Hook, Line and Sinker: Swallowing the Emergent Church Schema
Few things stir me up these days as much as the subject of the emergent church. Most of the discussions I have had or seminars I have attended left me feeling like I had not been heard. At the same time, others have told me they didn’t think I was really listening to them. Perhaps we were both right.
Maybe the only thing implied in the emergent church language is just a way of talking about the methods and direction of the contemporary church. If that is so, then I guess we have nearly always have had some type of emergent church. The Protestant Reformation, signaled so clearly by Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses being nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, could have been a type of precursor for an emergent-esque praxis. Calvin, Luther, Wesley, among others, could be seen, as leading the way for an ecclesiology which was more “user friendly”. Personally, I can hardly imagine these three Reformers even tolerating such a term.
The emergent church movement and its main enthusiasts do more in their writings than make simple observations of current church trends. I have chosen the book Why We’re Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck as a source for this month’s discussion partly because they attempt to look at and analyze the “substance and shape” of what is being written by the ever-growing group of emergent church authors. This book was written, say the authors, because much of what is being written by the “popularizers” of the movement is hard to swallow (Why, 23). No book exhausts its subject matter; this one doesn’t either. But perhaps it can be a beginning point for our discussion.
DeYoung and Kluck raise several particular objections to some common themes they observe as deep-seated to the popular emergent message. These are reflected in their chapter titles and subtitles. I have summarized the most basic of several questions which I believe is being raised. These are important matters with which we should deal.
Journey: Are the Pilgrims Still Making Progress? “An apt summary of the postmodern ethos” can be found in the sentence which adequately summarizes the spirituality of the west: “It’s really cool to search for God. It’s not very cool to find him.” (Why, 32) This text is asking the question, “Is experience really more important than destination?”
Rebel Without a Cause: What is Worth Submitting to? As persons move through dependency to inter-dependency to independency, there is a period of questioning and inquiry which is part of the maturing process. While “it’s easier to be against something than to stand for something,” do we need to question everything?
Bible: Why I Love the Person and Propositions of Jesus. In the emergent church, Scripture has taken on a different role. It is not the voice of God but rather “spurs us on to new ways of imagining.” (Why, 70). While it is true that these authors are from a Reformed tradition, a tradition that defends fundamentally the propositional nature of biblical revelation, it should be duly noted that the Wesleyan tradition is also committed to understanding the Revelation which has come through divine initiative. William M. Greathouse and H. Ray Dunning write, “The Bible is not a book of science or of secular history, it is a Book of God—that is, its authoritative pronouncements are theological in nature” (Introduction to Wesleyan Theology, p. 11). Here is the question being raised: “What can we say about the Bible that we cannot say about any other book?”
Thank You for Smoking: On Dialogue, Futurism, and Hell. Can we say anyone is wrong or that an idea is not correct? Or, has it become outright wrong to say anyone is wrong… all in the name of tolerance?
Doctrine: The Drama is in the Dogma. When I read this chapter, I was reminded of Chuck Colson’s review of Wade Clark Roof’s book Spiritual Marketplace in which he wrote:
People today see themselves as "spiritual" rather than "religious." And that tells us a lot. The word ‘religion,’ you see, comes from the Latin word for ‘to bind.’ But the spirituality of the marketplace ‘distrusts authority’. The emphasis on being spiritual [now] carries with it a [blended] approach to belief -- meaning that, instead of adhering to a specific set of doctrines, they feel free to pick-and-choose from all the various belief systems, or to create their own tailor-made religion. (Breakpoint Commentary—3/20/2000).
The question I hear being addressed in this chapter is this: “Is it a good thing to let people ‘pick-and-choose’ their religion?
A Funeral for a Friend: On Churches, Story, and Propositional Language. Jesus said, “the Father is looking for those who will worship him in spirit and in truth.” The Christian life surely can’t be “all spirit.” What is the “truth” that is to become the substance of what I offer to God?
And on the chapters go:
- Modernism: The Boogeyman Cometh.
- Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Dialoguing for the Sake of Dialogue
- Jesus: Bringer of Peace, Bearer of Wrath
- Real Topeka People: In Search of Community
- Why I Don’t Want a Cool Pastor
Like a number of other subjects, I am willing to concede the emergent church movement has its good and bad points. I do feel in my gut, however, that something about the “emergent” approach is not quite right. At the very least, it will be most helpful to those working in the Wesleyan tradition to think through the possibilities of holding convictions and understandings that diverge from those being proposed by the leaders of this movement.
