Bill Easums Observations

The Emergent Conversations 

(If you haven’t read the previous post you might want to do so for clarification)  Although no one person speaks for the Emergents, so far the primary mover and shaker of this movement is clearly Brian McLaren. His book, A Generous Orthodoxy, is a basic primer for Emergents. But recently Tony Jones, the National Coordinator of Emergent Village has become one of the most helpful voices for those trying to understand Emergents.  His book, The New Christians, is the best explanation of Emergents to date (although I don’t think the title helps the conversation.)  

If you have followed my writings the past year you know I have voiced some concerns about the direction the Emergent movement is going, especially in the writings of Brian. However, The New Christians has addressed many of my concerns to the point that I’m not quite as uncomfortable with their inquiries into the meaning of Scripture. I recommend anyone read Appendix B “A Response to our Critics.” It is worth the price of the book. Jones clearly states that Emergents believe that no one comes to God except through Jesus. That should be many to rest and cause angst to others, but it settles my primary concern.  

Emergents are hard to describe http://www.emergentvillage.com/.  The National Park world (prior to 1980s) was an “either/or” world. You either did it our way or there was the highway. The Jungle (today’s world) is what I refer to as a “Both/and” world. Emergents practice a “both/and” approach to issues which makes it very hard to pin them down. They prefer shades of gray, albeit deep shades of gray, to something that is clearly definitive. 

The best way to describe this movement is to start with their basic message: Emergents believe that it is no longer possible to hold on to the tenets and practices of modern day Christianity for two reasons; they are flawed and they don’t relate to today’s world. The postmodern world requires a new view of faith and new kind of Christian- a postmodern faith and a postmodern Christian.  

The Emergent movement is all about entering into conversations about what it means to be a Christian in a postmodern world. The conversations focus around a yet to be determined theology and new way of life. The more conversations the closer they might come to truth. However, to them truth is more beauty more than fact. Truth is messy and beautiful but never objective or eternally certain. Emergents will speak with passion and urgency but never with certainty. To them there is no certainty, only what one believes today, at this moment, in this locale. In addition, they seem to leave open the option of their theology evolving beyond what we know as Scripture as well as a total reinterpretation of that Scripture. The good thing about Emergents is they are a gentle people actively and graciously seeking dialogue with divergent forms of thought.   

The Key issue I have with the Emergent movement is this – Is the message of the Gospel actual reality and eternally true, or is it nothing more than a construct of our own language within the community of faith at this particular time in history in this particular place with this particular community? The emerging movement says we can never really know the reality of the Gospel apart from our communal language- that is our talk within the community constructs the gospel- which brings us very close to relativism. When accused of being relativistic in their thought they respond by saying everything is relative. Emergents remind me more of philosophers than theologians.
 
The Emergents want to change the theological dialogue so that it can have better conversation with the theology of the marketplace.  They are rethinking how theology changes in culture, a very dangerous approach to ministry. I don’t feel as if we have to adopt a postmodern faith in order to reach the postmodern world. That’s far too much compromise. We also don’t have to adopt a postmodern faith in order to address the issues raised by these emerging leaders.   

However, I do agree with them that we must adopt new methods of reaching the new world. Like we’ve heard many times- we must be in the world but not of the world. I agree with the authors that we can’t come on to postmoderns like gangbusters with an elitist attitude as if we have THE truth. I agree with them that the four spiritual laws no longer work. I agree with them that if we lead from the big story we are dead in the water. I agree with them (and with Viola) that the distinction between clergy and laity is not biblical and shouldn’t exist. I agree with them that the new world sees everything in shades of gray. But I do not agree that Christians must feel they have to be two steps removed from the reality of the Gospel in order to reach this new world. In fact, I think it is just the opposite. The clearer a leader is about the reality of gospel and the direction of their calling the more likely that person is to lead a growing and thriving community of faith.  

I still don’t feel the Emergent movement is going to be the primary shaper of the new Christian world. I think it will be a part of it, but only a small part. Look at most of the emerging churches-they are small and you seldom here about them. That’s because they believe and live as if small is better than big. They don’t even believe in planting churches in order to reach more people, nor do they believe in doing things to get people to come to their church.  They plant churches only to save themselves, whatever that means.  

So here’s my question for the Emergents. In a world where so many people are searching for spiritual guidance from so many venues, can you offer to take the position that Christians have to become like them in order to offer the direction they are seeking? Isn’t the Gospel always counter to the culture? Do you really believe broken people are going to be satisfied with never being eternally certain about anything? Do you really think people can have a personal relationship with Jesus when they know all that relationship consists of is the construct of their communal language? Do you really believe that people will believe that words brought Jesus back from the dead? Do you really believe you can reach the bulk of the population when you take the conversation as deep as you do? Or are you really only concerned with appealing to philosophers? 

