Andrew Rowell, a youth min. prof at my alma mater (TU), has posted a carefully thought out critique of Gibbs and Bolger’s Emerging Churches book. No one has yet leveled a critique of the book. Most everyone, such as myself, has merely drooled over it and sung it’s accolades. And for good reason. The Emerging Church has been misunderstood enough and given a bad rap. We were itching for someone to profile us in a positive light.
But I think that Andrew hits on a weakness of the book In an attempt to bring the Emerging Church into sharper focus, they miss out on some major contributors to the conversation. Here is a clip from his post:
"I think they are wrong to dismiss the possibility that Gen-X churches
are missional. (Popularized by Darrell Guder’s The Missional Church,
this term simply means a fresh application of the techniques of
missiology to Western culture. There is no reason only church plants or
house churches can do this. In fact, the book is written by Guder who
is a PCUSA person with the intention to shake up the mainline churches
especially). They are also naïve to assume that “emerging churches” can
possibly remove themselves from the influence of modernity. Emerging
churches will still likely use modern inventions such as printed
Bibles, automobiles, public transit, computers, phones, etc.
Because
of their definition, it seemed to me that the description by Gibbs and
Bolger of “emerging churches” sounds a lot like “house churches” to me.
"
I think I can understand where Gibbs and Bolger are coming from. They are sick and tired of hearing people say, "So if I want to do the emerging thing, I just need to read scripture slow, add candles, pray a creed, and serve coffee afterwards." They want to make sure that you know it’s not another program, not a fad, not a niche marketing effort, not just about epistemology, and not, not, not, not about candles.
So they sharpen their definition, focus on mission, and present a remixed version of church. That is well and good, but I think Andrew helpfully points out that a large part of the emerging conversation is still happening in established, traditional churches. In these churches there are people wrestling with the emerging church stuff, but their expression of it is still programmatic in nature. They may have some missional practices in place, but it’s still different from the "home spun" emergenging church described by Gibbs and Bolger.
And interestingly enough, we hit the old dilemna of ecclesiology. Is the church made up of organized (tax deductible) churches with buildings or people? We hesitate to include those in traditional churches because they bring along programmatic and ecclesial baggage that we can’t imagine seeing in the emerging church. They add a different look to the group. They enforce stereotypes that we want to eradicate.
But if the church and/or emerging church is just a name for people regardless of institutions or ecclesial preference, we can widen the characterization a bit. Maybe we need to talk more about emerging people or the emerging tribe, and less about the emerging church. We have possibly once again fallen into the trap of characterizing the church in terms of congregations and not in terms of the children of God.
Yikes, my head is spinning. Time to stop. Any thoughts on this one???
technorati tags: gibbs, bolger, ecclesiology, emerging
Filed under: Emerging Church
It is gratifying to have you read and understand my point. Thanks. Amen to your response.
I will keep checking out your blog. It looks like you are reading books that I want to be reading. Three of my heroes are NT Wright, Eugene Peterson and Richard Hays.
Amazing to find you are a Taylor grad.
I’m not actually a “youth ministry prof” (I don’t know much about youth ministry and have never really done it) but that’s ok – doesn’t matter. I just say I’m a “Christian ministry” prof.
Keep in touch.
andy
Thanks for dropping by. Are you amazed that I’m a TU grad because they’re a bit too conservative for the emerging church stuff?? Just curious. I lose touch so easily. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Adam Bennett at Research and Innovation joint, but he’s a good friend of mine.
Anyways, back to emerging church. I like the names on your reading list. It’s good to know the students at TU will have a chance to engage with their material.
Some other great books to check out include anything by Lesslie Newbigin and David J. Bosch. You may have already gotten into them, but they’re worth mentioning. Their missiology is what drives a lot of the thinking in the emerging church. Newbigin’s doctrine of election makes his Gospel in a Pluralist Society well worth the hours it will take to read!
I did correct the info about your job at TU.
Blessings!
Just got finished reading Andrew’s review and your response. Hope you don’t mind me re-posting my thoughts here…
I’ve always considered the “emergent” crowd and related ministries as follows: “Traditional models re-imagined for a post-modern world.” That’s where Bell, Driscoll, McManus and others fit.
The confusion arises, though, out of our attempts to describe this very non-traditional approach to church that seems to be “emerging” alongside the other models. Barna calls it the “Revolution.” Cole calls it “Organic Church.” Many in the house church movement are calling it “Simple Church.” Personally, I prefer any of those terms to “Emerging” because that word is already branded as part of the “emergent” community mentioned earlier. It is also true that these non-traditional experiences are a sort of new reformation in that much more is being challenged than strategies. Traditional Ecclesiology is being mercilessly scrutinized along with sacred assumptions of roles, requirements and regulations concerning the ecclesia as well as the individual person of faith.
So where are all the great “Labelers” when you need them? This movement needs a name that will differentiate it from “emergent” and that will stick in the minds of those interested. My personal “pet name” is the “UnChurch,” because most members of the Body would have a hard time identifying these experiences as church. They simply lack the “classical” identifiers.
I took Gibbs’ and Bolger’s Emerging Churches course at Fuller last month. If the book gives the impression that they see the ‘Emerging Church’ as pro-house church, I believe that is a mis-taken impression. They are describing what they saw and experienced in their research. I think they are suggesting that Emerging Churches tend to be less than forty persons, because they noticed these fellowships laregely organized as such due to relational barriers past that number.
Yet, they and I agree that emerging churches who are able to organize around doing community life, such as Solomon’s Porch are well within their definition of an Emerging Church