If our ideas do not play out practically in how our local churches (faith communities or whatever else we’re calling them nowadays) operate, we run the risk of dividing by the same standards as the established church.
For example, when a sermon is still the center of a worship service which is in turn the main activity for that body of believers, the ideas presented from that pulpit (even when it looks very unpulpit-like) will be the main unifying factor for that local church. To some of you, that’s not such a bad thing. In fact, you may be wondering why I would even be bothered by that at all.
One of the main characteristics of most emerging pastors is an openness to diversity in thought regarding nonessential doctrines. Teaching that is all well and good, but one’s theological background and bias shows through everything he or she does and talks about. That’s to be expected. But when the sermon is central to the community, the biases of the speakers will naturally shine through (as they should). Can you imagine believing very different things from the main preacher(s) and feeling like you belong with a group of believers who must be (why else would they listen every week) in agreement with the biases presented in the pulpit?
I’m not saying don’t teach. Not by any means, but if you truly expect a community of Christians from various backgrounds and theological traditions to exist for any length of time, you should consider moving the center away from sermons to perhaps the eucharist, corporate worship sans monologue, or even a more radical move which would place greater emphasis on the service of ministry than attending the weekly meeting.
And you can preach a missional message, but if your structure ties up your “best” people (read: those who give and give and give of their time…) with the functions of services or programs which are not fulfilling the church’s missional vision, you can hardly call yourselves missional merely because you talk about it.
Perhaps the most obvious place where church structure defines the message is in how you handle leadership roles. You can talk about organic, relational leadership all you want, but if the senior pastor still calls all the shots like a CEO (even while condemning the CEO business model for the local church), the message you send is antithetical to the teaching.
I’m concerned that in the emerging church, there is a lot of talk getting all the attention. What a few individuals think is the focus of critics and often of self-identifying emergers. Most who feel this is a bad situation blame it on the critics who are trying to define us and pigeonhole us. While this is true to some extent, the blame also rests on ourselves. WE still define ourselves by our beliefs (or at least by the topics we choose to wrestle with), so why shouldn’t our critics? It may not be fair to pin the beliefs of a few on the whole emerging church, but until the emerging church places greater emphasis on organizing our churches to function in ways that match our ideals, they won’t have anything else to talk about.
Alan,
Great post! I agree with your thoughts. I would like to see more drastic examples of changes in leadership and structure in the emerging church. I think they are probably happening, but those aren’t the dominant voices in the conversation.
grace
February 1st, 2007