Weaknesses
Having discussed the main strengths of the EM movement, we now turn to
examine some of its weaknesses and how they may be overcome.
Lack of Clear
Definition and Direction
The newness of the EM church and the nature of its reaction against ‘5 steps to church success’ and ‘one-size-fits-all’ models has meant that many EM churches are hesitant to define themselves or lock themselves into a certain method, description or category. While this can be helpful and allow a church to move forward rather than stagnate; it can also be counterproductive to have a lack of direction. As Kim Hammond admits, “my fear for the emerging church is that it defines itself by what it isn’t”[1]. Alan Roxburgh points out, “in too many ways, it is still reacting to the immediate past of the church in the West, and no movement of reaction brings real innovation”[2]. It is all too easy for many EM churches to identify the flaws of other church models and practices, but their real fruit will show as they continue to move from simply protesting about problems to creating and implementing positive solutions.
The strength of newness and experimentation that we discussed earlier has
a corresponding weakness in that trying new things is risky – new ideas are
untested and there is no hindsight to judge what might and might not work. Yet
as McLaren points out, the apostles and disciples had a pattern of
misunderstanding and goofing up, and Jesus patiently guiding them nonetheless –
we too need to be willing to experiment and learn from mistakes as we rely on
God’s guidance for our time[3].
But we are better off if we can learn to take into account insights from
history that can minimise mistakes of experiments already tried, and the feedback
of informed, constructive critics.
Unfair Stereotyping and False Dichotomies
However, often what we could learn from both history and our
contemporaries is limited by unfair stereotyping and false dichotomies by which
other churches and methods are prejudged. For instance, we are advised to:
“encourage holy dissatisfaction…rub the discontent
raw and then throw salt on it – our times are urgent; Christendom must be
brought down and apostolic faith and practice established if we are to be true
to our call as followers of the revolutionary Jesus in our day”[4].
But
while the idea that what the EM churches are doing is a ‘revolution’ causes
excitement with the ‘revolutionaries’, it also creates friction – producing a
‘them and us’ mentality. If people are then forced to choose between two
opposing camps, it often means that “revolution will bring nothing more than
shift of power and privilege and changing of the guard”[5]. Doran goes on to point out
that revolution “is a work of extraordinary delicacy that calls for a moral
superiority found as rarely in revolutionaries as in their reactionary
opponents”[6]. So, rather than calling
for a revolution, it would be more effective for the EM movement to foster
thought-provoking conversation between people in EM and established churches.
In this way, ideas can be shared and spread across a non-threatening round
table, so we can use both reflections from our heritage and plans for future
mission to strengthen the entire Christian movement.
But the exaggerated complaints that are common in EM writings are not
conducive to round table conversation:
“sometimes
the lived-out values of the inherited church seem staid and stuck, and tell a
dreary tale. Self-sufficiency is ingrained in the pews. Caution reigns rather
than the thrill of trying something new. Status quo climbs into the pulpit.
Comfort replaces sacrifice. Lack of imaginations stunts the ability to reach
out. ‘Make space for people who are different?! You must be joking.’ Christian
unity gets no more than a nod of the head. There are plenty of exceptions of
course, but not enough to slay the despair of many churchgoers today”[7].
There is also the labelling: Yaconelli speaks of “the illegitimate church”[8] and sets
up an extreme dichotomy comparing the church (with a little c) in which he
finds the “godlessness of organized religion, the bureaucratic smothering of
the institutional church, and the cultural worship of power and money gripping
most denominations and church-related organizations” – with the Church (with a
big C) – the “glorious odd collection of unimpressive, ordinary, flawed people
who make up the community of God, the body of Christ”[9].
Even types of Christians are labelled: ‘consumer Christians’ are those
who see “church as a place to have your needs met and consume religious goods
and services” while ‘missional Christians’ are those who see church as where
you are mission-centred and “retell the story of the church and how they are in
that story today”[10].
Yet if the EM church can move beyond labelling, there is hope that we might
gain the more realistic and biblical perspective that acknowledges that the
church is a community where people are simultaneously needy and gifted, and
therefore the search should be for the balance of ministering and being ministered
to, a freedom for all to contribute and receive – male and female, rich and
poor, clergy and laity, adult and child. We need to recognise that the church
is a divine and human institution, and what is holy and godly within it should
be affirmed and pursued, while what is sinful should be confessed, repented of,
and forgiven.
