Defining Missional and Emerging Churches

This week in my class at Multnomah, we discussed an interesting article reprinted from Christianity Today: http://www.ctlibrary.com/print.html?id=40534

This is a great article for people who are unfamiliar with postmoderns and the emgerging church to read to understand some of the trends. This is important for leaders in established churches because they represent changes in how the younger generations will interpret what we do.

These are the characteristics that the author suggests:
Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures. This definition encompasses nine practices. Emerging churches (1) identify with the life of Jesus, (2) transform the secular realm, and (3) live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they (4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with generosity, (6) participate as producers, (7) create as created beings, (8) lead as a body, and (9) take part in spiritual activities.

While this list doesn't seem really different from the churches I am familiar with (other than #3), there must be some subtle and perhaps overt differences between our current church models and these emerging models.

It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference that the postmodern person has: how she will discover "truth." While I have been raised theologically to believe certain core doctrines and concepts, the spoonfeeding of these doctrines may not connect with this generation. And while some have brought into question every single doctrine from the eternality of God to the person of Jesus, I believe that there must be a place for some doctrinal presuppositions (nature of God, integrity of Scripture, person and work of Christ) to provide a framework for the postmodern to question his way through the Bible.

Virtually all the works on postmodernism that I have read point to a propensity for discovering truth through experience (which makes traditional Bible instruction very challenging). Gruder suggests that "our understanding of truth is always an interpretation relative to our context and cultural understanding." One exciting passage in the article points to how the life of Christ becomes MORE relevent than I've seen it in traditional church:

Here is an emerging, provocative way of saying it: "By their fruits [not their theology] you will know them." As Jesus' brother James said, "Faith without works is dead." Rhetorical exaggerations aside, I know of no one in the emerging movement who believes that one's relationship with God is established by how one lives. Nor do I know anyone who thinks that it doesn't matter what one believes about Jesus Christ. But the focus is shifted. Gibbs and Bolger define emerging churches as those who practice "the way of Jesus" in the postmodern era. Jesus declared that we will be judged according to how we treat the least of these (Matt. 25:31-46) and that the wise man is the one who practices the words of Jesus (Matt. 7:24-27). In addition, every judgment scene in the Bible is portrayed as a judgment based on works; no judgment scene looks like a theological articulation test.

The second major emphasis from the document that I garnered was the emphasis on missional focus (which I blogged about last week). One item to add to that is the application of 2 Corinthians 5 and ministry of reconciliation. It is suggested that this ministry of reconciliation applies to both the lost souls (as we evangelicals typically interpret the passage), but also to the full ministry as Christ displayed a sympathy for the lost and for the "whole persons and whole societies." It is my desire to develop a personal theology of mission for myself and my spheres of influence during this semester.

In our first text for the class: Missional Church by Gruder, it is suggested that our churches need to take a broader view of "missions." "Congregations still tend to view missions as one of several programs of the church. Evangelism when present is usually defined as member recruitment at the local level and church planting at the regional level. . . Indeed the main business of many missions committees is to determine how to spend the missions budget rather than view the entire church budget as an exercise in mission (p6)."

-Derek