Summary
Consisting of a compilation of essays, dialogues, and monologues, Practitioners: Voices Within the Emerging Church, is a thought-provoking examination of post-modern ecclesiology by a diverse group of forward-looking leaders within the emerging church. Recognizing the immense change taking place in contemporary Western culture, these practitioners discuss their concerns with the traditional church, reflect on the Scriptures, reassess spirituality, and contemplate a variety of innovative ideas that facilitate genuine spiritual formation and social transformation in the post-modern setting. Convinced that the present church must be willing to change to remain relevant to the culture, the book explores alternative methods of relating the gospel to people in a variety of contexts. Unquestionably passionate, real, honest, and at times, controversial and offensive, the nine authors believe the church must embrace a new missiology that is centred on authentic, loving relationships with all people, regardless of socio-economic status, race, or sexual orientation.
Chapter one, written by Greg Russinger, lead “missionary” at The Bridges Community, an alternative church affiliated with The Foursquare Church, sets the standard for the book by exploring the life of Christ to discover how the church can embrace his redemptive mission in the world. Believing that Jesus’ ministry primarily took place within community, Russinger explores what the church could look like if it reflected the relational and communal heart of Christ. Rather than being confined by the moral judgment systems of others or inflexible church polity, Russinger envisions a missiology that is lived out according to the “rhythms of hospitality,” where people are welcomed into a loving and caring relationship that personally introduces them to the transformative power of Christ and the cross.
The following chapters expand on the notion of living according to the missional heart of Christ and present a vast assortment of ideas, thoughts, and visions for the future of the church. Chapter two focuses on reviving the sacrament of prayer that combines the transformative practice of intercession and social action. Chapters three and four explore the use of storytelling, media, and the visual arts as a means of communicating the gospel and expressing worship to God. Chapter five wrestles with the concept of what it means to be a “missional people” and how petty religiosity within the traditional church is often a barrier to the journey of discipleship modelled by Chris. Building on the idea of missional living, chapter six explores the role of justice in the life a Christ-follower and asserts that caring for the poor is not an option, but is rather an essential function of every believer who wishes to reflect the message of the gospel. The following three chapters of the book take a closer look at the future of the church, its leaders, and its followers, and provide a series of conversation starters that examine how the emerging generation thinks about God and how the church can penetrate the culture through creativity, imagination, and in “rhythmic harmony with God.” Closing out the book, the final chapter contains a series of journal entries from an urban missionary in London, England, who engages his community through “incarnational” living- being Jesus to the poor, hurting, abused, and disenfranchised.
Analysis
Endeavouring to be defined by the simplicity of living for Christ, another author and post-modern practitioner, Pete Greig, contends that there are three areas that every leader must address to be truly missional (147-8). First, every leader must focus on the fruitfulness of their private spirituality. According to Greig, there are many church leaders who speak a lot about God, criticize the traditional church, or identify what they perceive to be the needs of the current culture, but have little personal passion for God. Second, every leader must engage with those who are marginalized by society. When leaders define themselves outside of the poor, the oppressed, and those who do not share similar worldviews, Greig suggests they are unable to find true revelation and the true authority in Christ. Connecting with others who are not Christians or those outside of the common social stratum reshapes theology and influences the way ministry is understood. Third, every leader must live in community. Greig contends that many academic people consider themselves specialists on issues related to postmodernity and the church but actually live highly individualized lives. Without living in community, it is impossible to model the redemptive heart of Christ to others. For those practitioners wishing to lead truly missional lives according to the pattern of Jesus, every person needs to be living at the juxtaposition of these three things.
Building on the idea of what it means to be missional, Canadian church leader and equipper Joyce Heron proposes that the church needs to reassess its ministry of mercy or what she calls “Christian tourism in poor neighbourhoods” (154-157). She describes how justice is often relegated to a department of a church, but rejects such a narrow perception and suggests justice should be the function of every believer. Emphasizing that there are over four hundred references to meeting the needs of the poor and oppressed in the Scriptures, Heron concludes that “God has an absolutely massive bias toward the poor, and that as one of his followers, I’m supposed to manifest that same bias” (155). Rather than merely setting up church programs or popping in and out of the lives of the poor, which only perpetuates the “us and them” dynamic, to see real community transformation, the church must actually become friends with people who are marginalized. She contends that the church will never see the poor as people until they build authentic long-term relationships with them and personally share in the change Jesus makes in their lives.
Undoubtedly, the practitioners who endorse this concept of the missional church that is centred upon spiritual formation and community transformation also have some challenging comments about the traditional church. Although many express a desire to bridge the modern church with post-modern ideas or, at least, “take the best of the modern” and move on, one practitioner contends that the traditional church has debilitated believers by telling them what to think rather than how to think on a variety of levels (247). Doug Pagitt, pastor of Solomon’s Porch, a holistic, missional community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, argues that preaching does not work in the post-modern context because it creates the wrong socialization construct (186). He states, “the act of one person telling a bunch of other people how life is supposed to go” is essentially a flawed mechanism because it ignores the importance of dialogue within the community. Additionally, the theological concept of ordination, that one person is distinct from the rest of the people, is an enormous problem in the post-modern context (193). Rather than having one person with the “power,” leadership should emerge through different people at different times. As well, traditional churches have been told they need to have a mission/vision statement that defines who they are and what they do (180). Doing so confines them to a particular obligation when the church should be constantly making room for the purposes of God. Too many churches are concerned with having the right mission statement; instead, they should be regularly discerning the Spirit and asking, “What is the agenda of God and how are we uniquely postured to join into it?” (180). Other existing concerns with the traditional church model identified in the book include the problem of spiritual performance and professionalism, religiosity without missionality, promoting a self-centred faith built on personal convenience, and the unbiblical “weird subculture, ghetto thing” that pervades the traditional church culture (136).
Despite the abrasive tinge to some of the comments about the traditional church, the emerging church practitioners have correctly identified some very critical issues facing the traditional church. Not only are the traditional methodologies no longer viable in the current cultural context, but it also seems that the traditional church has strayed from its essential Christological mission. A religious subculture has evolved that includes its own embedded patterns of activity, language, and symbolic structures that support its activities with value and importance. Within this sub-culture, the church has spent an excessive amount of resources servicing its own people and facilitating ministries that have little or nothing to do with penetrating the surrounding community. Evangelism is rarely about engaging in authentic relationships with unbelievers, but is rather focussed on promoting a program in the hope that outsiders may attend and eventually incorporate the conventional belief systems of the faith community. The missional concept of genuinely befriending the poor or oppressed is rare, highlighting how fortified the common social circles are among traditional believers. Given these concerns, the traditional church is need of revival, but not a revival based upon a fleeting ecstatic experience which the church continues to regard as the pinnacle of spirituality, but rather a revival of the eternal mission of Christ to enter into the world of lost and broken people with the message of liberation and reconciliation. Clearly not everyone is able to have an inner-city ministry like Joyce Heron, but through the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit, believers can move beyond their familiar and safe surroundings and egocentric worldviews and enter into an unpredictable and often uncomfortable environment where the poor, oppressed, and hurting people can be introduced to the living Christ.
Quotable Quote (94)
“Fundamentally, we are at a crossroads in the Church at a massive level, and culturally we would call it postmodernism. It’s essentially the idea of deconstructing, unpacking and reworking. It happened to literature and literary criticism in the 1940s and 1950s and is still happening; it started in our culture in the 1960s and continues; it began in business in the 1980s; and its finally happening in the Church after the year 2000.”
Bibliography
Russinger, Greg and Alex Field, eds. Practitioners: Voices Within the Emerging Church. Ventura: Regal Books, 2005.
