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Alchemy, in part, entails physical experiments involving destroying the subject, extracting its essence and re-forging it as something stronger, more whole.
What would postmodern church-alchemists look like? Church structural experimenters who break down the institutional church, extracting its essence and re-forging it for our time as something stronger, purer, more whole.
Hmmm. Looks like I just self-inherited another label.
Any other Church-Alchemists out there?
From Glenn Hager: Some of you know that I am trying to shape a ministry that would come along side these pioneers and revolutionaries and help them through the transition. This desire has grown out of my own experience of being a pastor for over twenty years, struggling find my place, and eventually, losing confidence in the church system that I used to love, but not in Christ or his mission. My questions for you are: [the one I chose to answer] What do they/you need?
In a nutshell, I think the biggest thing people who are being led to re-form and re-dream the church is a safe place to do just that. It will be messy, unpredictable, and often times unconventional, but we need heart-supporters that will give us the space to play with living out faith in the pluralistic, global and postmodern context we find ourselves in. We need elders who, though they are not feeling led to personally re-tool ministry for the droves of people who are not connecting with the modern U.S. church, see the need and who are willing to protect and support the lives and efforts of those who are being called to lead such a change.
Too often the story gets repeated of a church who wants to re-dream a ministry for—as they call them—”those postmoderners”. They hire an emerging leader and initially give them a long leash to experiment. But as the months progress, the leash gets shorter and the collar gets tighter, especially as unconventional methods are being experimented with and more people begin connecting with these “new” ways and less with the “old” ways. Rumors begin to float, meetings take place, hurtful words are thrown (by both), egos get bruised, and the emerging leader usually is forced to self-resign due to the tumultuous environment or they are just out-right asked to leave the church.
It is my judgment that most of the emerging leaders would prefer to work alongside and with existing churches; that their desire really isn’t to break-away from their forefathers of the faith. I really sense that they long for the support, freedom, protection, love, friendship, companionship, and wisdom of those who are leading existing ministries and churches. But for most—not all—emerging leaders, they are slowly (and sometimes quickly) squeezed out of their community of faith, and so they reluctantly go it alone with a few friends to follow where God is leading their heart and passion.
And sometimes you hear of denominations and established churches taking a Kingdom-risk. They see the tide of change, and though they are scared to death at times, they support, embrace, love, partner, and get messy with what God might do through someone very different from themselves. They take bullets. They bite their tongue. They watch backs. They witness mistakes. They glory in success (though not often how they might define it). And together, they set out on God’s mission into a dying world needing God’s love and the message of his undying grace.
So if you were to ask me, What is it that emerging-missional (or whatever you call us) leaders need? Here is my answer. We need a safe place to experiment new paths of mission and theology; and friends who—though they might not “get it” or understand—can support us, protect us, trust us, and ultimately trust God as he leads us.
But safe place and friendship or not, we feel that God’s movement is going to happen—regardless. We’d just like it to happen with all of us unified together in relationship and trust, instead of in banishment and fear.
We are, after all, serving and trusting the same living God. In this, we should stand—together, not apart.
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Links to all of the participants:
Alan Knox: A Revolutionary? Who? Me?
Erin Word: Are We There Yet, Papa Smurf?
Jane: Onward Christian Soldier
Jeff Greathouse: So, You Want To Change
Jeff McQuilken: The Great Shift–and My Unwitting Part In It
Jeromy Johnson: A Safe Place To Experiment
Jonathan Brink: Re-Emerging Church
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More From Glenn Hager: My personal journey, reading, blogging, and conversations with friends have led me to uncover the fringes of a huge group of people who operate under the radar of much of the world. They represent over 20 million people in the U.S. (This is the number of people who are already expressing their Christian faith in ways other than through a conventional church, according to the Barna organization.) who have lost (or, are losing) their faith in the institutional church system, yet have a deep love for Christ, his community and his mission. Many of you are a part of that number which includes those…
- Who have been wounded through serving and separating from “church as they have known it.”
