My rambling thoughts on the emerging church . . . not all of my thoughts and probably not many defendable ones . . .
How does the church do evangelism (outreach) or whatever you want to call it!? At the Village we talk a lot about being Authentic and having an authentic ministry. I think we mean something like - our lives encountering
the life-changing gospel (victories) of Jesus Christ and letting that experience and knowledge leak out into the world through some form of cultural contextualization. All churches, in there own ways, must explore
their identities and discover their roles to which God called them in their community. If you are a Christian and have not felt the impact of our
changing culture . . . Well, you don't live on plant earth! Ways of doing "ministry" are changing and they are trying to engage the postmodern mind - which by the way - has nothing to do with individualism and cannot be defined because it is mostly about language and the deconstruction of ideas . . . I don't like postmodern thinking anymore than I enjoy listening to a bunch of puffed-up moralistic modernist trying to tell me they have all the
right answers and that they can know truth completely.
Ah, but I digress. Recently, the mega-church has been the model of choice. You know those churches that try squeezing as many people as they can into a
large building and get them to sing "yah God" music and listen to the 7 steps to be a success according to Jesus.
I honestly think that the Mega-Church model is not long for this world. I think it is a suburban aberration that will disappear as quickly as it came.
It is based on a felt-needs approach that says that the church is about you and your felt needs. The Apostle Paul spent a lot time engaging culture - then kept telling the first century church to imitate him. I'm not a "let's
go back to the first century church guy." Heck, keep me away from the Corinthian church. The church needs to return to its "missional way" - Leslie Newbigin - and I don't think you can find that in a mega-church.
I think community-based churches are our future - churches that no longer see themselves as suppliers of religious experiences. These churches form themselves around the idea of being community, experiencing life together
and, in the process, bring people along who are ("peeking in."- rod hugen )
The problem with the church is that it usually responds to the world as it was seen 20 years ago. The Four Spiritual Laws are still pretty big, and those were based on Newton's Laws. If you go to any University, you will
find that we don't believe those laws anymore. Yes, they do exist as guides, but they are not known as laws . . . we need to change our model drastically - or the evangelical church will have to hang out with the
dinosaurs.
A short note on sermons - Preachers must now become story tellers. Creating tension as the Hebrews did - not wrapping it up tight and neat in 30 minutes. Christ's stories were always subversive; they rattled the audience
and challenged them to think and debate. Instead of directly answering their questions, his stories often made the people more confused. |