Emergent Reflections: Spring 2006
Brian McLaren
Just over a year ago Doug Pagitt predicted that 2005 would be a year of criticism for the emergent community, and looking back, it’s clear that he predicted pretty accurately. Some of that criticism has been constructive and helpful, although a lot of it has been, sadly, less so. But even non-constructive criticism has its benefits: it gives its targets the opportunity to be gracious, forgiving, non-retaliatory, courageous, and persistent. It also can encourage humility and prayer. I trust that all of us who have felt the sting of criticism can feel ourselves, by the grace of God, benefiting from the experience.
It’s always wise to listen and learn from criticism, but it’s even more important to proactively examine ourselves. As Paul said, if we judged ourselves, we wouldn’t be judged (1 Cor. 11:31), and Jesus told us to examine our own eyes for lumber before worrying about the splinters in others’ eyes. So, in that spirit, here’s an exercise in self-examination for the growing global generative friendship that is associated with the name “emergent” in the U.S. and in many places around the world. It’s based on my own observations, and includes proposals for how we respond to the issues I try to describe. (This exercise has already benefited from insightful input from James Mills, and I’m sure many others will be able to add insight as well.)
All of these proposals can be put in terms of finding “above the line” solutions to reactions that tend to polarize people into binary positions “on the line.” (Many people will be familiar with this “above the line” concept from my book A New Kind of Christian.) Instead of mapping out a position at either end of us/them or either/or conflicts, or even choosing some moderate point in between poles, I propose that we seek higher ground in several specific areas.
All this is based on a general observation: in my travels, I frequently see a number of people in various places getting “anti-“ about one thing or another. In every case, they’ve identified something worth being against. But I’ve also noticed that whenever a group reacts and becomes anti-something, two things happen. First, they limit their options. There may be some percentage of good in what they’re rejecting, and by their rejection they cut themselves off from it. (This is a mistake a number of our critics seem to be making too.) Second, when people strongly react against something, they’re in danger of swinging to the other extreme. Evoking (crikey!) Steve Irwin, they back away from the crocodile on one side of the trail and step on a cobra on the other side. Dangers seldom come in ones, and the line between good and evil or wisdom and foolishness usually runs through, not between, alternatives. Seeking above-the-line solutions is an attempt to affirm the good on both extremes while seeking to avoid at least some of the problems. I hope these proposals will be of use to all of us who are seeking to faithfully serve God in the many and diverse churches that are emerging. Please be assured that nothing here is intended as a criticism of anyone – but simply as an attempt to offer helpful reflection on what I’m seeing and hearing, for what it’s worth.
1. Above the line on organization and leadership:
A lot of folks have gotten ground up or run over by churches or ministries that are run like well-oiled machines. They want something more organic, human, relational, and authentic. The problem is, some people may over-react against excessive or inhuman organization and leadership, and then find themselves suffering from the downsides of disorganization and leaderlessness. An above-the-line solution realizes that organization is not the enemy, nor is leadership the problem. It’s bad, unwise, inhuman, excessive, insufficient, unthinking, inflexible, overflexible, dominating, passive or otherwise ineffective organization and leadership that we need better alternatives to, and of course, finding those better alternatives isn’t easy.
I guess my point is that we can react so strongly to inflexible and overt organizational structures that we become equally inflexible in an opposite form of covert or unrecognized organization (or disorganization). Top-down, dominant, non-listening, autocratic or unaccountable and unapproachable leadership has been a problem in many quarters in recent years, but being anti-leadership will create equal and opposite problems. Mechanistic organization (whether well-oiled or rusty) has been a real problem, but developing an allergy to needed structure will create new problems of its own.
There are a number of related issues in this regard. Some groups are dropping terms like pastor or senior pastor to help avoid a clergy-laity distinction. Some are avoiding any salaries and working with completely unremunerated teams of leaders. Many are choosing to meet in rented or multi-use facilities rather than single-use facilities. Again, all of these approaches can be celebrated, but none should be seen as being itself a final and trouble-free solution. Today’s solutions to yesterday’s problems often will cause tomorrow’s problems, which may then call for very different kinds of solutions from the solutions that are being celebrated today. We’ll be wise, over the long run, if we focus on what we’re for without painting ourselves in a corner regarding what we’re against – whether in terms of structures or leadership.