The Emergent movement is providing a marvelous conversation for all of us. They have revealed the naked truth- the emperor has no clothes. The established Christian church is basically dead and in need of A Second Resurrection. For that we can be grateful and enjoy the conversation to a point. It should continue to be a fun ride for those who are secure enough to question their own understanding of reality.

Many who follow my writing know that two of my favorite metaphors for describing the signs of the times are National Park and Jungle (you might want to read this before reading on). Briefly what I mean by this is that prior to the 1980s we lived in what I describe as a National Park world. If you let your imagination run wild with this metaphor you will conjure up many images about the world that was, but for now just think of the world prior to 1980 as a tame, either/or world that played by a set of well known rules. Now change mindsets and think about the world since 1990 as a jungle and let you imagination run wild as you compare the two metaphors, but for now think of the emerging world as a wild and unsafe place of both/and that has no established rules other than the law of the jungle- survival.

In this wild, unruly world, a growing conversation is taking place that no Christian leader can afford to ignore.  The players in this conversation are multiplying like rabbits.  As we will see in a moment, much of the future of Western Christianity lies at the heart of this conversation. So we had better pay attention.

Here’s a list of the primary players as of now

The Emergent Folks
The Incarnational Folks
The Organic Folks
The Attractional Folks
The Reproductive Folks

Here is the where they fall on my continuum with the far left being a radical departure from orthodox Christianity and the far right being the closest to third century Christianity.

Emergent —Incarnational — Organic — Attractional –Reproductive

Several books are shaping this conversation. Here is a list of some of them based on the above continuum:

Emergent

The New Christians by Tony Jones
Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, by D.A. Carson
Everything Must Change, by Brian McLaren
A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren
A Christianity Worth Believing, Doug Pagitt
Truth and the New Kind of Christian, R. Scott Smith
They Like Jesus But Not the Church, Dan Kimball

Not Emergent Anymore

Radical Reformission, by Mark Driscoll

Incarnational

The Shaping of Things to Come, by Alan Hurst
The  Forgotten Ways  by Alan Hurst

Almost  Incarnational

The Tangible Kingdom, by Halter and Smay
Pagan Christianity, Viola and Barna

Organic

The Organic Church, by Neil Cole
Inside the Organic Church by Bob Whitesell

Attractional

The Externally Focused Church, Rusaw and Swanson
The Purpose Driven Church, Warren
The American Church in Crises, Olsen

Reproductive

The Multiplying Church, by Roberts
Missional Leader, Roxburg
A Second Resurrection, by Easum
Unfreezing Moves, by Easum
The Sticky Church, Osborne (TBR)

The Conversations of Our Time

This conversation is primarily focused on the nature and mission of the church in the postmodern world as well as how Scripture is interpreted. Over the next few weeks I will try to shape each of these conversations and their implications.

From time to time, I write about movements that I see emerging. The last three movements I wrote about were local churches establishing and staffing church planting centers within their churches, congregations with more than one location, and churches and organizations whose goal is to reach their city for Christ.  All three of these movements continue to gain momentum. Now, I want to focus on another movement that is having a profound effect on American Protestantism and I want to couple it with the three movements already mentioned. 

Three forms of church governance dominate the church landscape today: congregational, representative democracy, and apostolic or pastor led. Feelings usually run high as to which one of these is the best form of governance.  However, most of the churches using forms of congregational or representative democracy are leftovers from Modernity, and are either dying or on a plateau.  On the other hand, the vast majority of thriving churches are apostolic or pastor led.  We’ve also noted that the thriving churches using congregational and representative forms of governance have figured out how to circumvent as much of their governance systems as possible.   Over the past 15 years, I have had the opportunity to observe some of

  The rule of thumb of this new movement – the less democracy in the church the more authentic and effective the church is in advancing the Kingdom of

I just finished the first round of consulting and training with the Action Chapel International. It is a movement of Pentecostal churches out of Ghana that has gone world-wide over the past twenty years and is now in the U.S.  My role is to help them bring some order to the movement without turning it into a denomination- the archbishop is very clear on that point. We put a loose structure in place that will allow them to truly be one church in one location throughout the world. Now my role is to provide ongoing training.

The reason I’m telling you this is because of something that happened the last day that made my trip. Keep in mind that we were imposing order on a movement that for twenty years was allowed to run with the wind. I was a bit concerned how well this new twist would be received. When we finished unfolding the new structure and accountability system, the Archbishop led the group in another round of prayer-centered worship. When he finished praying, without any prompting the entire room broke into clapping and praise. All I could think of was, now this is the way it should be in the church- when the spiritual leader speaks, the church rejoices.