- Who are feeling alone, wondering if there is something wrong with their theology, if they suffer from some personality disorder, or if they are doomed to isolation.
- Who are former church leaders or staff members trying to find a new sense of direction.
- Who eventually want to return to community and fellowship, but not get mired down in the system they left behind.
- Who long for a faith community that is vibrant, accepting, and real, that joins in God’s kingdom in practical ways where they live and beyond.
Some of you know that I am trying to shape a ministry that would come along side these pioneers and revolutionaries and help them through the transition. This desire has grown out of my own experience of being a pastor for over twenty years, struggling find my place, and eventually, losing confidence in the church system that I used to love, but not in Christ or his mission. My questions for you are:
- What do they/you need?
- What did/do you need as you as went/are going through this transitional phase?
- How can a ministry or service help them/you?
. . . as I do, then read my friend Jonathan who put words to how I feel about the church. I could not have said it better. Thanks brother!
On of the things I appreciate about Emergent is their openness to honestly engage those who disagree with them—even offering an open critic-invitation for dinner in their homes. One of their values is to never turn down an invitation from their critics for honest dialog. This value has landed them on many a radio show to be openly criticized and “thrown to the lions”. Here is a very recent video where Tony Jones extended an invitation to one of his/Emergent’s critics (Rev. John Chisham, pastor of River of Life Alliance Church in Marshall, Minnesota [and also outspoken critic of Tony and Emergent]) to sit down and talk…
UPDATE from Emergent Village: Tony had not given his permission for this video to be posted, so it now has been taken down.
Just an FYI….If you are into the emerging church, trying to gauge what is happening in the postmodern church, or just plain curious, here is a link where you can print and read chapter one of Tony Jones’ book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier.
Scott Mcknight said regarding the book, “from now on, all conversation about Emergent begins right here.”
Also, you can hear Tony briefly explain the 10 dispatches via podcast. Here it is online at: http://www.whitworth.edu/podcast/index.aspx (It is the 11/9/2007 podcast. To download it, right click on the “Listen” link and select “Save Target As…”).
OK, so here is my vent. I fully realize that it is in our human nature to label and define and fragment just about everything into tidy boxes so we can then pass judgment, create an “in” and an “out”, an us and them. But just because I get it does not mean I like it. In fact, I even hate it when I see it surfacing in me. The fruit of such efforts usually creates a polarizing and dis-unifying “we’re good, you’re evil” mentality and “false” reality. It allows us to sit smugly back in our thrones casting everyone else into the shadows of our light. It REALLY makes me sick—and when I see it in myself, I feel sicker.
As one who appreciates and participates in the emerging dialogue and friendship, I often get labeled and boxed into a certain corner based on the label given me. As an example, there are a couple diagrams created by Michael Patton, which represent his certain opinion, floating around and generating quite a bit of buzz. Michael also posted 20 signs (and I get his humor, but behind it is a stab of denouncement) that you are moving from emerging to Emergent:
Top Twenty Signs you are moving from emerging to Emergent!
20. You only curse around fundamentalists.
19. You leave your church because the sermon was not obscure enough.
18. You refer to your local assembly as “church,” “synagogue,” or “mosque” depending on who you are talking to.
17. Your blog is a rant about how everyone else rants too much.
16. You brag that you have never been pinned down theologically on any issue.
15. The only thing you are sure of is that others cannot be sure of anything.
14. You bring your own wine to communion.
13. You are offended when someone says they are going to “Preach the Gospel” or “Teach the truth” believing they should just “Tell a story.”
