As promised a few thoughts in response to the snapshot of the Emerging Church provided by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger.
Here’s the first of a number of posts: this one on the Emerging Church and mission.
Mission is obviously at the heart of the Emerging Church’s reason for existence. Unfortunately the authors don’t make clear what “missional” means. The one definition is circular. You are “missional” if you see the West as “ripe for mission engagement.”
What does the book say about the Emerging Church’s understanding of mission? A few sample quotes:
“The focus of emerging churches on the ‘gospel of the kingdom’ as distinct from a ‘gospel of salvation’ has produced a new ecclesiology.”
“Populating heaven” is not the main part of the gospel. For the Emerging Church, “the gospel is about being increasingly alive to God in the world. It is concerned with bringing heaven to earth.”
“Our mission is justice and social transformation in the world”.
One leader confided with the authors privately that, “We don’t dismiss the cross; it is still a central part. But the good news is not that he died but that the kingdom has come.”
Reading the book I was left with a sense of déjà vu.
The language and concepts of mission in the book sound identical to that developed by the post-war Ecumenical movement which found institutional expression in the World Council of Churches and the mainline denominations in the West.
The Emerging church has rejected the sort of institutionalism that characterised the Ecumenical movement.
If my hunch is correct, it should also be aware that this theology of mission has been tried and found wanting. The only relationship between it and a dynamic movement is an inverse one.
9 Comments
Steve,
I have been looking forward to your post and people’s engagement with it out the the book. I too have read it and thought it to be a very useful diagnosis of what is emerging. Perhaps from my angle it’s greatest weakness as a book is that there is nothing critical in its nature about the emerging churches. It more or less says, ‘this is what’s happening… that’s the way it is. Period’.
However in regards to your comment about misison you are correct to link the emerging churches understanding of mission to the WCC. The emerging churches (and me too) and greatly infulenced by two of the WCC’s leading missiologists David Bosch and Leslie Newbigin. How can these two be ‘tried and found wanting’?
Steve:
I’m not sure linking the the theologizing emanating from emerging churches to WCC and Ecumenicalism is accurate. Unlike Andrew, I do not believe they are the same.
My sense is that in the emerging church milieu, the “rediscovery of the Gospel” through the lens of the gospels and person of Jesus is a needed corrective to the present-day evangelical overemphasis on the gospel being simply personal. This understanding of the “missio dei” is grounded, in in the New Testament, in a theology of the kingdom.
I think where that differs from the theological liberalism of several generations back is that such theology swirling around the emerging church has at its core a solid Christology and soteriology (even though the quotes you refer to above from Bolger and Gibbs give me pause and could certainly be stated better – but that comes with the turf in a messy renewal movement).
What I sense is the gospel that is being rediscovered is therefore “more than” what most evangelicals are accustomed to, not a “replacement of” which is the problem with 20th century ecumenicalism and its liberal theological underpinnings.
Sam I don’t disagree. My comments were an answer to this question from Brian McLaren when he wwas here in Australia recently. From my reading of Newbigin and Bosch, that is where they draw from (as well as Barth). And I don’t think that we can therefore ‘write off’ all theology that comes from the WCC.
First, I would be reluctant to concede Newbigin and/or Bosch to the world of the WCC. I’m not sure the categories are that cut and dried. There is much to learn and draw on from these missiologists. But I am not sure I would put Barth in the same category. While there is much to learn from probably the most important theological mind of the 20th century, I cannot drink from that neo-orthodox well uncritically.
Secondly, I think we need to have an accurate historical perspective on what really happened theologically and institutionally from the famous Edinburgh Missionary conference of 1910 and how that evolved and morphed into the present day WCC. That slide from what was probably the most promising missionary gathering of the century to the impotence of the present day WCC is a case study of a movement gone bad. Hence, Steve’s jaundised view about the WCC and missions has consderable historical legitimacy behind it.
Sam,
Again I find myself agreeing with most of your assessment except that both Newbigin and Bosch were definately committed to the WCC… and quite recently. Both of them since the 1980′s and forward until their respective deaths. I can’t see how they can be disconnected from the WCC. For some reason they wrote for and out of that institution.
One of the highlights of my ministry was meeting (and having a long coffee with) Newbigin, strangely at the WCC Consultation on World Mission and Evangelization in Brazil in 1996. He was a man torn by his commitment to ecumenism and to evangelical faith. What is more surpirising is that he was largely ostracized by the WCC afficianodos and had to make a surprise visit to even get a forum. I think he was unhappy with WCC towards the end of his life. Saw it as a failed experiment. On the whole I would agree with Sam on this Andrew. Like Barth, he became more and more ‘conservative’ the older he got. As for the WCC, my experience is that it is pretty bankrupt missiologically speaking…it was all about political correctness and rehashing old ideas.
I can’t argue with a story like that Al. You lucky bloke… what a great memory and shaping experience. Perhaps if I bought you a coffee sometime then I could say ‘I had coffee with someone who had coffee with Newbigin!’.
Andrew
Reminds me of a Woody Allen film where he’s arguing with a guy in a theatre queue about Marshall McLuhan’s views on the media.
Half way thru the argument Allen pulls McLuhan out of the line to support his position.
But what if Al is making up the story?
Yep, that was a trump!
All I was trying to say is that good things came out of (even) Nazareth and in the case of the WCC, it was Brian McLaren who invoked the associations of Bosch and Newbigin (who was an Assistant General Secretary) which reminded me of the importance of not discounting what another branch of the church can offer- not matter how we might disagree on some points of theology. For example, after 1000 years of basically ignoring the Eastern Orthodox church we suddenly find them and realise the they have quite an advanced Trinitarian theology.
Andrew
One Trackback
[...] things go in cycles of about forty years. So it should be no surprise that a new generation of evangelicals and “post-evangelicals” are seeking to broaden and secularize their understanding of mission. Perhaps a better title for [...]