|
I read the following comments from Bill Easum, of Easum Bandy, with great interest: "Most of my travels as a consultant have proven one thing to me: the emergent church will be part of the future, but they will be a small segment of the future. I don't see many emergent churches reaching large numbers of people yet. I'm not sure they can, based purely on the styles mentioned in this post. Now there is nothing wrong with small churches as long as they are reproducing themselves in some way-multiple sites, planting churches. But if they remain small and intimate, I doubt if they will have any more impact on the culture than the house church has. "The future needs both the emergent church and the mega or giga (over 10,000) church, but what we need most are churches that are reproducing themselves. So the real issue is: what are the emerging churches doing to reproduce themselves?" (emphasis mine) *
I read these thoughts with interest first because Bill Easum is quite responsible for my engagement with the various understandings of church that shape my life these days. I attended an Easum Bandy seminar in the late 1990's, just as I was beginning question many of my assumptions about the Church. I also paid attention to Easum's comments because other church leaders do as well, including those that write and speak about the future direction of the church. Easum is a thought leader in the Church, and what he says is, at the least, indicative of larger thought movements. But Bill Easum's comments are proof of one of life's basic maxims: we only answer the questions we ask. Easum is a consultant with a client base. He is quite likely to find evidence that supports an operational model similar to that which he and his client-churches expect. Easum is not criticizing the spiritual reproduction of followers of Jesus happening in undefined "emergent" churches. He is, instead, criticizing the lack of the emergent church's captivation by the industrialization model of the Church birthed in the West and promoted heavily in America by people like Charles Finney (for a thoughtful critique of Finney's work, check out Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation by Dr. Michael Pasquarello III). To Easum, the greatest failing of the emergent church is that it does not look like the churches he is paid to study and promote. It should come as no surprise that the emergent form of anything does not look exactly like previous forms. But the conversations about the emergent, and, to a lesser degree, emerging, church are about more than form. They are about the impact on belief and practice that has come from the industrialization of the Church in the West. This industrial cycle is one that Easum stands at the end of, and one that was largely driven by a scientific epistemological approach to ecclesiology. This epistemology affected the way Christians conceptualized being a follower of Jesus and greatly influenced the kind of congregations we created. Thus, theological orthodoxy became accedence to a set of propositionally constructed truths, as opposed to adherence to belief statements. And, as proof that "form follows function," a kind of methodological orthodoxy crept in as well, enabling an ongoing conversation about which model is right. Thus was born the need within the Church for firms whose sole purpose is to help churches connect with the right model and grow, with growth generally being measured in economic and consumer terms as more: more people, more buildings, more giving, more small groups, etc. Ironically, industrialization, fostered by a Protestant spirit of capitalism, is driving globalization across the globe, leading to an increased pluralization, both of cultural and religious expressions, in America. This could be leading the Church to a time of thoughtful consideration as to what it means to claim the name "Christian" when there exists such a wide array of religious and cultural choices. Yet this is also the kind of thoughtful reflection we may not find from those most captive to the industrial model of Church that has dominated American Protestantism in the late 20th and early 21st Century. This may be due in part to the paradigmatic adherence required of one who earns income from a particular model. Or, the lack of reflection may be as innocent as the blindness that comes from spending so much time thinking about a structure or idea in one particular way (Remember Thomas Watson's famous statement, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."). Regardless, it should surprise no one that Bill Easum see little future hope for the emergent Church. A thoughtful response to the challenge posed by Easum might be this: What hope does the emergent and emerging church hold for the institutional church? This reversal of the question may be a good corrective for those who claim a kind of radical faith but are just as captive to form. Another question might be: What does it mean to truly think of God and the rule of God on this earth as emergent, i.e., phenomenal, unpredictable and unable to be aggregated into a single scientific explanation? (By way of footnote, a larger conversation needs to take place within the emergent church regarding structure and sustainability. The models of financial viability available to those operating within the existing structural Church are not available to those seeking the emergent work of God's kingdom. Please feel free to share thoughts on this in the comments or
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
, as I will presenting on this topic at the upcoming CCDA conference in St. Louis)
* The Easum quote was originally in the comments section of this post, and was later requoted on the Emergent Village blog here
Original content at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Willzhead/~3/159007058/a-response-to-b.html.
|
Articles, Media, and More 
Scott Bartchy is a radical. He believes in a subversive system that embraces those on the fringes of our society and seeks to establish a new way of life that goes against the status quo.