A. W. Tozer said that organization is necessary and dangerous, and I think he hits a wise balance. The key with both leadership and organization is to seek forms, styles, and attitudes that serve, not that dominate – and that are flexible, not new rigidities. This approach, of course, is what Jesus taught and modeled.
2. Above-the-line tradition and practices
In several places, I see opposite things going on simultaneously in the church that is emerging. Many people in emergent come from communities that have always valued tradition – fixed-hour prayer, stations of the cross, the church year, and so on. Some are just discovering these practice-based approaches to faith for the first time – often the through the work of Tony Jones, Robert Webber, Mark Pierson, Scott McKnight, or Sally Morgenthaler. But at the same time, other people and groups are moving away from traditional approaches to public worship and spiritual formation.
Those who are moving farther away from tradition and historic practices are rightly rejecting traditionalism and ritualism – the inflexible tyranny of “the way we’ve always done it before.” Along these lines, I like the definition of a ritual as “using an action of your body to bond to meaning.” Ritualism and traditionalism happen when we keep doing certain actions but have no idea what the meaning is.
Conversely, those who are discovering or preserving tradition and historic practices are rightly rejecting a knowledge-fixated approach to spiritual formation – the idea that more Bible facts or more theological information will make one a better follower of Christ.
I think there is plenty of room for both trends in the emergent conversation, but both groups should be careful to preserve the freedom to celebrate both/and: both the value of ritual and tradition, always connected to the meanings they help us bond to – and the freedom to adapt or drop traditions that aren’t effective or sensible for their community. It would be a shame to throw out the bathwater of traditionalism and lose the baby of tradition too, just as it would be a shame to take on extra baggage that a community doesn’t need – just because “everybody’s doing fixed-hour prayer,” or whatever.
In some places there’s the danger of over-reacting against traditional practices, and in other places there’s the opposite danger: becoming so enamored with tradition that innovation and spontaneity are suspect. May God help us grasp “the genius of the both/and” and to move above the line of polarization.
3. Above the line on decision and commitment
Many folk from fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and evangelical backgrounds have become deeply disillusioned with the methodology of revivalism – calling people to “make a decision for Christ” by walking the aisle, raising a hand, filling out a contact card, saying “the sinner’s prayer” and so on. They rightly point out that these are rather recent traditions and techniques – not Biblical requirements, even though they can be Biblically defended in various ways. They have seen the downsides of using revivalist techniques, many of which seem to border on high-pressure manipulation or sales gimmickry. They realize that these techniques arose during late Christendom, at a time when and in places where nearly everyone was at least nominally Christian – when it made sense to call nominal people to immediate and dramatic decision to “accept Jesus” or “get saved” or “get the-baptism-of-the-Holy-Ghost” or whatever.
Too often, though, this decision-focused approach produces a series of raised and dashed expectations, as people “make a decision” but nothing really changes. And in settings that are in some ways more pre-Christian or post-Christian than typical of Christendom, calling people to immediate commitment without understanding makes no sense at all.
As an alternative, many of us wisely want to emphasize process – the process of coming to faith in Christ, the process of becoming and growing as disciples, the process of opening one’s life to more and more fullness of the Holy Spirit, and so on. Again, I think this emphasis is sensible, and the problems it seeks to avoid are real.
But it would be a shame if we lose the very real insight that some people are ready to make a decision or commitment and need to do so. They may be like the rich young ruler in the gospel story, or like the Philippian jailor in Acts: they want to take the next step, but they don’t know how, or even if there is a next step. My hunch is that baptism – which marks a key milestone in a process, and is both an ending and a beginning – should become a bigger focus in many of our churches. Perhaps some kinds of membership processes, or induction into a team of leaders or monastic community, can also help us explore new ways of calling people in process to decision and commitment in a healthy way. We need to be careful we don’t respond to an overemphasis on simplistic decisions and high-pressure events by accepting a low-intensity process without events or milestones or commitments, when what we need is an approach that looks for processes that include decisive events of commitment.
