Tony Jones No Longer to Serve as National Coordinator of Emergent Village

The new year brought a change to Emergent Village, with Tony Jones no longer serving as the National Coordinator.  This news broke here, among other places, in November, and was among the changes outlined in an online letter posted to Emergent’s Weblog.  I wasn’t aware of this change until yesterday when spotting it as a news blurb in the most recent edition of Christianity Today.

We’ll see what the future holds for Emergent Village.

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(Just) Thinking Church

Happy New Year, blogoids!  And Merry Christmas to all!  A few more days remain in the Christmas season–my tree and Christmas lights are still up, and likely will be through next weekend.

During my Christmas break I was pleased to receive an Emergent Village e-newsletter with a reflection by Phyllis Tickle.  I consider myself a friendly critic of Emergent.  Some of their leaders I admire, others, well, not quite so much.  What I do appreciate about the efforts of Emergent Village has been the way that they have pushed the dialogue within Christianity concerning our collective identity as the church in America.  Some of their critiques have been valid and helpful and for that I am very thankful.

The reflection I have mentioned by Tickle is entitled “Re-defining ‘church’ and ‘Church’” and you may click the link above to read it for yourself.  In her essay Tickle offers her observations concerning how church has been discussed in recent years and challenges her readers to continue this conversation with increased intensity and diligence.  Tickle states:

So this New Year, I seek—hope for—am eager to overhear—a sustained and prayerful conversation about exactly what we who are Christian in this time of emergence, hold as a working definition of emergence church/Church. And lest I be accused of doing no more here than passing along some kind of theological hot potato for the fun of it, I will begin the sacred game. I will begin the first round by saying that, as of right now, I believe both church and Church are “a body of people delighting in God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit.”

In offering this challenge Tickle has struck a chord with me, for I am all too eager to discuss the church.  I’m not too keen on “re-thinking” or “re-defining,” but I am intent to think after or think again the thoughts of Scripture and our tradition concerning what it means to be the church, the called out ones, the assembly, the Body of Christ, the People of God.  Being called as part of the church is a gift I have been (mostly) delighted to receive.  All too often we take for granted that we know what (or who) the church is and as a result find ourselves off course.  Having lost our bearings, we act in ways which betray our calling.  This being the case, reflection on our character and identity as the church is an ongoing and continuous activity which is to be undertaken in a spirit of prayer, love, community, conversation, hard thinking, and hope.

I plan to undertake Tickle’s challenge in the coming year, and for the remainder of my days.  I can only hope that other Christians will do the same.  By doing so I pray we increase our grounding in the truth of our story as the people of Jesus the Christ.

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Hitler and Emergent

This video made an appearance at TallSkinnyKiwi.  My friend Mike passed the link along to me. I laughed.  Out loud.  A lot.

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Developing and Shifting Theologies

This post from Dick Staub got me thinking, “How has my own perception(s) of the church emerging/Emergent continued to shift and change?”  I’ve encountered a number of bloggers, pastors, church leaders, and thinking Christians who have come across emerging church thinkers, leaders, and writers and have  strongly embraced the thinking and ethos of this strata of Christianity.  For the past two and half years I have been part of a church that is no exception.  The “emerging church conversation” has deeply impacted the ministry of those around me, as well as my own ministry.

In the past couple of years there have been reactions on the other extreme.  As emerging leaders have continued to publish and garner a higher level of exposure some Christian thinkers have launched critiques against the underlying presuppositions which fuel emerging/Emergent churches.  Criticism can most easily be found in the blogging world. 

Conservative evangelicals have rallied against “postmodernism,” predominantly because of a perception that emerging leaders are abandoning some form of “absolute truth” and embracing cultural relativism.  Some Christians perceive emerging Christianity as far too accomodationist, bowing to culture rather than to Christ and compromising the integrity of the Gospel.  Some of the criticism has been well formulated and well reasoned, while others have careless launched a disapproving tirade in a fashion unbecoming of appropriate Christian discourse (speaking the truth in love).  I’ve witnessed others who have cried foul because emerging leaders, after providing a helpful critique of contemporary Christianity, seemed to have created a void that they cannot fill.  In 2006 I had the opportunity to hear Dallas Willard speak at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection.  After being asked about the “emerging church,” Willard seemed to imply just that critique.  His perception was that the “Emergent conversation” may have successfully broken down unhealthy facets of Christian practice during our time, but lacked a gospel.

Staub, in his blog cited above, notes two opposite and opposing forces which encumberour efforts to translate the Christian faith to our culture.  He see these two elements as problematic:

• a biblical, theological, historical literacy is a prerequisite for doing serious faith and cultural correlation. Many of today’s younger (and older) evangelical reformers possess a cultural literacy that far outweighs their literacy in our biblical, theological, historical legacy.
• when the culture suffers from an unbearable intellectual, spiritual, creative impoverishment produced by a soul-deadening, busy, commercialized, consumerised, marketized frenzy of activity — seeking relevance too often consists of taking on the very qualities that need to identified, confronted and eradicated, not emulated or imitated.

Simply stated, first we need to know the Bible and our roots better than we currently do.  Second, we need to recognize the ways we ourselves have been corrupted by the powerful cultural forces that surround us.  In other words, we have to delve deeper into the richness of our historical, biblical, and theological roots in order to resist the powers and the principalities.

I’m thankful for the ways I’ve been influenced by emerging pastors, thinkers, and leaders.  I’ll continue to pay attention to some of those I’ve come to respect–including Dan Kimball, Tim Keel, and Scot McKnight.  However, Ive found that I have a great deal of work to do in terms of understanding the biblical, theological, and historical roots of the Christian faith so that I might better be able to engage the world.  By becoming more well versed in the Christian story, I hope to increase my ability to contribute to the community called Church, so that we might more truthfully witness to the world-transforming work accomplished by the Jew from Nazareth whose life, death, and resurrection constitute our existence.

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The Church Basement Roadshow

Tony Jones, Doug Padgitt, and Mark Scandrette hit the road for this Emergent adventure to “preach, sing, and sell healing balm in church basements from San Diego to New York.”  According to this website, the hearers “will be entertained, to be sure, but, more importantly, they will be given a vision of an alternative Christianity…of adventurous theology, passionate faithfulness, postmodern wit, and unrelenting concern for the justice and peace that God offers.”

I’ve heard Jones and Padgitt in person, and have surveyed their writings.  Scandrette, not so much.  I wish these three vagabonds the best.  I find this campaign a bit humorous myself.  Just how different, new, and critical is this “alternative Christianity” proclaimed by this trio (which they assert being “woefully lacking in today’s world”)?  The more I consider Emergent’s claims to espouse a rich, helpful “alternative Christianity,” the more I suspect these leaders vastly underestimate God’s provision and activity within those seemingly “old forms” of the people of God called Church.

As I continue to read and learn I find myself increasingly surprised and refreshed by the vastness of resources for a deep, vibrant, and passionate faith in Jesus Christ which have been right under my nose–and indeed all around me.  It may be true that the Christianity of my forebearers in the faith failed to notice the changes occurring in the world around them in America and failed to adapt to the challenges presented by the postmodern millieu.  Padgitt, Jones, McLaren, and others like them should be thanked for their contributions in this regard.  We should acknowledge, however, that a changed world is nothing new, as “The world was fundamentally changed in Jesus Christ, and we have been trying, but failing, to grasp the implications of that change ever since”(Hauerwas/Willimon, Resident Aliens, 17).

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