There have been many efforts to describe what an emergent Christian is. Each attempt inevitably analyzes them from a certain angle and so inevitably produces various portrayals. This is further complicated by the fact that they are not a monolithic group. They come from different walks of life, different theological persuasions, different traditions, different geographical locations, each one has his/her own story and so on. I would say they are as diverse as the individuals that make up this group. Yet they feel a bond with each other. There is a thread that unites them all: they want to be the architects of their lives. They don’t want to blindly or “in faith” employ someone else’s design for life; they want to create their own customized blueprint.
For way too long there has been the assumption that Christians ought to be a homogeneous group. That they have to look the same, feel the same, think the same, believe the same, act the same, smell the same … pretty much made from the same matrix (ok, I am exaggerating, but you get the point). The way this has played out is that there is a Christian “tradition” that is to be passed on from one generation to the other, passed on faithfully and accepted without examination, i.e. “in good faith”. The emergent Christians have broken this chain and said: we can’t just take this in blindly; we need to examine and we need to examine EVERYTHING.
There are some people who may like to call themselves emergent or are referred to as emergent by others. Ed Stetzer’s three streams of emergents is a prime example. Here’s my paraphrase of what he said and it is believed in general. Some “emergents” want to rebrand the Christian tradition so as to be relevant nowadays. Everything stays the same, we just change the face. These are the relevant emergents. Then there are those who are willing to take a stab at how we do church and change it as needed. These are the reconstructionists. The last group are those that want to re-examine everything and are ready to undergo a system wide overhaul. These are the revisionists.
Laying aside the labels with their negative connotations let me just say that the last group represents the true emergent Christians. In order to pass as an emergent you’ve got to have the guts to re-examine EVERYTHING. If you’re not ready to examine everything why examine anything? [I really don’t get this pick and choose kind of reexamining. What is the criteria by which you figure what to examine and what not to? Really !!!] Now, does that mean that everything will be changed? Not necessarily. It is simply an honest re-evaluation of the Christian tradition that has been passed on to us: practices, doctrines, ecclesiology etc. What are we to be afraid of? If we sincerely love God, have the Bible as a guide and are committed to follow Jesus then we should be fine, right?
The true emergents have always existed. They are those who want to examine everything before they adopt it and make it their own. They are the Bereans in Paul’s time who did not think that just because you are Paul we should just gullibly accept everything you’re giving us. That is the right posture, one that will save us of many harmful human traditions that want to creep into our paradigm. It is the task of each generation to take a fresh look (not with a closed eye to those that have come before) and re-imagine what does it mean to be Christian, to follow Christ in his or her context. It is much easier to just replicate a passed on tradition then to redesign a fresh one. But to be true to our internal compass, to the God we love, to the Bible we hold dear, to the world we find ourselves in and to Jesus whom we want to follow, there is no alternative. To be Christian is to be emergent.
Congratulations for a great text. Of course, not everything is right with the emergents – there are potential risks and actual mistakes, but it is good to begin with sime appreciation.
Just one reservation. I am not convinced this ‘who are the “true” emergents’ question is really helpful. In fact, in Christianity at least, we have, as you have suggested with the three kinds of emergents, a whole spectrum of positions, a sort of continuum, with funamentalists at one end and heretics at the other. From this perspective, the above question is quite irrelevant, I think. But I may ne wrong. Who knows?
Danut,
It is true that when you put everything on the table and rethink it you may have all kinds of things coming out of it. We do have to re-examine with great care and thought. Nonetheless it is a path we must not shun away from!
I totally agree that the third group are the real emergents. If one is going to authentically redefine church, it needs to come from a redefined missiology and understanding of God. It’s not authentic if they are just doing it because it’s relevant. Tony Jones said something to the same point several years ago, I believe. Good stuff.
The key word is “authentic”. If all we’re doing are cosmetic changes then … well, we’ll have a cosmetically good looking church, cosmetically good looking message and so on … People have a good radar for inauthenticity.
I love this post Florin. Especially the last paragraph. There have always been emergents…and that’s what is means to be Christian.
When I look at my journey thus far I find that I started initially in the first group and eventually moved through the second and finally to the third, which is where I find myself today.
More and more I am beginning to realize that only when we are willing to question and re-examine everything are we truly free to embrace the unknown and indescribable that is the divine.
Yeah Blake,
traditions have a way to block the knowledge of God. It becomes what God meant for them. We need to know God in the here and now and all that means. Their experience/knowledge of God is a great guide but should never replace a fresh encounter.
At the same time, Florin, there are traditions and… traditions. Humans are fundamentally traditional beings. We simply cannot live without traditions. Even the against traditions position is a tradition
one of the bad ones of the Reformation.
The issue is not with traditions per se, but with their tendency to become autonomous and get disconnected from revelation, which should be the controlling factor of any traditions.