I’m sure you’ve been in meetings where radical change was being unfolded to a board or congregation and the response was vastly different.  Somehow in most of the U. S. churches, especially those that are declining, pastors are not considered to be the spiritual leader of the congregation. Instead, they are looked upon as the servant of the congregation who is suppose to take care of the congregation the way a caretaker of a museum takes care of the artifacts. 

How did we come to this when the Bible is very clear about the spiritual authority of the Elders (pastors). They are to be respected and their leadership is to be followed or they are to be replaced.  Somehow we have replaced biblical authority with a demonic form of democracy. But we have no written record of God leading through democracy. Yet most churches impose some form of democracy on their people.

But here’s the catch- democracy and Holy Spirit are like oil and water- they don’t mix, ever. Isn’t it time we owned up to our sin of replacing biblical authority with democracy, and throw the villain out?

I talked about this in the opening chapter of the book I co-authored with Bill Cornelius, Go Big: How to Have Explosive Growth.  Anytime you have an organization with meeting-layered Democracy and consensus building, you hamstring the power of the Holy Spirit and you reduce the effectiveness of God’s movement in the world.

See you at the chaos.

Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com

I first wrote about movements in my book Unfreezing Moves: Following Jesus into the Mission Field.   I described Christianity as an organic movement and compared it to modern day religion. God intended for Christianity to be a movement not a religion.  The problem is Christianity has been highjacked by our passion for democracy.

Movements only happen when an individual is free enough to take on the mantel of an apostle. Democracy hates an apostle with a passion- thus we have been free from movements in the U.S. for some time now.

However, over the past few years I’ve watched the emergence of a number of apostolic leaders who are changing the face of Christianity in the U.S.  In an article titled “The Apostolic Movement of our Time, I wrote the following about this new movement

• One quality stands out above all the rest in every one of these pastors – they pastor as spiritual leaders who listen to God rather than corporate leaders who lead based on democratic rule. 
• The rule of thumb of this new movement – the less democracy in the church the more authentic and effective the church is in advancing the Kingdom of God!

 You can read the full article here.

Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com

The American Church in Crises
David Olsen

This is a must read for any Christian leader who wants to play a part in what God is doing in our world at this point in time. Olsen has given us a priceless book. It’s not doom and gloom. It clearly shows the way forward. The hope of the American church lies in planting churches.

Here is some of the information

1) Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church - half of what the pollsters report. There are approximately 330,000 churches in America; out of those churches approximately 17.7% (52 million) of Americans attend church on an average Sunday. 2) American church attendance is steadily declining.

• Evangelical 9.2%
• Catholic 5.5%
• Mainline 3.1%

3) Only one state is outpacing its population growth. Hawaii. 4) Mid-sized churches are shrinking; the smallest and largest churches are growing.

• Churches under 50 and over 2,000 are growing
• Average attendance of Protestant church: 124
• 1,250 mega-churches in America/one emerges every three days

5) Established churches, 40-190 years old - are, on average, declining. New church starts reach more people better, faster, cheaper than existing churches. 6) The increase in churches is only ¼ of what’s needed to keep up with population growth.

• 3,000 churches close every year
• 3,800 new church starts survived
• Net annual gain: 800 new churches
• Net annual gain needed to keep up with population growth:10,000 new churches

7) In 2050, the percentage of the U.S. population attending church will be almost half of what it was in 1990.

• US Population in 1990: 248 million/20.4% church attendance
• US Population in 2050: 520 million/11.7% church attendance

Everything Must Change
Brian McLaren

As are all of McLaren’s book, Everything Must Change is extremely well written and researched prose bordering at times on poetry. His theme is simple yet profound – unless everything changes in our approach to the suicidal systems story that drives today’s world life on this planet isn’t sustainable. He argues for Christians to believe a new framing story- the story framed by Jesus.

Based on the context of the Roman Empire (and the U.S. empire) the new framing story of Jesus is:

·         The law of good deeds for the common good replaces capitalism’s law of progress through rapid economic growth

·         The law of satisfaction through gratitude and sharing replaces capitalism’s law of serenity through possession and consumption

·         The law of salvation through justice replaces capitalism’s law of salvation by win-lose competition

·         The law of freedom to prosper by building better communities replaces capitalism’s law of freedom to prosper through unaccountable corporations

I can’t see how any Christian can disagree with McLaren’s conclusion that life on this planet is presently unsustainable. I took away several beautiful “A-hahs.”

