The Church in Emerging Culture

I have quite a lot I'd like to say about one of the most interesting books I've read lately, and I hope you will find my reflections helpful. Sometimes books are not only worth considering per se, however, as they immediately link us to other books, similar authors, and a constellation of similar thoughts. This month's review will be on of those kind of wide-reaching ruminations. This month's lead title really is a must-read, but it should also be put in context.

The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Views (edited by Leonard Sweet (Zondervan, $19.99) is a friendly, if at times feisty and diverse, conversation about the ways in which — given our postmodern times — the church should or should not adapt our methods and message to the ways of contemporary culture. Five fine writers and Christian leaders debate the character of our culture (Is it excessively consumerist? Postmodern? Hyper-modern? Secular?) and the nature of the gospel (Is it a grouping of propositions with which we must agree or a narrative in which we find ourselves? Is it the death of Christ to save souls or the transformation of history into the reign of God?) and of course, the form and mission of the church. It is a healthy and good conversation by witty and smart people, and it is a privilege to sit in and overhear these papers and proposals, critiques, interruptions and rejoinders. I'll bet you've got some smart friends, but you don't just have conversations this good on most nights. Kudos to Len Sweet, who orchestrated this whole project for our sake. I hope it sells widely as it is a foundational sort of work.

I will briefly describe this provocative book but will then offer a bit of comment on other books on this topic and the religious world in which this book is situated.

First, the authors. (For those who follow evangelical publishing, you may know these.) In one volume, we've got Andy Crouch, of the late and wonderfully thoughtful Gen X mag, re:generation quarterly, whose well-written and surprisingly mature and balanced pieces always catch my attention in Christianity Today; Michael Horton, reformed theologian and heady, radio host of the White Horse Tavern show; Brian McLaren, postmodern pastor, thinker, novelist, rabble-rouser; Erwin Raphael McManus, who pastors an innovative and edgy interethnic church in Los Angeles called Mosaic (his job description is "cultural architect") and who has published some inspiring books such as The Unstoppable Force; and Frederica Mathewes-Green, who has written richly on her journey to Orthodox faith, ancient forms of prayer and worship and who appears as an occasional commentator on NPR. [She will also be speaking on gender at Jubilee 2004.]

The essential structure of the book takes a bit to explain but is really quite simple; readers just need to know this much (class, pay attention now): Each of the five authors in this book offer their assessment of the contemporary (emerging?) culture and the question of how churches might respond. Each has a different angle, which can be described by seeing (more or less) how they approach both the nature of the church and the gospel, the medium and message. Here is how they stack up:

One says we should change the method or medium, but still preach the same old message. Another says the opposite — that we can still maintain the same traditional structures, but must construe and explain the gospel differently. Yet another says that we need, in these post-Enlightenment emerging times, a new formulation of both medium and message, and a fourth insists that we ought not to seriously change our best formulations of church or gospel. The fifth voice, Frederica M-G, says, interestingly, that yes, we need to change our understandings of both church and gospel, but not towards a new postmodern paradigm, rather to a pre-modern method and message (she's Orthodox, remember). She argues for the normativity and wisdom of the earliest understandings and practices of the church.

What's more, Leonard Sweet's amazing and erudite preface sets up the conversations in a remarkable way. This is Len at his best, sociologically insightful, theologically astute and clever as ever (and footnoted to the hilt). His extended metamorphic schema of garden, park, glen, and meadow illuminates and plays with (deconstructs?) Niehbur's categories from Christ and Culture. Don't skip this good part of the book. (Also helpful is his brief discussion on the inconsistencies within various groups as they relate to culture in ways that are described as reactive, responsive, or redemptive.) Sweet is to be applauded for giving good handles to pick up this discussion, for midwifing the conversation and applying his insight, verve and hope to the task at hand: helping us all think more faithfully about bearing fruit in our fast-paced and ever-changing world.