Danut,
you make a very important point that needs to be part of this conversation.
Good post! In Phyllis Tickle’s book (and conference), “The Great Emergence”, it implies that these upheavals occur once every 500 years. 500 YEARS! Why does it take this long? I think it is due to the institutionalization of church. Once you create this behemoth, it is an overwhelming task to change things…complacency sets in…bureaucracy sets in…maintenance sets in…fear of change sets in…
What I love about the Emergent expression I am part of is that they are small and nimble and creative and always shifting, tweaking, moving, reinventing, playing, risking, deconstructing, reconstructing, etc. The Emergent church I’ve been part of for a little over a year is NOTHING like what it was when I first started. That is how it is SUPPOSED to be. It should be an ongoing, continual process. Always emerging.
Have you read Frank Viola’s latest: “Pagan Christianity” and “Re-imagining Church”? Good stuff!
Words coming from a practitioner! Good stuff Jeff. I appreciate very much your input.
I have not read them yet, but they are on my list. Thanks for mentioning these titles.
@DanutW I wonder if you are alluding to the difference between Tradition (capital “T”) and tradition (lowercase “t”)? The former being a system simply for the sake of the system or “disconnected” as you say and the latter being a more pliable and dynamic entity.
When you say “we need to examine and we need to examine EVERYTHING.” do you imply we should also examine if we really should “have the Bible as a guide” and should examine if we really should “follow Jesus”. Or should we examine everything from a Christian position? But then, when we position ourselves in a Christian position we automatically accept some things unexamined.
You’ve set some prerequisites for a “true” place where the emergents should start examining everything, namely “If we sincerely love God, have the Bible as a guide and are committed to follow Jesus then we should be fine, right?”. The question seems to me quite simplistic. It assumes an optimistic view of the human nature.
I’ll end with a quote from an interview with Jaroslav Pelikan:
“For those who believe that you don’t need tradition because you have the Bible,” he reflects, “The Christian Tradition has sought to say, ‘You are not entitled to the beliefs you cherish about such things as the Holy Trinity without a sense of what you owe to those who worked this out for you.’
Vasile,
Thank you for chiming in.
Yes, to start with, you do have to examine everything. For example, you don’t want to believe in the Bible just because someone else told you to; you have to embrace it yourself. Emergents after examination have decided to stay within the Christian tradition: hence emergent Christians. We all have our own presuppositions. You can’t escape that. What you don’t want is to adopt another’s presuppositions without first examining them and then making them your own.
Yes, it is simplistic. It is only a very short essay that focuses on another point. I’ll come back on this in another post.
As far as tradition, I am not dismissing the role of tradition. It is a valuable guide, as I pointed out.
Nice, Florin, good work! But after reading through some of the stuff I have written like this, I’ve learned that it can be mistaken as a bit arrogant. So let me take a stab at a little clarification in hopes to keep from appearing too “self-assured”…
“Revisionist” as a title presumes that a “new, correct” version is only being written now. It might be more precise to say that new versions are always being written. And so folks in this third category are free to be more honest (and self critical) about our face, our ecclessiology, and our lived lives. But even if you call us “early adapters” it doesn’t mean we’re fully aware/completely unfettered/objectively unbiased. So I would warn us not to presume we’ve “arrived” or truely “left” the other two stages that Stetzer proposes. In fact we truely need to be in conversation with each other as these are all part of emerging culture as it is being brought into conversation with incarnational theology.
All three (as well as many anti/post/un-emergents for that matter), insofar as they/we are willing to ask about the Word being made flesh here and now, are co-laborers. And we really need one another.
…
@ Vasil: Jesus’ Lordship dangerously calls everything into question: the text serves the Word, not Jesus serving disembodied historical directives. Somehow the spirit is tangling it such that the Father could send the son, who would then breath the spirit on us, sending us. So the sending M.O. of the Spirit, our “vocation,” (from Abraham, Moses, and Ruth through to Peter, Paul, and the Ethiopian eunuch) is to examine everything as we daily take up a cross that was not ours, and yet is perfectly fitted for us. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?
Troy,
As I was reading your comment to my wife she kept sending you knuckles. Way to go dude, way to go!!!
Hi Florin, I appreciate your thoughts here. I too identify mostly with the third camp, though I share some of your commenters ambivalence with trying to determine who the ‘real emergents’ are. It’s kinda a contradiction for a movement seeking to model the hospitality of Jesus, you know?
Mike,
You’re raising a good point. Though I never had in mind to make emergents into some kind of exclusivist breed (the very opposite is true, they are inclusive, welcoming), I can see how that can come across from what I wrote. So thank you for catching and pointing that out. See, that’s why we need each other in this conversation. Thanks for coming along!!!