Another disturbing dichotomy of the EM church is that their leaders
accuse the established church of shunning everything in the world as evil, and
thus treating the world as a hopelessly sinking ship from which we can only
rescue souls, instead of acknowledging the goodness that remains and the
transformation possible. Yet the EM church is often just as guilty of treating
the established church as a lost cause. Rather than taking an exhorting stance
on the church such as Hybels’ “the local church is the hope of the world”[11],
EM leaders are better known for dismissive statements such as the suggestion
that EM churches should be “in the church, but not of it”[12].
Observing this weakness, Carson warns EM church leaders against
using “overkill, sweeping claims and exaggerations that time and sober
reflection will eventually discard. Wise and measured warning is helpful, but
divisive overstatement is not”[13].
Fortunately, many segments of the EM church are already acknowledging and
starting to address this weakness – for example, Mike Frost now admits he would
be less indicting if he were to write The
Shaping of Things to Come[14]
all over again[15],
and Steve Taylor has also been able critique this aspect of his own movement:
“So much of the emerging talk is about starting anew. Let me rant. It’s
dangerous. It’s disrespectful. It’s dodgy in it’s [sic] theology. If we really
believe in the Spirit of God at work in the world, why is it so hard to conceive
that the Spirit could be pregnant among the concrete block walls of a church?”[16]
Yet, while some steps have been taken, the journey of overcoming this
weakness needs to continue. Much damage has been done to create tension between
established and EM churches, which means that more often than not, there are
two camps of people relating on the basis of attacks and defences, instead of
open dialogue with a common goal of growing in our ability to bring Jesus to a
rapidly-changing world.
I think, in light of the tensions created, the onus is on the EM churches
to take the first steps in repairing relationships, praying that established
churches will then respond in kind. Even if it was a fair statement to say that
the “Christendom-mode of church has framed us and set us up for failure”[17],
it was still through these churches that our faith has been kept and passed on,
and to entirely dismiss their efforts and insight is to dishonour our parent
churches and lose a part of our heritage, which EM churches claim to value.
Furthermore, breaking fellowship and conversation with established churches increases the risk of getting facts wrong and divorcing ideals from reality. Many of the EM writers seem to think they can and should be recreating the early church of the New Testament, living according to the same rhythms, networks, and orientations – Kimball even assumes his orientation is theirs, referring to “the emerging missional Thessalonian church of the first century”[18]. When we lose touch with the reality of our heritage, Christian history is oversimplified into charts like this[19]:
With charts like this, some EM writers are breaking our church history
into eras, and then labelling those eras with gross generalisations – ideal,
irrelevant, or even embarrassing. Consequently, the EM church misses out on
many of the lessons and perspective that history should teach, and assumes they
can judge which churches are (and aren’t) operating effectively for our current
era.
Exclusivity
Another weakness of the EM church is that it is promoted as though it is
the solution to reaching everyone, yet its style mostly appeals to and reaches
restricted groups of people. Dan Kimball talks about how he felt excluded from
the world of pastoring where connection to others in everyday life was achieved
through sport – an interest he didn’t share[20]. Yet it
seems that the EM church is attracting and networking through other means, such
as language, mysticism, and the arts. While it is commendable that they are
finding these ways of networking, it means that a potential weakness the EM
church will need to fight to overcome is the expectation that everyone should
fit into their mould.
Encouragingly, there are attempts to broaden the EM concept to include
multiple stratas of society, as Michael Moynagh writes, “Café church,
arts-based church, church in a David Lloyd leisure centre…it could sound very
middle-class. But emerging church is not for one part of society alone.
Alongside experiments in the suburbs, fresh expressions can be found in rural
areas, in city centres and among the urban poor”[21]. But
the reality is that most EM churches – or at least those which are most vocal
or well-known – are suburban middle class, and still largely led by Anglo
males.
Yet there is at least awareness of this factor, and attempts to address
it. When travelling to EM conferences with her husband Brian, Grace McLaren
holds gatherings for women and EM leaders to share experiences and discuss how
women might be empowered within the movement. This is just one of many ways EM
groups admit and discuss this problem[22], so we
may hope that this awareness will continue to generate enough action to empower
a more balanced representation of different genders, nationalities and
backgrounds. As Moynagh urges us, the need for diversity is vital: “when you
bring lots of people together, usually the more educated or affluent take
control. They make the key decisions and set the tone”[23].
Therefore his book includes an afterword by Howard Worsley, which brings the
needs of the poor to the agenda, urging the EM church to deliberately and
continually think of and care for the poor, considering how they will be
affected by different situations[24].
One further area for the EM church to explore is ministry to children and the
elderly. Kimball writes a little about the need to consider how to reach and
include these groups, but he allocates less than a page to that discussion in
the midst of an entire book[25].