When we are dedicated to holistic spiritual formation and equipping people for integral ministry, we need both processes and events. I’m excited to think about the new and creative above-the-line approaches that will embrace the spectrum from decision-only to process-only, and everything in between.
4. Above the line about megachurch and microchurch
If the megachurch was the church innovation of the boomer generation, and if the downsides of the megachurch movement are beginning to become apparent, it’s not surprising that a new generation of innovators would want to explore the opposite direction.. House church, micro church, liquid church, and other terms are being used to describe faith communities that are generally small, organic, and noninstitutional. I am very sympathetic to people who are exploring these forms of church, and I am the first to say we should encourage and celebrate them. I’ve planted two house churches in my life, and helped in the development of many others, so I have a lot of experience in this regard.
However, I also want to celebrate and encourage a “generous orthodoxy” and a “deep ecclesiology” (the first term coming from Hans Frei and Stan Grenz, the second from Andrew Jones). I wish we could have megachurch pastors who celebrate microchurches, and microchurch leaders (or members) who celebrate megachurches, not to mention middle-sized churches that celebrate – rather than feel threatened by - both.
In the U.S. and around the world, some of the best examples of churches that are emerging are home-based fellowships that number less than 40. But I also think increasing numbers of megachurches are or are in the process of becoming excellent examples of emerging churches too. We would really be breaking with a bad tradition of either-or thinking if we could celebrate the church in all its forms. There are things each can do that the other can’t, and the chance for mutual enrichment is huge. Size isn’t the point; attitude is. A megachurch that is proud of its large size and judgmental toward smaller churches is unattractive; a microchurch that’s equally proud of its small size and judgmental about large churches is no more attractive. And we can’t let the middle-sized churches get lost in the middle! Whatever a church’s current size, it has much to give and much to gain from cooperating respectfully with churches of other sizes.
5. Above the line on serving both the pre-churched and the de-churched or overchurched
Some of us have been so turned off by negative approaches to evangelism – rude, insensitive, canned, programmatic, high-pressured, glitzy, or whatever – that we have unintentionally backed into some degree of silence about the good news. This is especially true where churches are caring for the de-churched and overchurched - alienated and wounded refugees from fundamentalist, Pentecostal, charismatic, or other evangelical churches where evangelism was practiced insensitively or in an otherwise unhealthy way. It’s understandable that these folks would need some “detox” time, where they can heal and recalibrate their spiritual lives without an unhealthy degree of pressure to evangelize. There are a lot of wounded (and sometimes angry) Christians out there, and they need to be cared for with patience and sensitivity.
In addition, as some people rethink the fiery absolutism and exclusivism that they were brought up with, and as they grapple with inclusivism, pluralism and relativism and seek some “terra nova” beyond the extremes - they find their evangelistic zeal temporarily diminishes (although I think far more find their evangelistic zeal intensifies when they lose the “turn or burn” rhetoric, and they proclaim the gospel of the kingdom rather than the gospel of hell-avoidance).
Meanwhile, my main calling, as I understand it, is as an evangelist – in the sense that I have devoted my life to understanding and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God, available to all, through Jesus Christ – and to making vibrant, maturing, contagious disciples of Jesus Christ, especially among previously “unchurched” people. So I can’t be satisfied when people respond to an abuse or misuse of evangelism with disuse or avoidance. As the old saying goes, the best antidote to abuse or misuse is not disuse, but proper use.
Most of the folks I meet in emergent share this commitment to making new disciples along with healing and maturing damaged ones. But for those of us who may have lost our balance a bit, perhaps this reminder will be helpful. We have good news to share – for the religiously wounded and for the irreligious spiritual seekers, and everyone in between.