That the book isn't like those linear, debate-type books, with chapters and counter-chapters but includes (in italics) interruptions and asides is itself indicative of the mood (and philosophy?) of this project. There are even grainy black and white photos of the conference room — juice bottles, notebooks, Bibles and recorders scattered — where some of the initial conversations occurred. This helps you literally see the authors, imagine their tone, appreciate their passion. The conversations get deep sometimes — Horton especially plays the curmudgeon, at times, as you might expect — yet sometimes are lighthearted. (Like when Frederica writes, "I'm standing on my chair cheering. Okay, I'm getting down now.") This is a fun and important book and I commend it to you.

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The Church in Emerging Culture isn't raising these great questions out of the blue, of course. A book like this had to happen, as these are conversations that are happening in college fellowship groups, in struggling churches looking for new ways to be effective, in innovative church plants and in the growing (or now plateaued) mega-churches or mega-church wannabes. The questions of Christ and culture, especially now as we are in a period of social upheaval and epochal changes, are huge. If churches aren't asking them, it seems to me they are either deaf to the times or very, very dumb.

There is, you should know, a growing movement of folks who are writing and reading and experimenting with new forms of being the church and doing ministry in ways which they take to be congruent with our post-Christian new millennial culture. A colorful handful of hardbacks in the Flagship line from Group Publisher (the flagship of which was Sweet's Aqua-Church) well illustrate this movement. Hear the ring of these kind of titles, such as An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Be the Church God Had in Mind by Erwin McManus or Mission-Driven Worship: Helping Your Changing Church Celebrate God (Handt Hanson) or Morph! The Texture of Leadership for Tomorrow's Church (Ron Martoia) or, unLearning Church: Just When You Thought You Had Leadership All Figured Out (Michael Slaughter) and the brand new Discovering Your Church's Future Through Dynamic Dialogue (by Pittsburgh's Dave Fleming). Even more staid publishers are reflecting on revitilization of congregational life, in light of the changing generational research and cultural mores of our times.

One of the early books signaling this re-examination of church structure — sort of a wilder-than-Willow Creek, more organic and gritty, knowingly influenced by postmodern themes — was Brian McLaren's own The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix. (Of course, every generation has visionaries reflecting on what the church ought to be and be about; I was reviewing, in Sojourners, Howard Snyder's communally-oriented Community of the King in the late '70s, a book that I still find immensely important and happily still in print!) Dallas Willard, certainly no postmodern guru, and one who surely cannot be accused of superficiality or trendiness, has a telling blurb on the back of McLaren: "We'd better listen to McLaren if we want to bring the reality of Christ into the world as it is and the church as it now is." As McLaren puts it in that important book, "We are exploring off the map, looking into mysterious territory beyond our familiar worlds on this side of the boundary between modern and postmodern worlds."

He has gone on to ruminate on his vision of new kinds of faith in two much-discussed novels published by Jossey-Bass, A New Kind of Christian and the sequel, The Story We Find Ourselves In ( which is subtitled "Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian"). His newest is co-written with Tony Campolo, Experiments in Missing The Point: How The Culture-Controlled Church has Neutered the Gospel, a book whose very title speaks volumes. His heart, though, is with the local church and his Church on the Other Side illustrates much of his vision.

One of the recent books documenting this new movement of younger, postmodern thinkers and pastors who are pursuing new efforts is Dan Kimball's The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Zondervan, $14.99). Highly readable, this is the overview given to us by the founding pastor of "Graceland" (how's that for the name of a fellowship?). It shows that the newest and most postmodern spiritualities are neither generic nor unconnected to Christian tradition but are, in the memorable phrase of Robert Webber, "ancient future." That is, they incorporate liturgical aspects, aesthetic attitudes and doctrinal insights to create worship experiences and communal practices that are more than the "stripped down" singing and announcements and an informal talk that has come to characterize some seeker-friendly Boomer services. To reach a younger, postmodern generation, worship will have to regain what the seeker movement of the last decade resisted: mystery, ritual, multi-dimensional involvement.