·         We are all related to one another; therefore it should come natural to us to love even our enemies.

·         The world would truly be better with religion

·         The more Americans consume the more the world hates us.  The more the world hates us the more we fear and stockpile weapons. The more we stockpile weapons, the more the world fears and hates us.  I could go on but one can’t help but get the message.

However, based on the sales of apocalyptic books as the “Left Behind” series, I can see how many Christians will disagree with the solution he offers – we must truly disbelieve the framing story that the worse things get the closer we are to the second coming (which means we shouldn’t worry about saving the planet) and passionately believe a new framing story of God’s love for all creation including the planet earth (which means we should do everything in our power to save it and by doing so save ourselves).

Whereas I totally agree with the basic sentiment of the book, I have some serious concerns about the direction McLaren seems to be going (I wrote about this earlier on my blog). He seems to make salvation totally social – in relation to others and the environment. I get the impression that he has serious issue with salvation even having the hint of a personal savior.

If McLaren was an atheist I would say this is a book on how to respond to the plight of our planet. However, McLaren is a professed Christian and as such his treatment of Jesus concerns me. He constantly begs the Jesus question.

So I have some questions of Brian (you should know we have been friends for a decade)

 Is he the eternal son of God? Was he God incarnate or just another great prophet? Or does his divinity depend on our language within the community of faith? Is salvation both personal and social? Can Christians have a personal savior and still have a concern for social justice? Is there a literally heaven and hell? Is salvation nothing more than the liberation from the framing story of the U.S. Empire?  Did Jesus understand salvation to be nothing more than freedom from the Roman Empire or did it also encompass one’s eternal destiny? (The reader should know that I have always thought of salvation more in the context of how it causes one to live in this life but I have always also retained the belief in its affects on one’s eternal destiny.)

I would have found the book even more persuasive if so much of it was pitted against Brian’s fundamentalist background. Not all evangelicals I know subscribe to a literal interpretation of the book of Revelation. Even as Brian wrote this book, more social justice ministries are being done by evangelical churches than by liberal churches. The book would have far more punch, credibility, and a wider readability if he hadn’t based much of the early part of the book on that background.

Is this a book to read by all Christians- YES, by all means! The book is a call to arms to adopt a totally new way of looking at everything we do and profess to be. It tackles the second most profound issue of our day – the sustainability of our world (what is our relationship to Jesus). Still I want Brian to answer the questions above. Until he does I will continue to be concerned.

Bill  Easum

By Frank Viola and George Barna 

Pagan Christianity is not only a logical sequence to Barna’s recent book, Revolution, it also is an interesting and accurate account of the historic events that have shaped today’s form of Christianity.

Four sections tell most of their story:

“Healthy organic churches never produce a clergy system, a single pastor, a hierarchical leadership structure, or an order of worship that renders the majority passive. To our minds, such things… run contrary to New Testament principles.” Page 163

..there is a strong consensus among evangelical scholars that the early church did not have a clergy, did not meet in sacred buildings, did not take the Lord’s Supper outside of a full meal, did not have a fixed liturgy, and did not dress up for church meetings.” Page 165

“The ‘church meeting’ was devolving into a ‘service.’ Page 91

“Oratory tended to take the place of conversation.’ Page 92

Although the authors leave some wiggle room the only really logical conclusion of their arguments is the end of the institutional church.  My central question or criticism of the book is can that form of Christianity, thrive in an institutionally based and concert driven world like the West?  Whereas I agree the present form of Christianity we see today isn’t biblical, I still question whether what they suggest can survive much less thrive within our context.

So here’s my question: how can we take the unarguable truths in this book and apply them to our present day context? The West is very different from China under Mao. Even the house church there has evolved into more of an institutional form.

Their major criticism of today’s church, other than it being totally non-biblical is the passivity and the elitism of today’s Church. I agree the passivity and elitism of today’s church is deplorable and has to be addressed if Christianity is ever going be what Jesus wanted it to be. Every church leader ought to read this book and respond to its criticism of modern day Christianity with the goal of addressing the passivity and elitism of today’s church. Any positive movement away from these two sins of the church and this book has done its job.

The only place I totally disagree with the authors is in their argument about the non-biblical nature of the sermon.  I agree that as it is practiced in most churches it is non-biblical but it doesn’t need to go. Preaching in the New Testament was never directed to the saints but to those who have not heard. Preaching isn’t an in-house exercise. It is to spread the Good News. If one is to preach in church it should be directed toward the non-believer. When Wesley took to the fields preaching he was following a long line of New Testament preachers. 

Frank Viola is responding to comments, criticisms, and questions at www.ptmin.org/pcobjections.htm

Bill Easum