6. Above the line about denominational renewal
Parallel to the idea of honoring megachurches and microchurches and everything in between, I hope we can honor the whole spectrum of denominational and nondenominational churches as well, from the most high-church historic and hierarchical through the midrange of congregational churches to the low-budget and flat-structure and highly-relational nondenominational church expressions that include house churches, cell churches, micro-, liquid-, and quantum churches – along with faith communities that may not call themselves churches, but may in fact be.
There is no question that many (if not all) denominational structures are in trouble. Dwindling numbers, aging demographics, failure to recruit younger generations, loss of leaders to dropout and burnout and opt-out, lack of evangelism, bulging bureaucracies, budget cuts, paralyzing endowments, rigid traditionalism, clergy shortages or clergy surpluses, theological rigidity in some places and lack of theological backbone in others – all of these are symptoms of a sea change that will require renewal or revolution in denominational structures. Additionally, when it doesn’t result in schism, the issue of homosexuality seems to be driving many denominations to shift power from headquarters to regional judicatories or local churches. The pedophilia scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are having similar effects, as increasing numbers of local parishes seek to protect their assets from lawsuits that may bankrupt their diocesan offices.
It’s no surprise that many people in the emergent conversation are seeking to do Christian life and mission without denominations at all. Even increasing numbers of loyal denominational folk feel it is bad stewardship to invest decades of their lives (and large portions of their mental and emotional health) in what may seem a rather doubtful enterprise. They have found the politics to be so ugly in some cases that they secretly encourage emergent leaders to look for opportunities elsewhere – at least in the short run.
But others are deeply and sincerely committed to the dream that denominational structures will be reformed and renewed, and they wish that more gifted people would join in that endeavor rather than “jumping ship” to plant nondenominational communities. So both those inside and outside denominations have widely varying opinions about the patient’s prognosis.
A variety of opinions on a complex issue like this makes for good dialogue, but what is less helpful is either a) an anti-denominational stance that holds no hope that God might renew denominations, or b) an anti-nondenominational stance that holds no hope that God might do new things in new wineskins, apart from or in spite of denominational life as we’ve known it.
I recently heard of a headline about General Motors, where an official there said something along these lines: “We created the modern corporation, and now we have to dismantle it to survive.” Or I think of Frederik Willem de Klerk, who led within the apartheid regime in South Africa – and then realized that the time had come to lead to its transformation into a multi-racial democracy. I see healthy signs in many seminaries and denominational systems that these kinds of leaders are emerging … willing to dismantle and transform the structures they have inherited so they can survive. Meanwhile, those who work outside the structures, if they don’t take an anti-stance toward their denominational sisters and brothers, can serve as God’s R & D department and offer resources that will contribute to strength across the spectrum of a “deep ecclesiology.” And whether they acknowledge it or not (I hope they will), they will benefit from the strength and presence of the more structured traditions even as they work alongside rather than within them.
It’s encouraging to see denominational leaders waking up and courageously naming the realities that face them. Many of them are becoming participants in the emerging conversation. If the nondenominational folk welcome them and recognize them as colleagues and friends, there could be some very exciting cross-pollination, because I know that all sides have many gifts to offer one another.
7. Above the line confidence
I often hear people say that emergent is more interested in questions than answers. That’s probably a bit of a misstatement, containing truth but easily misunderstood. More accurately, I think we’d prefer open questions to bad, insufficient, unsatisfying or wrong answers, and we happen to be less satisfied with some standard answers to some questions than many people. Similarly, some people accuse us of “excessive humility” when we should be more bold (and others accuse us of the opposite). But I think we are seeking an integration of boldness and humility – a bold humility or a humble boldness.
To use Lesslie Newbigin’s phrase, we need a proper confidence. We don’t need the excessive confidence of the unthinking fundamentalist who charges ahead, seemingly incapable of reflection or a second thought, insulting anyone who disagrees. Nor do we need the insufficient confidence of the confused, cowardly, or bland “Mr. Nice Guy,” afraid to take a risk or a stand which might offend anybody or garner disapproval. The person with excessive confidence tramples on anyone who gets in his way, while the person with insufficient confidence runs away, afraid to take a stand for fear of being disliked – or perhaps for fear of making a mistake.