Webber has given us the essential programatics for that in his powerhouse two-volume set, Ancient Future Faith and Ancient Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community (both Baker, $14.99). These are important books by a wonderful man and a scholar who has himself pioneered an ecumenical and diverse approach to worship that emphasizes creedal affirmation, the arts, gospel clarity and ancient ways. That he thinks this is especially appealing to the newer generations is clear in his must-read documentation of the ways in which young Christians experience their faith, entitled The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (a book that must be read by any middle-aged leader who works with younger folks or any pastor or church leader who senses that there is a paradigm shift or generational gap in their community). I wish space permitted to describe in greater detail Webber's body of work, but know that he is an important and wise writer who has done serious homework and paid serious attention to the various voices — from Marva Dawn to Leonard Sweet, the early church to the latest rage — calling for ecclesiastical and liturgical reform. Any of his works — including the slim Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail — are worth considering. See also his magisterial, trans-denominational six-volume set now published by Hendrickson, The Complete Library of Christian Worship (two of which are specifically on the arts and music). Each volume sells for about $50.00, and we offer good discounts on the set. You can also check out his Web site (www.ancientfutureworship.com) or call us to talk further about his work.

One incredible place to check out the ideas of younger Christians who take seriously the interest of engaging culture and reflecting on contemporary forms of faith is the now renowned Web site, www.theooze.com. For those less than cyber-savy, the emergent line of books has released Making Sense of the Church: Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations about God, Community and Culture edited by Spencer Burke (Zondervan), which is a reproduction of and commentary on some of the more interesting discussions going on in that forum. For a real-life glimpse of stuff people are saying, it is a very open window through which much can be seen. The book is worth having around just to dip in to, to jog your own thinking, or to attempt to understand — especially if you are an older reader who must say, in Leonard Sweet's apt description — postmodern is not your native tongue.

You must know, though, that there are those who would contest this emergent village (see www.emergentvillage.com) ooze. I myself expressed both appreciation and ambivalence in my review last year of Stories of Emergence: From Absolutes to Authenticity (edited by the late great Mike Yacconelli; Zondervan). I was fascinated with the stories — well worth reading — but frustrated that so many were moving towards spiritually-alive, life-affirming, artistic, socially-active, culturally-aware visions of the church as an authentic community as if that were a new idea. Where have they been, I perhaps unkindly wondered: haven't they heard of the culturally-incisive critiques of modernity by Francis Schaeffer? Or the wonderfully liberating yet centered work of Ron Sider and Evangelicals for Social Action? The biting satire of The Wittenburg Door? Or the aforementioned Howard Snyder's books on the church as a community, published by IVP in the '70s? Must one really become postmodern to be against legalism, anti-intellectualism, middle-class religiosity, right-wing civil religion, trendy church growth campaigns, and authoritarian faith communities? Had the decades-old flood of books on contemplative spirituality, liturgical renewal, and spiritual direction entirely missed them? Haven't these independent church workers ever visited a mainline church that worked hard at these things?

And, I wondered, and wonder still, if this emerging movement of new voices doing edgy postmodern ministry really does intend to be biblically potent, challenging the idols of the age, building community with the poor and resisting the violence of imperialism, daily technocracy and the like? Or are they just a hip and tattooed version of the Boomer-oriented seeker services, making everyone feel comfortable and cared for, as long as they fit the homogenous demographics recommended by the church growth consultants? I know McLaren — perhaps because he is an avid environmentalist or because he's been hanging out with Mennonites a bit — has similar concerns, and I respect him for being graciously outspoken on matters of peace and justice.

Still, it isn't just the emerging generation of young post-evangelicals whose current tendencies may be an (over?) reaction to a lack of intregal orthodox vibrancy of the past decades. Conservative evangelicals and trendy mega-churches aren't the only ones who have failed to keep up with radical cultural shifts, relating faith to the issues of the day. I was recently with McLaren — selling books in the back, of course — who was sharing his "ministry as postmodern dance" steps with a good gathering of largely liberal mainline clergy. And amazingly, more than one old school leader said to me, browsing the smattering of these kinds of books I had on display, "Where did this stuff come from?" and "I've never heard these kind of views before!"