However, sometimes exclusivity is simply a result of concentrating on
reaching a certain people group. Frost and Hirsch argue that since people tend
to come to Christ where there is a minimal cultural gap between themselves and
a church culture, then we should not work against the homogenous unit
principle, but instead, plan that after people commit to Christ, we can then
disciple them to maturely mix with a heterogenous Christian community[26].
However, the practical outworking is challenging: for example,
[1] Quoted from Forge National Summit, 2005. Blogged at Signposts. Online: http://www.signposts.org.au/index.php/archives/category/us/
[2] Alan Roxburgh, “Emergent Church: Filled with Creative, Energetic
Potential”, Missional Leadership
Institute Newsletter, June 2005. Online:
http://www.mliweb.net/newsletter_june05.html
[3] Brian McLaren, “The Method, the Message and the Ongoing Story” in Leonard Sweet (ed.), The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives (Grand Rapids,Michigan: Zondervan) 2003, p.204-205
[4] Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson) 2003, p.192
[5] Robert Doran, Theology and
the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press) 1990, p.363; cited in Shane Clifton, An Analysis of the Ecclesiology of the Assemblies of God in Australia
(Sydney: Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Australian Catholic University)
2005, pp.101-102
[6] Ibid.
[7] Michael Moynagh, emergingchurch.intro (Oxford: Monarch Books) 2004, p.37
[8] Mike Yaconelli, “The Illegitimate Church” in Mike Yaconelli (ed.), Stories of Emergence: Moving from Absolute to Authentic (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan) 2003, p.16
[9] Ibid., p.14
[10] Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan) 2003, p.96
[11] Bill Hybels, Courageous Leadership (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan) 2002, p. 12
[12] Maggi Dawn, “In the Church but Not Of It”.
Online: http://www.emergingchurch.info/reflection/maggidawn/index.htm
[13] Don Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan) 2005, p.78
[14] Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson) 2003
[15] Michael Frost, “Introduction to the Missional Paradigm”, session delivered at “Exploring a New Kind of Christian(ity)” Forge Intensive, February 17, 2006
[16] Steve Taylor’s blog – online: http://www.emergentkiwi.org.nz/archives/a_simple_metal_plumbing_pipe_and_why_the_future_of_god_is_indeed_among_the_people_of_god.php
[17] Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The
Shaping of Things to Come (Peabody,
Massachusetts: Hendrickson) 2003, p.193
[18] Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan) 2003, p.15
[19] Paul Dietterich “What Time Is It?” in Transformation
Volume 1, Number 3, Fall 1994. The Center for Parish Development. See also
the three sweeping categorisations of church history into ‘Apostolic and
Post-Apostolic Mode’, ‘Advance and Triumph of Christendom Mode’, and
‘(Emerging) Missional Mode’ in Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come (Peabody,
Massachusetts: Hendrickson) 2003, p.9
[20] Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan) 2003, pp.146-147
[21] Michael Moynagh, emergingchurch.intro (Oxford: Monarch Books) 2004, p.26
[22] See also, eg., http://signposts.org.au/index.php/archives/2005/07/05/missional-chicks, http://www.emergentkiwi.org.nz/archives/a_to_z_of_emerging_church.php.
[23] Michael Moynagh, emergingchurch.intro (Oxford: Monarch Books) 2004, p.51; see also “Community Participants Perspectives on Involvement in Area Regeneration Programmes”, Findings, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, July 2000
[24] Howard Worsley, writing the afterword “What’s In It For The Poor?” in Michael Moynagh, emergingchurch.intro (Oxford: Monarch Books) 2004, pp.243-250
[25] Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church (Grand Rapids,Michigan: Zondervan) 2003, p.150-151
[26] Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson) 2003, p.52
I agree that this sort of criticism of mainstream chrisianity is the most disturbing aspect of em. Perhaps the worst example on the web is the signposts blog (i have not referenced it because i dont want to advertise them - but they are easy to find on google_ - which includes endless aggressive and unsubstantiated attacks on hillsong, pentecostals, other churches. This blog is associated with the Northern community emerging church in melbourne, and i contacted the leader, Phil McCredden, about this matter - only to be informed that allowing freely expressed criticism is a form of grace. Mmm - not grace as i would understand it.
Posted by: Shane Clifton | July 12, 2006 at 07:17 AM
Shane - indeed the unreflective, unconstructive criticism is a major issue - but I would also like to mention that most of the practitioners I have had the pleasure of speaking with are supportive of other forms of church - happy to acknowledge their heritage, work on joint projects....and I've even bumped into groups from their churches coming to enjoy/learn from Hillsong conferences.
