A Different Perspective

In a comment to my post, “The Emerging Church Nobody Talks About,” Brian Baute asked me to post on an example of the church I would want to be a part of, so here goes.

While filled with imperfections, I’m actually already a part of a church I would be a part of. We don’t have a name or a set meeting location. We don’t have a pastoral staff (or even the title of pastor), and we don’t have a weekly sermon.

Of course, the reason Brian asked was not to find out what we don’t do, but to find out what we do, do.

I’ll start out by telling you what we do poorly. We don’t have a set meeting day and time any more, so we’ve been sporadic with our meetings. It was very easy for us to get distracted and not meet formally. We met last Wednesday and had a difficult time finding any flow that didn’t feel forced, because we haven’t been intentional about getting together to share, worship, and support one another.

Starting out with what you don’t do and following it up with what you do poorly probably doesn’t make believers out of you that this form of church is better, eh?

Okay, what we do well:

In spite of not having formal meetings, many of us prayed together and found times to worship outside of a formal setting. We support one another, and our openness and honesty with one another in the ugliness of life frees us to find forgiveness and transformation without having to hide stupid things we’ve done. Although it’s never been said by any of us (that I know of), I feel there’s a general consensus that when we confess sins, we don’t need guilt trips about it. And if we’re doing something another thinks is sinful, we don’t get all pissy because of the disagreement. In fact, we care about each other so that we genuinely consider the rebukes rather than run from them.

I believe that much of the “successful” evangelism in the established church is the result of reaping what they have not sown. I’m not saying that as a bad thing, believe it or not, but there is a tremendous need for sowing the difficult ground, the ground of those who have grown to hate the church not because of righteousness but because the church has sown something herself, judgment. We are very good at building relationships with those predisposed to hate the church, without compromising what we believe. Any church I would want to be a part of would have to learn this trick. It’s not easy. It requires being honest about what you think, while not being an asshole about it. It requires going way beyond the not-so-catchy phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” to something more like “love the person, be honest about how you feel.”

We’re good at supporting one another when in need. Because we don’t have a building to pay for or a staff to take care of, our money is freed up to help those in need. Sometimes it is from within, sometimes we help those outside of the community. There are drawbacks to not collecting a formal tithe or offering. We are too much in control of the money and where it goes. But given the extreme waste I’ve seen from being in a position to monitor budgets in established churches, very well-intentioned established churches I might add, I’m convinced ours is the better way. As far as stewardship of God’s things is concerned any way. And for the betterment of those in need as well.

Our learning must be practical application to what God gives us in the Scriptures. Rather than turning to a 30-minute eloquent or not-so-eloquent speech, we seek to apply the Scriptures we already know in such a way we really learn them. I wish I could give you hard examples of how this is done, but honestly, we’re still learning.

We are far from perfect. There are many questions I have which find no easy answers. I certainly don’t believe ours is the only way of doing things, but with all my heart I know we, and many others, need to try to live out our faith in ways consistent with our moral values.

You see, the issues I posted about previously are moral issues to me. Most emerging churches, in my opinion, have become so for reasons of evangelism; they want to reach postmoderns. As noble as that is, my path to the emerging church began from a different source. I believe the cultural shift we’ve been calling postmodernism is being used by God to shine the light on faults the church has had for an entire period of history. The shift has opened our eyes to see wrongs which have been done. For me, the quest for a different way of being the church and doing ministry stems from a desire to not commit the sins of the past.

I’m not sure how much this post as actually helped for anyone wishing to construct something in light of the issues I mentioned previously, but it’s the most sincere answer I can give to the question asked.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2005 at 9:16 am and is filed under Faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.