12. Instead of a tract, you carry a can of Play-doh in you back pocket.
11. Your website links to Green Peace and the Democratic National Convention just because conservatives are against it.
10. You start a Christian blog, but leave it blank, fearing that you might offend someone.
9. You are not any good at art, yet you continue to present the Gospel by painting stick figures on recycled paper.
8. When you present the Gospel, Heaven is renamed The Matrix and you call Christ Neo.
7. Your church caters from Whole Foods.
6. Every sermon illustration begins with “The other night I was drinking a beer and . . .”
5. You have yet to read the book of Romans believing Paul was too modern in his thinking.
4. Your car has a bumper sticker that reads “I think my boss is a Jewish carpenter but I can’t know for certain.”
3. You don’t worship on Sundays because everyone else does.
2. You evaluate truth by asking how many people hold to it. If it is too popular, then it is wrong.
1. When someone calls out your name you get angry saying, “Don’t label me.”
I really do not see either the list or the diagrams as being helpful at all—quite the opposite. I have been reading through a book called Dialogue (by William Isaacs) and some of what he says really resonates with me about this whole inherent human need to label. What happens is we label something—give it a distinction, an image—and then we come to believe that these divisions are real, rather than simply our man-made boxings.
Isaacs notes that when a Syrian astronaut saw the earth from space the first time he said, ‘”From space I saw Earth—indescribably beautiful—with the scars of national boundaries gone.” The dividing lines disappear when you get enough perspective. The lines were made in the minds of human beings, in many cases drawn in the boardrooms of Europe and applied to places like Africa and South Asia. Yet now these lines have significant reality to them: Institutions have formed around them, identities are invested in them. The fragmentation on earth remains pervasive. [...] we make divisions like these all the time and then forget that WE have done so. [...] As a result, our social fabric is deeply fragmented. This fragmentation pervades the way human beings talk and think, in families, between friends, in business, in communities [politics, religion...]. It is a reflection of the divisive forces that we have inherited and usually take for granted [...] and so produces relationships based in the fiction of isolation. [...] Whatever image (or label) our minds make up is NOT the thing imagined. It is always both more and less.”
What Isaacs suggests next floored me with its complex-simplicity and possible beauty: That we might “practice the art of looking at something without needing to have a name in our heads for what we are looking at.” Imagine that? When we see something, or someone, or some movement, or—whatever—we resist the need to name it or label it. When we see a pregnant teenager with tatoos wearing all black we don’t label her, instead, we go deeper. We simply look at her and when a label comes to mind, we shuck it and keep looking until we see HER—as she really is—not a label. This enables us to view her and ourselves as participants of each other, instead of judges and labelers of each other. Empathy begins to surface. Then, perhaps, we might be at the place to begin a dialogue and friendship where we can really try to see them as God sees them, to love them as God loves them. We begin to see ourselves as participants with everything and everyone (with all of creation), acknowledging that we are really no different then the thing we are tempted to label.
So instead of asking and feeling the need to determine, “Where does this belong?” may we slow down and practice the art of looking at something without feeling the need to name it…whatever “it” is. Perhaps, like me, the labeling-alternative is making you sick. To that I suggest that perhaps from God’s perspective (which is more than enough) our labels and lines and fragmentations and names and boxes really don’t exist and they are simply images that we have created and worshiped…
Citrus C Monster. Sometimes, there is nothing a body needs more, especially when recovering. At least that is how my body felt today after chugging 15.2 OZ of this elixir-of-life.
I’ve noticed that my body does a pretty good job of telling me what it is needing, and not needing, at any given time. Still recovering from my brutal fever battle, I tried one sip of coffee—My body cringed. Then someone brought in some chocolate-chip cookies and I tried one—Ugh…not today. Then I fed it the C Monster and it went down like butter on a bald monkey’s head. 1000% of my body’s vitamin C requirement was well welcomed and my body let me know. It does that—very softly and quietly, at a gut level. And it does me good to pay attention (though seldom I do, just ask my wife).
My spirit is the same.
A lot of things, at the gut level, my spirit resisted—at times cringing—about the modern church expression and I couldn’t always tell why. Something at a core level rejected what was being ingested. But my conversations around what is emerging in the church today, at least for me, have been like Odwalla: a deep sense of refreshment, nourishment, and healing that my spirit has been craving for a long time.
And much like butter and a monkey, it has been well welcomed…[wait, that made no sense…??...oh well]
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