The Emerging Church and Where I Stand

One of the most perplexingly frustrating details about
myself is that I am emergent.  I am not
just emergent, I am the cohort leader of the Northern New Jersey
Emergent Village
cohort. 

Some readers may have picked up on the certain ways I say
things or the language I use sometimes and had an inkling that I am in the
broad stroke of "emergent".  Other
readers may have no idea.  I never wanted
the label "emergent" to keep people away from the importance of recovering
liturgy and spiritual discipline in every facet of our daily lives.

I have talked to a few friends about how to basically state
that I am emergent and not cower saying, "please don’t hate me!"  After several conversations I think the best
way to explain where I stand on emergent/emerging is to tell my story.  After watching the latest video on defining
the emergent church from the Christian Books Expo I wanted to be able to tell
my story because what Scot McKnight says finally gave me the courage to say I
am part of something that is broad and diverse while at the same time vigorously
defending it.

I first became involved with the emergent church by reading
James K.A. Smith’s Who’s Afraid of
Postmodernism and John Franke and Stanley Granz’s works.  I came in through the back door, so to speak,
wanting to engage in theological and philosophical discussion.  I became the emergent cohort leader of
Northern New Jersey because I wanted to have theological discussion with people
that lived around me after moving to the area and not being able to find the
type of academic conversations I had grown accustomed to while at college.

When people hear that I am part of the emergent church I get
weird looks.  They think I hate doctrine,
I am a reclusive mystic, or that I am part of a secret conspiracy to destroy
the church.  I assure you that is the
least of my aspirations.   I want to be
in conversation.

I joined Emergent
Village because they are
the only people talking while the rest of the Christian world seems to be
shouting or vexed.  I joined Emergent
Village because I wanted to be part of a group of people who did not all look
like me, talk like me, and believe the exact same doctrine, theology, or philosophy
as I do.  I wanted to be part of the
larger whole of Christianity as it exists in such a diverse group as the
emergent church.

I do not want the label emergent.  It is not a label I would have a problem losing.  I would have a problem losing the label
missional, orthodox, or Christian.  But
emergent isn’t essential.

What is essential is knowing that my brothers and sisters in
the emergent church all love Jesus and the good news he brings.  The most used criticism of the emergent
church is that it doesn’t know what it believes, and while there is no official
doctrinal statement of the emergent church Emergent Village’s "Values
and Practices" comes very close, and for those skeptical of the emergent
church it should change your mind on many of the blatant lies that spread about
the movement.

Recently Mark Sayers wrote about the mini-movements
of the emergent church, a similar concept to Scot McKnight’s Christianity
Today article "Five
Streams of the Emerging Church."  I
identify readily with parts of all five of McKnight’s streams, and some of the
mini-movements Sayers identifies (particularly the Neo-Anabaptists and
Neo-Missionologists).  But what is the
best part of the emergent church, and why I will continue to be a part of it,
is that I can be with such a diverse group of people and still find myself in
different streams or mini-movements that are not much talked about.

I identify mostly with a mini-movement Sayers does not touch
on but McKnight does which is the Ancient-Future movement (McKnight calls it Praxis-oriented).  I also would identify with being what Rod
Dreher calls "Crunch Conservatives," people who are socially very conservative
but hold to a cultural mandate to support the local community in a way that is
both Christian and agrarian.  I, as is Rod
Dreher and many others, am deeply indebted to the works of Wendell Berry in
outlining what it means to be a counter-cultural Christian and to undo the
separation of the physical and the spiritual that has taken over the vast swath
of Western Christianity.

I am not being individualistic in claiming my own stream or
mini-movement, for there are both many who agree with me and many who agree in
part.  But the best part of being
involved in the emergent church is that I can still love and serve with those
who do not agree with my agrarian, ancient-future way of doing things because
we hold to one common faith.

This is why Scot McKnight is so right to stress the creeds.  The creeds are what hold us together.  The creeds are what make the emerging church
not a "diversity" but a "university," a place of unity amongst diversity.

I am involved in the emerging church and have never read a
Tony Jones book.  I have never read a
Doug Pagitt book.  I have read James KA.
Smith, Stanley Grenz, Scot McKnight, John Franke, and others who don’t come up
as the "major players" in the emerging church, but that doesn’t mean I am not
emergent or that those authors aren’t, as McKnight argues.  I am emergent because I am in conversation
with those who might disagree with me, and I am okay with that and they are
okay with that—and in the end that is what is so scary about the emerging
church for so many people.

It is a conversation where the buck never stops.  There is no gavel that pounds the table and
says, "done!"  Some people want that and
desire it because they want there system where all the holes are plugged and
everything makes sense.  A static
Christianity.  And most people believe
that Christianity has always been static.

Let us not delude ourselves. 
Christianity has always been, and will continue to be, an ever evolving
conversation about what it means to follow Christ.  That is why new books are always being published,
sermons being preached, conferences being attended.  These are all good things, and should
continue.  They are all part of the
conversation since Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and got the ball
rolling. 

I want to be part of a dynamic Christianity.  I want to be part of the whole body of
Christ, not just one little facet.  I
want to be part of a conversation about Christianity that stretches across
geography and time.  That is why I am
part of the emerging church, for better or worse.