I think the unfair stereotyping problem has a few causes:
1. Communication via reading and writing (as opposed to verbal conversations) often has a lot more potential to sound harsher than intended or be misinterpreted without the author having a chance to clarify, or for the reader and writer to really get to know one another's hearts and backgrounds.
This problem gets only more complicated when you have writers speaking for practitioners in their books; magazine interviews of EM church public figures; and secular media representations of churches. Unless we go to extra effort to confirm our impressions are correct, or that the person writing is giving a fair representation, it is all too easy to inherit biases and incorrectly assume we have their faults all worked out (I came across a clever poem that reminds me to avoid unfair stereotyping, see http://the-bright-side.blogspot.com/2005/02/recipe.html).
2. It tends to be the most 'sensational' writers, and the shortest and most shocking quotes that are circulated to the public and/or busy pastors (often out of context). So therefore the movement gets a reputation based on its extremes.
3. The blog you mention has a lot of anonymous commenters. Sometimes in online conversations people forget they are people talking to other people about other people - people created to learn to increasingly reflect God's image; not to curse or slander, or be cursed or slandered.
I think it is the responsibility of whoever runs a blog to guide the authors and commenters in healthy and gracious reflection; just as a pastor or even someone running a prayer meeting should take care to make sure the discussion is constructive and appropriate for the audience present.
4. As much as I like to see the best in people and give them the benefit of the doubt, I must face the fact that there are some people out there who are deliberately stirring up disunity. It was a problem in the early church, and sadly it still is today. But Jesus is building his church nonetheless, and I'm glad I can choose to join the building team rather than attempt to tear it down - I hope this essay is received by any EM people out there as the constructive humble reflection of someone working on planting some kind of unusual church herself...
Posted by: Deborah Taggart | July 12, 2006 at 11:15 AM
Good topic Deb.
I think while there are some valid points you made in the weakness of the EM movement, I wonder if for the most part those weakness's are part of Gods strength in rebuilding / modeling the church.
I sort of see the EM in the same category as what happened out of Azusa street revival and church became culturally different - only it is revising even more so.
From a lot of the old writings I have read, it seems the complaints of the EM movement are comparable with the complaints of the early Pentecostal movement, and even still today how the Pentecostal movement can speak of the traditional church.
Has the modern Pentecostal Church so matured that the EM is now comparing it to the traditional church?
I find it interesting that you quote the "Them and Us" which seems to be a oft quoted quote by those who are against the notion of a 2nd word of the Holy Spirit.
Glad to hear you are thinking of planting a uncoventional church yourself, go for it...
Blessings craig
Posted by: Craig Bennett | July 12, 2006 at 08:28 PM
Craig, I'm not sure I've understood you correctly, but here is my try at response to what I think you're saying...
hmm, I agree that God can work through and/or despite our weaknesses, but I don't think God chooses to show his strength by having certain parts of his church demolish or abandon others, so that he can 'rebuild'....in fact, I wonder if to say the church needs rebuilding is to deny the building that God has been doing before we came along. Maybe this stage of the project looks (and needs to look) a bit different, but if we are to truly glorify God as builder of this thing we call church, we need to be prepared to recognise the greatness of God's work in many different stages of our heritage (although of course the church is a divine-human project, so we can also reflect and work on avoiding/overcoming some of the misrepresentations of God we have made in the past).
It is an interesting thought to study the history of revival movements and the cycles they tend to go through....interestingly, while there are many comparable features, the EM movement seems to be starting from a different basis than usual. Most revival movements begin with some people having a sudden surge towards prayer, fasting and repentance - and while I wouldn't deny the EM church does these things, I'm not sure it's at the strikingly heightened level of most revival movements which erupt from that core; instead, the EM phenomenon seems to have grown more out of reflection, shifts in ideaology (and perhaps pure frustration with our apparent inability to reach certain groups within our culture!).
Not that any of this has to mean the EM movement is less 'spiritual' or has less potential to bring revival to the church; after all, if God wants us to love him with all our minds (as well as heart, soul and strength), why can't a greater, revival-inducing love for him and commitment to his Great Commision arise out of our thoughtful reflection?
It will certainly be interesting to watch (and be a part of) what God is doing....
anyway, I hope some of those thoughts made sense, I'm enjoying the interaction :)
Posted by: Deborah Taggart | July 15, 2006 at 10:17 AM
Hi Deb, I may be late in on the discussion but I just wanted to say that I appreciated your analysis. I welcome the conversation anytime. Alan Hirsch
Posted by: Alan Hirsch | August 12, 2006 at 02:25 AM
aww....thanks Alan :)
and you MUST appreciate conversation anytime, it says you posted this at 2.25am!! :P
Posted by: Deborah Taggart | August 12, 2006 at 07:28 AM