Admittedly, I can’t always put my finger on the issue. I would be most interested in hearing the pros and cons of others in ministry regarding the acceptance or distancing of the Wesleyans to the emergent church. What I am looking to discuss most surely doesn’t have to end in an “all or nothing” split. But what will we do? Is the disavowing of propositional truth problematic? Does the sanctifying of “journey” mean one thing to the “holiness is process crowd” and another thing to the “crisis-driven” folks? Does an idealism that borders on tolerance become a fault which sadly neglects the stewardship of the tradition of the Church? Or, is there something inherent in selective responsibility that will keep us from throwing out the baby with the bath water?
I worry about the self-understanding of those who are championing the emergent doctrine while pastoring in the Wesleyan-Holiness ministry. Should we allow the trajectory of our churches to be shaped by believing “life in the religious community is set by cultural and sociological factors?” Does not a church guided by principles which are satisfactory to and descriptive of cultural and sociological norms of a fallen, unredeemed society disqualify itself from holding the high ground of Spirit-led, objective conviction?
I am reminded of a disagreement I had with my district superintendent while pastoring many years ago. One Saturday we were called to a District Team Day. On this occasion we sat through one of those “this-is-what-I-expect” lectures. In those days I was greatly under the influence of non-conformity (more so than today). When I verbalized my aggravation at being told how to pastor my congregation (as if one plan would fit all situations), I was brought up short with this rebuke, “Whose church are you pastoring anyway?”
I’ve reflected on that sentence many times over the years. My superintendent was not suggesting that I was pastoring his church. He was reminding me that I was part of a larger whole. This was not an independent work but a work which was part of a specific tradition and methodology. Issues of ecclesiology, theology, ordination and service must be tempered by the acknowledgement that I am working corporately, not in solitude.
I offer these words and the recommendation of this text as a way of getting into the dialogue of clarifying what is useful and what is workable in a Wesleyan-Holiness framework for doing church. These are my thoughts. How do they strike you? What am I missing? Is there something I’m not seeing? Let's discuss these questions further in the Discussion Forum along with some other questions I have posted. I look forward to the conversation.
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Author Profile & Commentary
Michael Wallace Benson is the Chaplain to the University at Olivet Nazarene University, a position he has held since August of 2002. Prior to that he served for eight years as an evangelist and has held more than 400 revivals, retreats and camp meetings. He has also served in staff assignments and the senior pastorate for more than a decade. Two districts elected him as their District Nazarene Youth International President. A published author, Benson co-authored with his father, the late Bob Benson, the seminal devotional guide Disciplines for the Inner Life. He and his wife Gwen make their home in Bourbonnais, IL.
Another Voice
“Honing Our Understanding” by Hal Knight
(view article)
Henry H. (Hal) Knight, the III, serves as the Donald and Pearl Wright Professor of Wesleyan Studies at St. Paul’s School of Theology (Kansas City, Missouri). Hal is as highly published a Wesleyan scholar as we have in this tradition. A more developed listing of his work can be found by looking him up on the SPST website.
In 2007-2008, Hal wrote an article for Preacher’s Magazine entitled: “John Wesley and the Emerging Church”. I am grateful to Hal for the article and for the questions and thoughts it rasied in my thinking. And, for allowing me to use it this month in a spring board for our thinking together. I invite you to read this article and join me in dialogue as we sharpen our focus.
Knight asserts that Wesleyans should welcome the emerging church as it both embodies and brings into being the form (or a form) of the postmodern church. “The purposes and values that churches are seeking to embody—their vision of discipleship, church, and mission—is highly congruent with those of the Wesleyan tradition.”
Both Knight, in this article, and the authors of Why I’m Not Emergent complain of the difficulty in characterizing the emerging church in satisfactory ways. Perhaps this common complaint about the complexity of emergent thought, is, in and of itself, a place for pause in linking Wesleyanism with the emergent church. That is to say, “Would Wesley have attempted to be purposefully vague?” “Was John Wesley willing to be so innovated and diverse that he would have held on to beliefs that were unorthodox long engouth for the climate to change and the belief to become “less messy”?
Current similarities of the emergent church in areas such as “ancient/future”, to cite one example, may be more of a reach than is permissible. Surely the approach to the traditional spiritual practices as found in this eighteenth century figure of early Methodism developed differently than the current “return” to the ancient forms by those emergent's who are “highly dissatisfied with the assumptions and practices of the church at home."
I have special interest in knowing your thoughts on the fifth characteristic feature of emerging churches, i.e., “that proclamation and teaching in emerging churches find truth more in biblical narrative than a rational/propositional reading of scripture.” In my work among college students at the University there is no doubt that a storyteller is a more popular speaker than an expositional preacher. How do I make sure that I am effecting a balance between the historical understanding of the church (in her doctrinal statements) and the more subjective teaching of experience?
These are some thoughts that come to my mind. What do you think? I welcome you to share your view on this and related topics by joining the conversation in the Discussion Forum.