Often I get asked the question, "Zack, what is the emerging church?" in which my answer is often, "You know, I am not sure how to define it." I usually tell the askers of such a question that I am not so sure I am comfortable with the label "emerging" applied to myself.
But…have no fear. Scot McKnight (blog) has recently come up with a definition for those of us who aren't sure they qualify as proper experts on the "emerging church". This is a great read. It's about 30 pages and in it he tackles D.A. Carson's critique of the emerging church, the different streams of the emerging movement, and the distinctions of this movement frommpast church movements.
Last week I started a new book called "Simply Christian" by one of my favorite author/theologians, N.T. Wright. Wright has challenged my thinking in so many ways and that has made me a huge fan. So While I was killing some time recently at our local B&N, I picked up this book. I have heard this book described as similar to C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity – which is a bold claim.
As I read the introduction, I became more excited than I have ever been to read a particular book. As Wright is explaining his purpose in this book, he explains that he has broken it into three parts. He starts by describing the first part. Here's the passage that hooked me:
"First, I have explored four areas which in today's world can be interpreted as "echoes of a voice": the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in beauty. Each of these, I suggest, points beyond itself, though without in itself enabling us to deduce very much about the world except that it is a strange and exciting place."
Community/spirituality/beauty/justice are aspects of the Kingdom, but are also as Wright calls them, "echoes of a voice" that the world hears and longs for, but doesn't understand. To help them understand is what Kelli and I do. That is our profession; our calling.
This book is so exciting to me because we for over a year now have felt these exact things. Check back for updates on this book as I finish it this week.
This weekend, the community of faith I am a part of had a community garage sale to raise money for a friend of ours in need. It was a LONG weekend, but a really good one. In fact one of the best in the six+ months our little band of friends has been gathering. It was a good one because the garage sale was a beautiful glimpse into what the early church must have been like. Here we were, a group of friends committed to each other, hawking our junk for a small profit all in the names of compassion and generosity. It wasn't easy – we must have spent at least 15 hours or so together (most of that in the 100-degree heat). But it was good. In fact it was probably more fulfilling that any other church experience I have ever had. And for the past 24 hours I have been trying to figure out why.
The best answer I can come up with is that I experienced a deeper committment than I have ever experienced before from those I "church with". See, I have seen a deep committment to each other before inchurches I have been a part of, but usually that committment was really to the institution of the church. People committed themselves to the organization, much like they would a country club, a home owner's association, a political party, or a fraternity. In our community, there is no formal organization to commit ourselves to – no institution to make sure "survives" year-after-year, no "we-will-do-anything-to-make-sure-we-succeed" organization to buy into. Our community is a bunch of friendships connected to each other by a collective interest in the ways of Jesus. Our committment is to Jesus and to each other. We are discovering the beauty of such a thing.
I wonder if that is a major reason that the church seems to be impotent in America. I wonder if we are leading people to commit themselves – their finances, their talents, their time – to an organization. I wonder how the average American must view that. I wonder if the average American misses Jesus in the church because he's clouded by organization. I wonder if giving is perceived as dues. I wonder if "congregational meetings" are seen as council meetings. I wonder if evangelism is seen as recruitment. I wonder if meeting community needs are seen as dutiful philanthropy.
We wonder why Americans have trouble finding passion about their faith.
My good friend Josh just left our house and my mind is racing. Kelli, Josh, and I talked for the past few hours about life, faith, and how well the two are working together. What came to my mind, as it has seemed to so many times recently, was how much we talk big of living differently, but in reality, we aren't that much different. Blame part of it on the fact that we are as flawed and hopeless as any other human on this planet, and put the rest of the blame on us directly. We have gotten too busy, too comfortable, too lazy, too casual about this Jesus we claim to follow. Something has to change. Something has to be done. Not just for the sake of doing, but for the sake of balance, for the sake of justice, and for the sake of integrity. So here's where we're headed, a life lived centered around community, Christ, creativity, and compassion. No other distractions, no other agendas – just figuring out how to live in these ways – community, Christ, creativity, and compassion. We'd love to share this life with others, learning from them along the road. If you resonate with this simple, yet serious way of life, you're more than welcome to join us – the more the merrier.
