New World, New Church?

Hannah Steele

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780334054900
• eBook ISBN: 9780334054924
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

The emerging church movement has quickly become one of the fastest growing ecclesiological phenomena in the west today. But there is still a debate to be had about how the church understands its identity and purpose within postmodern culture. Offering an assessment of the impact of the emerging church upon the church in the West, and examining the thinking of the movement's leading proponents including Brian McLaren and Rob Bell, "New World, New Church?" affirms what is good and insightful in the emerging church and offers a robust critical evaluation of its theological revisions.

Contents

1 What is the Emerging Church?

2 The Emerging Church and Culture

3 The Emerging Church and Eschatology

4 The Emerging Church and Missiology

5 The Emerging Church and Ecclesiology

6 The Church of Tomorrow

Bibliography

Subject and Names Index

1
What is the Emerging Church?

Introduction

Christians throughout the ages have been faced with the issue of how the church is to relate to its surrounding cultural context and what its message and role should be in challenging times. The decline of institutional Christianity in the West at the start of the twenty-first century has propelled many within the church to attend to that task with renewed urgency.

I first became interested in this subject through my own involvement in mission activity in a church experiencing growth and change in South East London. While my own personal engagement was more associated with the mission-shaped church, or ‘Fresh Expressions’ movement as it later came to be called, it was the frequent appearance of the phrase ‘emerging church’ that most captured my imagination. This term ‘emerging church’ seemed to gain rapid momentum over a very short period of time through its blogs and conferences, but at the same time it has been anathematized and even, more latterly, declared redundant by some.

Of all the approaches being offered about how the church could and should relate to postmodern culture, the one being presented by the emerging church, and primarily American voices such as Brian McLaren and Tony Jones, seemed to be calling for the most radical change. It was this group, described in this book as ‘the emerging radicals’, who, of all the writers engaging with the relationship between church and culture, seemed unafraid to challenge the settled assumptions of evangelicalism in order to explore the possibility of creative and alternative ways of being and doing church. However, the speed with which this conversation was taking place, and the rapidity with which publications were produced and absorbed, raised serious questions for me about the nature of its cultural engagement and how much theological critique was taking place. While this book seeks to chart the emerging church’s remarkable journey from a conversation of like-minded innovators to its current widespread popularity and represents my own intrigue and interest in this movement, it also endeavours to contribute something to this ongoing conversation.

As time progressed and the emerging church was gaining popularity, I also became aware of the lack of published evangelical responses to the movement. Although there had been articles and collections of essays, no comprehensive theological response had been offered. Donald Carson was the exception to this rule, although his response focuses on the emerging church’s epistemology, which is arguably only one aspect of its contribution, and does not reflect the impact of the emerging church on the future shape of the church. My exploration of the theology of the emerging church seeks to offer an appraisal of both the strengths and the weaknesses of its cultural and theological engagement, drawing out what is to be learned from its approach while also questioning its broader theological engagement.

My conviction is that the emerging church finds its origin as a protest movement within evangelicalism, with its protest oriented against the perceived assimilation of modern values into its theological and ecclesiological expression. While protest movements can often symbolize Kairos moments for change within our ecclesiastical patterns and structures, leading to renewal and even revival, such movements can also tend towards the establishment of a reactionary theology that is in danger of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

While protest movements can deliver prophetic and timely challenges to institutions resistant to change, it is not always clear how they then relate to the very tradition from which they have emerged and in which they are calling for change. Such movements can also be difficult to classify since it is often clearer what they are against rather than what they are for.

This provocative phrase from Brian McLaren seems to go to the heart of what this movement is all about.

‘You see, if we have a new world, we will need a new church.’1

This statement raised questions for me: are we really in a new world? If we are, does the church need to reimagine itself entirely? And what might a theology for that new church look like? As I continued exploring the emerging church I discovered that its protest was mainly against three areas of theology: eschatology, missiology and ecclesiology, and that it offered revision of its theology within these categories. These three disciplines seem to be most crucial in establishing the shape and future of the church in the world today. Furthermore, these three areas cannot be viewed in separate silos; it is their interrelation that enables us to imagine and grasp both what the church is and what the church could be in the world today. The majority of this book will therefore deal with these three critical theological themes, exploring both that which is gained and that which is lost in the emerging protest and revision of each of these areas.

