Today, I’ve been thinking about motivation. Persons will do very similar things but often for very different reasons. When it comes to the emerging church, motivations differ by almost as many individuals there are participating. But there are two broad categories many persons fit into when it comes to the motivation for being a part of the emerging church.
One – The established church does not live up to your idea of what the church should be, and you believe the church really needs different structures to emerge. You may or may not see the need to rework theology, but regardless of your theological bent, you see the practical workings of the church failing in the establishment. Rather than abandon religion altogether, you choose to join with others who see the same problems and desire to see new forms of being, and participating in the life of, the church.
Two – You’ve been terribly wounded by the legalistic tendencies in many established churches, and you want a place of acceptance. For you, the established church is probably not just broken, it is evil. It may be more important for you to find acceptance than theological agreement… it may even be part of the main mission of the church you choose to become a part of.
I know there are many different motivations, but today I was thinking about these two. And, the fact that the critics of the emerging church tend to treat all emerging church persons like they are in the second group. Going further, the motivations of the second group are interpreted as desiring to go to a church where anyone can do whatever they want. For some people, that is true. I believe that is an issue we need to find a way to address within the emerging church (there will certainly be no slowing down of the advice coming from without…). But we also need to recognize the muddy waters life creates (the emerging church didn’t muddy the waters, it recognized them) and find a way for practical diversity in our local churches.
The greatest difficulty, in my mind, facing the emerging church is this: we must find a way for communal acceptance for individuals with varying beliefs on the “nonessentials” of the faith without creating a self-centered individualistic environment where each person simply does what he or she wants. God does ask a life of us that goes beyond what we think or feel is right. But that life is not necessarily the social standards in place within the evangelical world right now. Wanting to abandon those standards does not have to equate with the motivation to be free to do whatever we want without having to change. Following Jesus is a life of change, and we must recognize the fact that as human beings, we are in need of becoming better persons. And by better persons, I mean more closely resembling the people we were created to be in the image of God.
I don’t have a lot of answers on how to navigate these waters, and I think the solutions may very well be in the working out of these issues in church settings. The emerging church exists for this reason, for this time. Only in communities of faithful followers of Jesus will we find ways to be a Church which strives together to become more like Jesus Christ, all the while holding great diversity in our beliefs about what is right and what is wrong.
Pity mission is not a more primary motivator. I agree with you, but I lament that so much of emergent reflectin is nacisistic and not more focussed on the missio Dei.
Matt Stone
June 9th, 2006