My good friends Travis, Dave, and I were hanging out a few nights ago over bad cigars in Camarillo, CA when Travis mentioned that he felt incredibly conflicted these days. Travis and his wife Jyll are a month away from having their first child and three months away from moving across the country to begin a new community of faith in Jyll's hometown of Providence, RI. There's enough to be conflicted in those realities alone! But that's not really why he felt conflicted.
His "inner conflict" was coming from stepping away from an identity he has known for so many years. With his upcoming move, he is leaving an existing church to initiate one from scratch. He is leaving the known for the unknown. He is leaving a church that operates (like many American churches these days) with an assumption that if they just do things well (worship service, spiritual services to offer members, etc.), the people of their surrounding city will be interested and "come and see" what this Jesus is all about. He is moving to cultivate a new community of faith in a part of the nation that for the most part isn't in any way interested in this brand of Christianity. He can no longer assume that people "will come and see". His paradigm of the church must change – and it is. These are all tied to his identity. Over the past 5 years or so, he has found fit and favor within groups of people who see faith playing out through a similar lens. He finds himself feeling as though he is on the edge of a cliff ready to jump. I give him some major credit putting his feet to the edge.
I think most of us have felt as though my friend Travis does. Our identity is tied up in what others think about us. I know this from experience. For the past year, I have wrestled with the expectations of others. As our family walked away from missions organizations and denominations, I often felt (and still at times do) that we were walking out on our ecclesiastical families. I felt as though were were being viewed as liberal crazies who where abandoning all common sense. As we asked theological questions that we felt comfortable asking, we felt as though in the eyes of others we were "flipping the bird" to our conservative evangelical roots. Maybe we were. We felt really alone at times – stuck between being the people we felt was calling us to be and the people everyone expected us to be.
But why are we so afraid of this "inner conflict"? Why do we feel as though it is always better to fit within some existing groups of thought or faith. Don't we each have an obligation to wrestle with God (and life) as individuals and to come to our own conclusions? And if we are truly honest and always on journey (growing, evolving, changing) aren't we always going to discover conflict within ourselves? For me that fact is reflected in my choice of blog title, "Confused Clarity". Just as we grasp the idea of Jesus, we have to reframe our understanding with the perspective of his relation to the trinity. Just as we clean up one area of the messiness of our lives, we discover four more. Just as we come to terms with our imperfection, we run across Jesus' charge to be perfect (Matt 5:48). In conservative theological circles (and I suspect most other theological circles as well) there is pressure make our complete understanding of God all be able to be wrapped up in a nice package that can easily be labeled.
Maybe our inability to flee from conflict speaks of our relationship to God as humanity. God obviously has a handle on the things of the world – he created them. But we are so far from having a handle on most things. We are most definitely not God! So maybe we should take more comfort in this "inner conflict" and in fact expect it. Maybe we should become worried when we have periods where we don'tfeel this sense of conflict instead of when we do feel it. Maybe we should learn to expect it and even pray for it. Maybe it is a gauge of the journey we are on.
Matt and I just got back from the Soliton Sessions on Sunday. We had a great time and met some new friends. These are some of the "tricksters" we shared the weekend with – Shane Claiborne, Greg Russinger, and Si Johnston – each brilliant in their own right. Matt and I had some great chances to talk about ourselves as well as about the community we are a part of here in Mesa. I am still processing a list of concepts – most of which were stirred by dialogue with Kester Brewin about "dirt" and the boundaries we create around us that keep us from all things dirty and from thus becoming dirty ourselves. Interesting stuff. Also thanks to Gareth, Pagitt, Travis, Andy, Rob & Angela, Jon, the people of the bridge (way to practice what you preach), and most of all Miki for letting us stay on your floor.