So — woosh! Did you see Neihbur's ghost fly by, leaving traces of his old categories? Apparently, it isn't just a caricature: conservative Protestants really have been disengaged from culture, holier-than-thou and out of it, while liberal Protestants have too often been nearly swallowed up in accommodation, trying to be relevant but still essentially bourgeois.

Which reminds me. I said a few months back in this column that Os Guinness' book, Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance (Baker $16.95), is an essential essay to remind us of the dangers of selling out to the latest manifestation of the spirit of the age. In Os' very important and clear little book, he maintains that the contemporary zeal for relevance amongst evangelicals, especially, may be a mirror image of the unhelpful move of the mainline churches of the 20th century. As the mainline gutted out commitment to serious theology and orthodoxy, eroded Biblical truth — all in the name of cultural and scientific relevance — they increasingly became, as the pundits now put it, "sideline." I wish Os could have been a part of this conversation with the other five partners in The Church in Emerging Culture, and I would love to have each of them comment on his important and incisive book. (His thesis, too, that our view of time — mechanistic, clock-oriented — is a prime carrier of modernity, leading to an idolatry of the efficient, would be a very, very important bit of conversation for the five to discuss.)

Hasty readers can skip this nasty aside — I just can't help myself, and somebody ought to say it, so I'll say it here in the little CCO Ministry Exchange and on my Hearts & Minds Web site: despite my loyalty to a mainline denomination and my general ease with ecumenical theology and my pleasant friendships with those who see themselves as theologically liberal, it just exasperates me to no end when otherwise sharp liberals rave about Marcus Borg's new book. Therein, he boldly claims that fundamentalists are modernists and his brand of mystical liberalism is not. That is the downright dumbest thing — well, except his denial of the bodily resurrection, which is worse than dumb — he has yet written.

His penance should be to have to take nearly any undergrad sociology of religion class to get it right: Protestant fundamentalism emerged as an anti-modernist movement; liberal theology wanted to accommodate Protestant faith claims to modernity and science. Higher critical analysis of the Bible is hardly anything but an Enlightenment reading. Hasn't Borg read nearly any postmodern or canonical critics who make this claim, or even Walter Wink's first book? One of the quintessential stories in the telling of Western history is the secularization of Europe after the Enlightenment and modern theology's complicity with that Kantian modernity with its anti-supernaturalism and its brutalizing fetish of progress through science. My favorite explanation of this, by the way, is simply and engagingly spelled out in the first chapter or so of Walsh and Middleton's spectacularly significant Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age.

So, be warned: not everybody who talks about this modern world stuff has a clue. End of aside.

And so, now, into this hot-wired cultural context, some evangelical publishers are cranking out new paradigms and emerging voices, while others protest. From Marva Dawn's prophetic critique (influenced as she is by Jacque Ellul's naysaying) to Eugene Peterson's sober pastoral wisdom that eschews methods and glitz to those social justice radicals who might wonder if all this search for new millennial methods is not just too comfortable with Constantian power plays, not everyone is sure of these emerging guys….and good-hearted folks in rather ordinary congregations wonder what the fuss is all about.

As should be plain by now, I believe that liberals, evangelicals, post-evangelicals and everyone else in between or otherwise, in our own place and way, need to struggle with the cultural changes that are around us. College students or Boomers, youth ministers or older-school, stable clerics, all must grapple with the air we breathe, the air our friends and neighbors breathe. We are called to be discerning of the times, caring for our world, wise.

Len Sweet in Soul Tsunami — we still recommend the audio tape versions of that thick book — spelled it out like this: the shift from modernity to postmodernity includes (among other things, perhaps more important things) a shift that he called EPIC. Where we were once essentially a print culture, oriented towards linear logic, we are now experiential learners. We now insist on being participatory; our world is increasingly visual and image-based; we are longing for community to replace the excessive individualism of the American way.

