Some people talk about the movement called “Emergent Church” but I am growing to resent that title a bit. You see, in my way of thinking, the church has always been emergent, being reborn and reshaped to work in the culture thrust upon it since 2000 years ago when Jesus said to Peter, “Upon this rock.”
Emergent means that it is unfolding, being unveiled a little at the time – and that seems to be God’s secret formula. And the real secret in the secret formula is that nobody knows the full story. Only God. Even Jesus said he didn’t know the details about how the kingdom of heaven would finally come about.
What’s true is that we live in between times, and that in between these times the light is shed slowly on the path before us. I'll be "emergent pastor" for a moment and tell a story about what I mean.
Growing up in southeastern North Carolina, I lived across a cornfield from my cousin, Brian. One night I was sent by my father to Brian's house on an errand. I was walking the corn field on a new moon in November with a kerosene lantern (yes, I really had a lantern for camping, and besides, what 10 year old boy doesn't like to play with fire and fuel?).
It was a completely dark night, the clouds snuffing out all the stars. For you city folk who have never seen full darkness, you need to know that a cloudy night on a new moon is so dark that you can't see your hand in front of your face. Friends, it's so dark you couldn't scratch your...ok, that's a little too genuine for this blog. The point is that was terrifyingly dark.
That walk was scary, I tell you. There was no beam of a flash light to shine way out ahead, only the radiant glow of the lantern that would iluminate about four feet in front of me and that was all. Slowly the path opened up for me, but only as I moved forward. I imagine today what I looked like that night from my cousin's porch, a soft circle of emergent light, slow and steady moving forward to light my little corn field world.
That seems to me to be the way the church moves through time. A journey that is in some generations sometimes plodding and plotting; in other generations it is erratic and radical reform. Nadirs and wagon ruts, she still moves forward, emerging, emergent. There has never been a time when the church wasn't "emergent."
So, to my friends and colleagues who are on the razor sharp front of "where" the church is headed next, please redefine things carefully and choose your terms and labels with equal caution. The church as "emergent" is not new, she is doing as she always has.
2 comments:
I like your story of a fear filled boy crossin a corn field headin to your uncle's house. It echoes with the phrase often connected with Jesus sightings in the new testament..."fear not..". Your story also give a perspective to the journey, and how small ideed is the church's light in this fast paced American culture where Harry Potter releases or the latest hi tech gadget produce a lot more interest than whatever is emerging around a church. I plan to go on anyway partly because of "your uncle's house" as the destination, constrains me in that direction..it's the mission to which I feel called, and going with the church helps me remember the mission.
I just looked up on the shelf above my computer and saw a brown jug with a corn cob stopper, and thought about the way containers have changed since plastics and wide mouth cans emerged. Part of me says, its not the container that has value. The other part asks, "would I buy something in a brown jug?" But that is probably another subject. Thanks for the lantern in a cornfield story. It shines. marvin
thank you for your story that reminded me of a similar journey walked from my cousin's house in a small centex town 3 miles out a country road to spend the night at gmom's.
we did have flashlights, and i don't recall the moon's phase.
i had my cousin as a companion.
but for your story, mine would still be back in the "almost forgotten" places of the mind.
the adjective for the church, though, should be "evolving" (sometimes "revolving").
it's current state grows out of a prior state in ramifications like that of life's family tree itself.
even christ's church evolved from the judaism of his day.
emergent? it seems we don't ever quite crawl, climb, or fly out of anything.
we and the church remain grounded here in the middle of things, the medium through which our work is done.
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