CBA 2007: Inside the Organic Church
- Posted by scott on February 2nd, 2007 filed in emergent, conversatio, mars hill, cba 2007
While at the CBA convention, I noticed a book on display at Abingdon’s booth called Inside the Organic Church. The cover was dark and scary, so I took a peek inside. Author Bob Whitesel (who was standing nearby) identified 12 emerging congregations and attempted to distill a few tips from each. The book seemed to be written for leaders of decidedly un-emerging congregations who wished to capture what Christianity Today calls “The Emergent Mystique” for themselves.
I flipped to the chapter on Mars Hill (Grand Rapids / Rob Bell) to see what he thought. Two suggestions included “locate an abandoned shopping mall in your neighborhood and make it your church” and “use small groups to foster greater intimacy among your members” (I’m paraphrasing). I highlight these two points for a particular reason – frankly, they’re a bit useless. Free abandoned shopping malls are tough to come by, and nearly any church that’s heard the word “emergent’ has had small groups for years!
Two thoughts on this:
1) Faced with declining numbers and participation, many traditional protestant church leaders are searching far and wide for “something that works.” Emerging is the “hot thing” at the moment, and according to Whitesel, anyone can be emerging. Reviewing the book, blogger Shane Raynor states that Whitesel argues that “emerging” is “less about theology than it is about style and methodology.” For pastors who aren’t willing to let go of their Grudem, this sounds appealing.
2) Under all of this lies the assumption that there is “a model church” somewhere and that duplicating its ideas, its style, and its creativity will produce the same results in a completely different local context. But all of emerging seems to be screaming “Don’t copy us! It won’t work!” I spoke to a member of an emerging-ish church’s office staff on this a few months ago. She said that they often get calls that go something like this:
- “Hello, xxxxx Church, this is Susan.”
- “Hi Susan. How do you do postmodern worship?”
- “Uhhh…” (and behind that Uhh: “I don’t even know what that means…”)
This is interesting - I hadn’t considered this. After last week’s post about the endless tension between “emerging” and “not” (which is very much real), it looks like many traditional congregations are reaching out and pleading, “Please help us – we want to be like you! You’re good at ministering to the next generation, and we want to be, too. We don’t agree with a lot of what you say and we think those Zen gardens are a bit syncretistic, but that soul patch sure is cool!”
I don’t mean to cop a Dr. Phil-esque hard-line stance like “You either get it – or you don’t.” But I will suggest that there’s more to emerging than style.
CBA 2007: Inside the Organic Church
- Posted by scott on February 2nd, 2007 filed in emergent, conversatio, mars hill, cba 2007
While at the CBA convention, I noticed a book on display at Abingdon’s booth called Inside the Organic Church. The cover was dark and scary, so I took a peek inside. Author Bob Whitesel (who was standing nearby) identified 12 emerging congregations and attempted to distill a few tips from each. The book seemed to be written for leaders of decidedly un-emerging congregations who wished to capture what Christianity Today calls “The Emergent Mystique” for themselves.
I flipped to the chapter on Mars Hill (Grand Rapids / Rob Bell) to see what he thought. Two suggestions included “locate an abandoned shopping mall in your neighborhood and make it your church” and “use small groups to foster greater intimacy among your members” (I’m paraphrasing). I highlight these two points for a particular reason – frankly, they’re a bit useless. Free abandoned shopping malls are tough to come by, and nearly any church that’s heard the word “emergent’ has had small groups for years!
Two thoughts on this:
1) Faced with declining numbers and participation, many traditional protestant church leaders are searching far and wide for “something that works.” Emerging is the “hot thing” at the moment, and according to Whitesel, anyone can be emerging. Reviewing the book, blogger Shane Raynor states that Whitesel argues that “emerging” is “less about theology than it is about style and methodology.” For pastors who aren’t willing to let go of their Grudem, this sounds appealing.
2) Under all of this lies the assumption that there is “a model church” somewhere and that duplicating its ideas, its style, and its creativity will produce the same results in a completely different local context. But all of emerging seems to be screaming “Don’t copy us! It won’t work!” I spoke to a member of an emerging-ish church’s office staff on this a few months ago. She said that they often get calls that go something like this:
- “Hello, xxxxx Church, this is Susan.”
- “Hi Susan. How do you do postmodern worship?”
- “Uhhh…” (and behind that Uhh: “I don’t even know what that means…”)
This is interesting - I hadn’t considered this. After last week’s post about the endless tension between “emerging” and “not” (which is very much real), it looks like many traditional congregations are reaching out and pleading, “Please help us – we want to be like you! You’re good at ministering to the next generation, and we want to be, too. We don’t agree with a lot of what you say and we think those Zen gardens are a bit syncretistic, but that soul patch sure is cool!”
I don’t mean to cop a Dr. Phil-esque hard-line stance like “You either get it – or you don’t.” But I will suggest that there’s more to emerging than style.
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