Experiential, participatory, image-based and communal. These are easy ways to name some of the shifts of culture, and it is at least worth debating if he is correct. And then, if he is even partially correct, how then shall we live, how then shall our churches form and order themselves, how do we proclaim and live out the implications of the gospel of God's Kingdom acoming? Do we work with these trends (as if they are inevitable) or resist? Or applaud? What should the church look like today? What should be the focus of its message? How should we present that message?

The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Views is one of the most useful tools I have seen to begin or deepen that dialogue. Read it, talk about it, argue with it, share it with others. It is not the full answer, but I am sure the discussion here is broad enough — Mathewes-Green is Orthodox, after all, and Horton is a conservative Calvinist — to raise many of the best questions. I promise you that in these discussions you will learn something worth knowing, overhear something worth pondering, discover a voice worth respecting and, yes, read a line or two that will make you shake your head.

Perhaps I might close with one of the underlined quotes from McManus's chapter:

Without realizing it, we have slipped into the view that the world creates culture and that the church reacts to it. In our most innovative moments we analyze cultural trends and project historical movements. Then, like a twig determined to stop a tsunami, we brace ourselves for the future. But is it possible that the church was intended to be the cultural epicenter from which a new community emerges, astonishing and transforming cultures through the power of forgiveness, freedom and creativity? Have we overestimated the effectiveness of methods, programs, and structures and underestimated the transforming essence of faith, hope and love?

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One of the best ways to see how to relate faith to culture is to not just have these great and feisty debates as portrayed in the book just commended, but rather to plunge in to an artifact of contemporary culture and get busy. Study the structure of American cities and towns (see my review from September of books to do that) or reflect on the nature of advertising, film or the pace of life. (Check out the theological introduction to new urbanism, appropriately entitled Sidewalks of the Kingdom by Eric Jacobson (Brazos Press, $16.99), or the high-octane rant — one of my favorite books of the year! — by suburban critic, James Howard Kunstler, called Home From Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century (Touchstone, $14.00).) An new amazing book is entitled Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place, which is a big, sprawling book of deep insight about the ways space has played a part in the ordering of our lives and our views of faith. Author Jon Pahl is a beloved teacher at the Lutheran Theological Seminary (he studied under Martin Marty at the University of Chicago), and it is published by our friends at Brazos ($17.99).

Another Brazos title — they have an excellent record of helping us study this kind of stuff — is Selling Ourselves Short: Why We Struggle to Earn a Living and Have a Life by Catherine Wallace ($22.99.) Here, she carefully unpacks the way consumerism, fast-paced time schedules, and contemporary cultural practices damage our efforts to find meaningful work and home life. Jean Bethke Elshtain calls it "a courageous and moving work." Such resources are worth working through so that we might truly understand our times, and thus become more equipped to discern the contours of faithful living in them.

Or, yet another way, you can just study rock and roll, the current language of much of the world's population.

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that we have just received our copies of the much anticipated Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching Through the U2 Catalog edited by Raewynne Whiteley & Beth Maynard (Cowley, $14.95). It is, as you may have heard, a collection of actual sermons preached which use the lyrics of U2 songs. Since it just arrived, I have not had time to read anything but Eugene Peterson's brilliant preface on metaphor. I had previously seen four of the chapters, two by my good friend Brian Walsh and two by my good friend Steve Garber.

I am so absolutely thrilled and honored to know these two guys — stunning writers in their own way, each faithful to Bible and Bono — and am not at all exaggerating to say it is worth every single penny to buy this book if only for these five chapters. I am confident that many of the numerous other chapters will be good and the group guide in that back looks quite useful. I applaud Cowley — most known for tender books of spiritual formation and the wonderful Barbara Brown Taylor collections — for leaping into this new world for them.

Perhaps there is a parable here. Take the risk to try a new thing. Listen to Bono. Preach the Word. How's that for a strategy for postmodern faithfulness?

January 2004