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October 19, 2004
"Traditional vs. the Emergent Church"
There’s a new article up at Allalon called TRADITIONAL VS. THE EMERGENT CHURCH: Struggling with Structure and Looking for New Forms (sorry, you’ll have to start a free membership to read it), by Alan Roxburgh.
Here’s an excerpt:
...I participated in a conference of self-identified “emergent” leaders. These leaders were not from main line or even classic evangelical denominations; but from a loose assortment of church plants and new church experiments across the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia. What characterized the conversations among this diverse group (it wasn’t everyone but the majority) was the common reaction to the ‘institutional’ church (I put it in italics because it is the word they used to describe existing congregations and denominational structures. Pointing out that any group that becomes more than one or two people and meets somewhat regularly is de facto institutional did not deter their deeply felt responses to existing forms of church. There’s was a visceral response coming out of hurt, confusion and a longing to discover forms of church that would engage the world of their peers in a post-modern context). These were people living into experimental forms of church life (home churches, church planting experiments, new kinds of community with no leaders at all; experiments in emergent forms of church life where nothing was planned but came forth as people met and so forth).Roxburgh does a fairly good job of laying the ground for church history (and even has a chart reminiscent of a couple of my own), but in my opinion he began with a judgmental tone. I also think that he may have missed the history of the Emergent movement and, quite possibly, some personal connection to the people involved as well.
Roxburgh’s understanding is that the Emergent movement is a hyper-critical group of people, scorned (by their own experiences in the Institutional Church) into bashing that which they don’t agree with. Now, I admit, some of this is true, but it didn’t come without a past. In Roxburgh’s mind, it seems, the Emergent movement began in the blink of an eye — as if a few hurt people decided that they should critique the modern Church for all that it put them through and voila! Emergent was born.
And, as another admission, this is exactly how I felt the first time I came in contact with Emergent. But, as I can now see, I jumped into something head-first, critical because of my own past and ignorant of a movement that had deeper roots than I had expected.
Roxburgh ends his critique of Emergent relaying the fact that most people know that something is wrong in the Instituional Church and that there needs to be a change.
Most ‘emergent’ type critiques of the institutional church represent reactive responses to this dynamic as it is played out in the North American church. Too a large extent most people inside existing church structures understand that something has gone terribly amiss and want to find ways of addressing the situation.He then lists some actions that could be taken in order to do this. (I’ve cut each of these list-points short, so please read the entire article to better know exactly what Roxburgh said).
Now, I don’t know about your experience with Emergent, but these are exactly some of the things that are already taking place. To me, Roxburgh is forming a very generalized (and institutional) view of Emergent (as if his only experience with Emergent is from the conference he attended). He is discounting the personalities and experiences of hundreds of church leaders who have come to a different (not right or wrong, but different) understanding than he has. He is making judgments based on his time with leaders and not laypeople.
- Let’s stop the rhetoric and bomb throwing across the divide between the so-called institutional and new or emergent groups…
- Create dialogue among the different groups – bring emergent and existing church leaders into listening dialogue…
- Engage in Scripture with one another…
- Listen to the ordinary people in our congregations and house churches…
- The agency directed, anti-structure responses of our time cannot be sustained…
Alan Roxburgh does make some good points in his article, but I think he’s selling Emergent — and himself — short. The conversation that we all so desperately need is happening… We just need to open our ears and listen.
I’d love to hear your takes on this article.
By the way, this statement appears at the end of Roxburgh’s article:
The following article is the sole property of the respective author or publisher. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Article used with permission.I don’t mean to infringe on anyone’s rights or anything, but this seems kind of ridiculous to me. How about an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License?
Posted at 09:35 am
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However, I do know that there has been a significant effort put forth by its leaders to address these attitudes – because they are often valid and important to understand. The emergent church is no novel idea – heck, Luther and Augustine probably were authors of similar movements within their days. I appreciate the emergent folks, as Holly and I have been deeply involved been in “emerging” churches for the past 4 years (first Jacob’s Well, now Imago Dei). From both the “emergent” and the “institutionalized”, these discussions, conferences, and articles need to be tempered by a solid understanding of Scripture, humility, patience, and grace.
p.e.horner () (URL) - October 19, 2004 at 2:15 pm
spoooooooooooooooky.
We obviously subscribe to and / or read the same stuff around the same time. For about the 1,000,000th time I go from reading an article to minutes or hours later seeing it on your Blog. Our lives (or at least our social-theological-political intersets) seem to parallel greatly . . . minus your insane computer knowledge and riding the KCATA of course.
keep it going . . .
doug () - October 20, 2004 at 01:37 am
What’s your view on the article, Doug?
timsamoff () (URL) - October 20, 2004 at 10:26 am