But the person of proper confidence seeks to know, speak, and do the truth, in love, and is willing to suffer for doing so, or to make mistakes and learn from them. Dr. King and Archbishop Tutu are models to me of proper confidence. Their example offers a way of being bold but not arrogant, courageous but not aggressive, determined but reflective, and most important, a way of genuinely seeking to love their enemies and treating them with such respect that it would be easy for their enemies to switch sides and become friends. Bono is another model to me of this kind of proper confidence. He’s not timid in expressing his goals and dreams, and he is consistently eager to build coalitions among people with whom he no doubt has many disagreements. His confidence in his main goals – fighting global poverty and HIV/Aids – makes him flexible and tolerant on lesser matters.
8. Above the line about politics
Especially here in the US, but increasingly in other countries, the Religious-Right mentality requires everyone to choose sides: for, against, or “don’t want to play.” In the Religious Right setting, the world is seen as polarized between the right, the good, the moral, the traditional, and the Christian, versus the left, the liberal, the secular, the relativist, the immoral, and the anti-Christian. (Or, conversely put, between the right, the bigoted, the narrow-minded, the greedy, the merciless, the war-mongers, and the fundamentalists versus the left, the compassionate, the open-minded, the generous, the forward-thinking, and the “spiritual.”) This climate – with hot rhetoric and us-them thinking – creates “unsafe space” for people who think, question, and aren’t satisfied with one polarity or the other.
Those from conservative backgrounds may become increasingly anti-liberal, until they experience some sort of disillusionment with conservatism, after which they often become anti-conservative with even greater intensity. And the reverse can be true too. What we need in the emergent community is a situation where we have “transgressors” from both camps – conservatives who are eager to learn from liberals, and liberals who are eager to learn from conservatives. If that happens, then perhaps a new, irenic, and productive identity will be forged. That new identity becomes all the more full of potential as the emergent conversation (thankfully) moves from talking exclusively about the church to talking more broadly about the gospel and its effects in the world (which includes the church but isn’t limited to that subject). As we engage with a range of issues from economics, justice, racial partnership, ecology, sustainability, spiritual formation, and holistic disciple-making – we will need insights that are drawn both from what has been known as “the left” and “the right,” and other perspectives that haven’t even shown up on that line.
In this regard, there has been some productive dialogue lately about what it means to be “political.” Some say, “I’m not political,” meaning they don’t want to be limited to the partisan politics of left and right polarization. Others say, “The gospel is political,” realizing that the message of the kingdom of God speaks to all sectors of life, private and public, individual and social and realizing that to remain silent often means tacit support of whatever regime is currently in power. Others try to avoid taking a stand either way, knowing that they are surrounded by contentious people eager to embroil them in quarrels and controversies they are neither interested in, informed about, nor called to. There is wisdom in each of these responses, and I hope that we can demonstrate respect for one another’s freedom to respond in a variety of ways - as our calling, conscience, and context call us to.
9. Above the line about theology and practice
A number of people have begun to make a distinction between the terms “emergent” and “emerging church.” Emergent, they say, is a conversation that is focused on theology, message, and content, while “emerging church” is more focused on methods, pragmatics, and style. Of course, whether consciously or unconsciously, all practice is rooted in theology, and all theology gets expressed in practice, and “emergent” and “emerging church” share a realization that some standard operating procedures of the 1940’s or 1980’s aren’t working or ringing true and need a fresh examination.
So, quarrels here should be seen as “lover’s quarrels” or differences among friends. Otherwise, one group might try to discredit the other. For example, people who are progressive in practice but conservative in theology might use a loaded term like “revisionist” or “liberal” to discredit those who are rethinking some aspects of theology. And those who are less conservative in theology might caricature their more conservative sisters and brothers as pragmatic or superficial for dealing with “cosmetics” but failing to grapple with deeper issues.