Next month, a few of us from our developing faith community (along with some local friends involved in another community) are headed to Ventura, CA for the Soliton Sessions. The Soliton Sessions are put on by the Soliton Network, a network of global missional practitioners who host discussions those interested "in dialogue about 21st century mission, justice, spirituality and the church." I went last year, and I loved the experience. It was amazingly forming to my thinking on mission and the church. If this sounds like something you would interested in check out more details here. If you live in Southern California and are interested in hooking up while were out there – email me here.
In the past week, I have run into three conversations with strangers about faith, spirituality, & the way of Jesus. Spending so much of my time on developing a community of faith here in Phoenix, I often have these types of conversations with people I meet. As people ask the obligatory, "So what do you do for a living?" it inevitably launches the conversation deep into spiritual territory. But I have conversations like this once or twice a month and they typically last 3-5 minutes. This week I have had three of them each lasting 30-45 minutes. I haven't done anything different this week – I haven't worn any "I love Jesus, ask me about it" t-shirts or got out the old, "Know Jesus Know Peace, No Jesus No Peace" bumper sticker. I have just run into these interesting (and welcomed) conversations. With each new person I talk to, I learn more about the local perspective on things of faith, on the church, and on Jesus. Here are some themes I am hearing consistently:
people are interested in faith, but not actively pursuing it in their lives.
in most cases, people see the local church as a necessary piece of human spirituality and if they don't like it for some reason, development of their spiritual life dies with their church involvement.
most people don't think about faith outside of religion, but they like the idea when it's presented to them.
people aren't anti-Jesus, just anti-church (which for them is the clearest representation of Jesus)
a lot of people are deeply (more that I could have imagined) interested and intrigued in the Kingdom way of life.
hypocrisy, judgement, lack of acceptance, financial irresponsibility, all talk-no real action, and the politics of the church are all barriers that people mentioned in response to the question, "So why don't you attend church" – interestingly,one person I talked to articulated that the mission of the church these days seemed to be a different one that the mission of Jesus – something I often feel as well.
people would follow (or at the very least investigate) the way of Jesus if they had a safe, accepting, relational, community to join in the pursuit with.
I should qualify that the people who I have had these discussions with would be considered non-Christians by a conservative, evangelical crowd (they don't go to church and can't articulate that the death of Jesus of the Cross and his subsequent resurrection are events in which they trust as the necessary substitutionary death for forgiveness of their sins and a redeemed relationship with God). I am assuming that these voices represent the larger voice and perspective of our local culture here in Phoenix. I will continue my research :).
Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in an online forum on missional church planting hosted by Ed Stetzer and put on by the good folks at Coachnet. If you've read Ed's book called, "Planting New Churches in a Post-Modern Age", then there's not much new to share about this experience, but a few good nuggets of wisdom did emerge for me (mainly a reminder to work hard to understand my city, some practical ways to do that, and some challenging concepts on the difference between covenant community and Christian community) Some good resource nods came up too. Anyway, all in all I am glad I was a part of this thing and am posting the summary of the forum if you are interested.
In the past week, I have run into three conversations with strangers about faith, spirituality, & the way of Jesus. Spending so much of my time on developing a community of faith here in Phoenix, I often have these types of conversations with people I meet. As people ask the obligatory, "So what do you do for a living?" it inevitably launches the conversation deep into spiritual territory. But I have conversations like this once or twice a month and they typically last 3-5 minutes. This week I have had three of them each lasting 30-45 minutes. I haven't done anything different this week – I haven't worn any "I love Jesus, ask me about it" t-shirts or got out the old, "Know Jesus Know Peace, No Jesus No Peace" bumper sticker. I have just run into these interesting (and welcomed) conversations. With each new person I talk to, I learn more about the local perspective on things of faith, on the church, and on Jesus. Here are some themes I am hearing consistently: 