they have so commonly been referred to are not so easily persuaded and still stand firm in their concrete to their beliefs of the unoffensive church sermon, the same old same old sermond that happens the same time every year. instead we need to use church, in my opinion, as a gateway to deep thought and research into scripture to find its meaning in our own lives. why is it that some do not so easily see it that way? is it because they are not christian, is it because we are wrong in our way. i believe neither, i believe just as jews did back in jesus' time is that a lot of people are brought up to follow a certain set of rules and ways to perform. this is where we must instead of stage right, take our own paths to the same point, our salvation. now that i am rambling, i must say that i feel personally that though most of those stuck in their old ways do not see the modern christian as the same, and are reluctant to modify, they are indeed in their own ways, maybe unbeknownst to themselves doing something similar in their own righs.
well it might not be that their way of church was wrong, it obviously is wrong for us, but maybe they met god more in that style than they would in our style.
although a church pastor from a mainline church sat behind me at ecclesia this sunday and he seemed to enjoy it very much
i think it is as it is with every field including the business world. the old school people are relcutant to move into the new school of thought. its something that they are eventually pulled into it whether the realize it or not. but a relcutance to even experience the difference is more ignorance than non-exposure. im glad to see that indeed there is a movement into the new school of thought.
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