The issues that the emerging church raises are of great significance to the future of evangelicalism – if not to the future of Christianity in the West. The need to address the role of the church has perhaps never been more urgent or challenging a task than in the current cultural climate. The plethora of books and publications seeking to address this very subject make that undertaking all the more challenging as, increasingly, we are pulled in different directions. The emerging church’s contribution to the debate is a hugely important one. The rising popularity of its publications and the sell-out tours of its protagonists are evidence of a movement that is raising questions that resonate with many, both within and outside evangelicalism. Evangelicalism cannot dismiss the emerging church as merely another model of how to do church, as the nature of the revolution it offers is far more serious than that. While some question whether the emerging church as a movement exists any more, nevertheless the ideas and conversation raised by its originators continue to gain momentum and acceptance.

It is my contention that evangelicalism must listen and respond to the theological protest and revision being offered by voices within the emerging church. The questions that it raises are too important to be ignored and some of the proposals that it offers have the potential to change the shape of western Christianity in the immediate future. Galvanizing a generous yet scrupulous critique of this movement is one of the most pressing responsibilities facing evangelicalism. My bold hope and prayer is that this book will play some small part in contributing to that most critical and urgent task.

The origin of the emerging church

While pinpointing the start of the emerging church is not easy, the protagonists within the movement refer to a seminal moment that took place in 1995 at the Leadership Network gathering in Colorado Springs. In a seminar on how to reach young people, Brad Cecil suggested that the postmodern writings of Derrida and others were critical to the missiological task of reaching Generation X.2

Tony Jones, who later became the first and only national co-ordinator of Emergent Village, described the impact this seminar had on Mark Driscoll, Doug Pagitt and others:

(They) couldn’t articulate it yet but they could feel it. It felt like the beginning of something new and the overthrow of something old. It felt to them like the burgeoning of a whole new way of understanding who they were as Christians. And they knew that they needed to do something about it. They began travelling the country looking for others who got it.3

The inception of the emerging church cannot be confined to this one single incident, any more than the Reformation can be confined merely to Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses to the church at Wittenberg; nevertheless such events play an impor¬tant role in deciphering what lies at the heart of these movements for renewal. The Colorado Springs incident indicates three significant factors in the inception of the emerging church conversation: the first is that it arose out of missiological concern; the second is the importance to the emerging church conversation of the shift from modernity to postmodernity; and the third is that it was catalysed by dissatisfaction with the current state of modern American evangelicalism. Tony Jones describes this initial group as ‘a group of church misfits and cast offs’, most of whom had ‘cut their teeth in mega-church evangelicalism’.4 This significant moment at Colorado Springs led to a burgeoning ‘network’ of shared ideas and conversation, and a corporate sense that if the church was to survive in the twenty-first century then radical change was required. The fact that this conversation progressed primarily through the social media of Facebook and blogs meant that anyone could ‘write theology’ for others to read and discuss. This represents a significant shift in how theology is communicated and adapted, also indicating the fast pace at which this movement has evolved.

While there remains conflict over what the term ‘emerging church’ actually represents, and some of its early protagonists have since disassociated themselves from it, I will continue to use the phrase and identify what I consider to be three strands of thought within it.

First, there are the ‘emerging missioners’. These, I would argue, are represented by Dan Kimball and Scot McKnight who are missionally focused and whose primary concern is thinking comprehensively and intelligently about the culture of those ‘outside’ the church. They are looking at what creative and daring changes can be made to the way church is structured in order to reach out to those who would not darken the doors of traditional churches. Within Britain I believe that fresh expressions and the writings of Graham Cray and Michael Moynagh are examples of emerging mission that seek to look creatively at the way faith is expressed outside the traditional church format. The protagonists within the emerging missioners are church practitioners and evangelists.

The second strand of the emerging church that I have identified is the ‘emerging ancients’. While this is perhaps the smallest of the strands, there would appear to be a shift by some groups within evangelicalism towards a discovery of the past. The emerging ancients seek to re-establish connection with the history and tradition of the church. The desire to link together imagination, contemporary culture and the Christian tradition is typical of the emerging ancients, and as an emerging strand it remains strongly ecclesiastical.

The third and final strand to be identified within the emerging church is what I have called the ‘emerging radicals’ and it is the impact of these writers that I am most interested in exploring here since they are the ones publishing most prolifically and proposing the most radical revision of eschatology, mission and church in our current context.5 The emerging radical’s assumption is that the pervasiveness of postmodernity calls for radical revision and not simply cosmetic adjustment. In many ways Tomlinson’s publication The Pos...

Table of contents

• New World, New Church?
• Contents
• Bibliography
• Subject and Name Index