I hope that we can avoid polarization on this line and instead move to a higher level of discourse. Each group, I think, should be glad for the other – just as scouts, pioneers, and settlers in the past learned, through many conflicts, to appreciate one another. The scouting and pioneering work of theological rethinking is, without question, risky business. The only thing more risky would be to see one’s group of settlers as perfect, beyond need of reform, and so to refuse ever to rethink anything theologically. As in the other areas we’ve considered, there are two dangers, not one: excessive theological innovation, and insufficient theological imagination.
Those who are re-examining aspects of their theology and scouting out theological “terra nova” should always remember that some of their explorations will lead nowhere, and some explorers might get lost in the woods. For that reason, scouts and pioneers should be glad that not everybody signs on to follow them on every scouting mission. They should be glad for those settlers who wait and see how this or that particular exploration party turns out.
Meanwhile, the legitimate fear of these kinds of failures and misadventures will keep the majority of settlers back in familiar territory. But they shouldn’t be too quick to discredit every exploration. Even failed explorations yield knowledge for future explorations. And in spite of the inevitable criticism from the settlers and the real possibility of failure, some scouts and pioneers will in fact blaze new trails too good lands. In doing so, they will be serving the more cautious settlers and their descendents, because once the trails are shown to be safe, once they have been proven to lead to a good land, settlers or their children will follows those trails. In fact, they may name their new settlements after some of the very scouts and pioneers their forefathers attacked as revisionist or “liberal!”
So, while new explorations are in their experimental phase, I think we’d all be wise to be restrained in our responses. Scouts and pioneers shouldn’t claim to have found “the Indies” or “the Cumberland Gap” or “the Northwest Passage” too soon. Settlers shouldn’t be too quick to attack or discredit those who head out into the hills. We need each other, and if we transcend the normal level of argument, we’ll remember that.
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To summarize, all of these nine items are really just varied ways of saying the same thing: it’s easy to react to problems to your south or east, and in so doing, back into problems to your north or west. Rather than being reactionary “on the line,” we need to find solutions “above the line” so we can transcend facile, binary, poorly-framed polarities. That’s where Jesus keeps going, as I read the gospels, and so should we.
If I were to add a tenth item, it would be about avoiding speaking critically or uncharitably of any individual or church. I’ve made it my goal to avoid doing that for a couple reasons. (Even though I fail, it remains my goal.) First, I aspire to follow the Scriptures that teach not to let an un-edifying word come out of my mouth. (Again, I fall down on this, but keep getting up again.) Second, as someone who has received my share of bashing, I am more sensitive than ever to what it must be like to be Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Josh McDowell, Chuck Colson, Joel Osteen, or anybody else who is bashed by their fellow Christians for one reason or another. Most of us are doing the best we can, and all of us have walked a hard road and gotten some scars along the way. So whenever anybody is bashed, I’m sympathetic to them.
In addition, I’m not sure what bashing or counter-bashing accomplishes. It certainly doesn’t win anybody over or end any arguments. It just inflates them. I think of this piece of wisdom from Bob Dylan’s autobiography:
I would always be moaning to my grandmother who lived with us, my one and only confidante, and she’d tell me not to take it personal. She’d say stuff like, “There are some people you’ll never be able to win over. Just let it go – let it wear itself out.” Sure, that’s easy to say, but it didn’t make me feel any less bad. (42-43)
We’re all in process, of course, and we move forward like inexperienced canoe-paddlers at times, veering toward one bank, over-correcting toward the other, and so on. With experience and time, instructed by both internal self-examination and constructive external criticism, I trust that we will develop a smooth, graceful, and balanced stroke and move strongly forward in our adventure, enjoying both the journey and our companions, in the joyful presence of God. As we move forward in faith and service, I want to say how honored I am to be on this journey with all of you.
Brian’s most recent book is The Secret Message of Jesus (W Publishing, 2006). He’s spending about 16 weeks outside of North America this year, engaging in conversation with leaders and practitioners in the global emerging-missional community.