Supporting the Emerging Church
Ok, here is one for you all to give me some input on….
I have been asked by our denomination this question :
“How does a denominational head office support/nurture/encourage the emerging church?”
In your reply, you can assume you have funding for what you want.. (within reason :)) Perhaps you could think through issues of incubating missional initiatives outside and within existing Churches, mentoring, training etc. If someone was employed to do this - what skills, experience and expertise would you look for..
July 27th, 2004 at 4:12 pm
As far as emerging church planting, I think the approach needs to be team-oriented, and the teams need to be trained. It can’t be done solo.
Recruiting teams and training them is where the funding should concentrate. (Give lots of money to Forge :). We had the benefit of a full-time coach who helped form our team and get us focused on our mission, as well as ask tough questions when necessary.
As for non-church-planting approaches…I think the “Pastor of Emerging Ministries/Purveyor of all things postmodern” approach is valid, but will bring some inherent limitations with it. To many people, church’s un-appealingness is not just stylistic, but structural. A church that relies on attraction and financial contributions from passive attenders will not reach certain segments of society that have a certain mindset.
To reach emerging generations, you have to go in. You have to send people in who can live there and incarnate the message and mission of God the way Jesus did in Palestine. You have to give them the freedom to do theology from within that context, while maintaining open dialogue and relationships so they don’t just go crazy with things.
I think it’s also important to recruit top-notch people for the job (not that it should necessarily be a paying job…). What the church does not need is a generation of church leaders that didn’t have the ambition to do anything with their lives, so they decided to enter the ministry instead. I’ve seen that happen - the lowest-ability people get siphoned into church work because the standards are low and they get to hang out in cafes as part of their job. Recruit the people graduating at the top of their college class, and send them in.
Recognize that not all contexts show signs of emergence, and some may require traditional approaches - particularly work among the poor, who generally aren’t into the pomo thing.
August 3rd, 2004 at 11:41 am
Hmmm…
Perhaps the greatest support would be talking us up around the place and validating us by including us in stories of great things happening.
In most state newsletters only those with huge churches are put up as ’successful’.
So perhaps a first step would be to advocate for us (root for us if you’re an American!) and help us that way.
Money is always valuable to support those who want to have a go, but not too much of it. we still want people who are willing to out their balls on the line and a full salary with house and car would only attract those seeking comfort.
Including missional training in the denom colleges would add cred.
Perhaps either staffing someone to develop the area or working with organisatiosns like Forge would also help.
I think for me its about saying we are a valid expresson of church, not a pretend church or a wannabe church.
August 4th, 2004 at 2:43 pm
great question - especially if there is a genuine desire to respond to the answer given by those asking.
From my experience a number of things come to mind….
1. The denomination can ‘talk up’ Emerging Missional Church. I’ve really appreciated the fact that virtually every denominational meeting I go to I hear at least one of the denom’s leaders talking about new forms of church. This means I don’t have to break as much new ground as I would have thought. There is a growing environment of missional church in the denom that makes it a lot easier for us to exist and participate in it. Like hamo says above - this reinforces the validity of what we’re doing which is important to us, but also the denom as a whole.
2. Money - this is important, but probably not the most important thing I’ll mention. For me the money we’ve been given as a seeding grant is obviously important to me and my family - it takes the pressure off us and our community - but to me it speaks more about the seriousness of the denom to see things through with us.
3. Permission - to dream - to experiment - to fail - to push boundaries etc. Our denom said to me right up front -”we know that many new communities don’t make it - we want you to be sustainable and long term, but even if you’re not we want to support you in it and learn from you”. We’ve been given heaps of space to experiment, dream and form community without a heavy hand upon us making sure we ‘do it right’.
4. Accountability/Support - balanced with permission is accountability and support. There is something to be said for a hands off approach which gives real freedom, but I also value the contact and conversations I do have that offer support and seek to keep us accountable to what we’ve set out to do. This comes from one on one contact with a supervisor, but also in a variety of group contexts within our denom. We have a ‘missional communities committee/group’ that help set up new communities etc - this group has been really valuable for me not only in their support for me, but also now I’m on it as a place of connection with others on the journey.
We’ve also started a theology group who will meet every now and again to think through emerging church theology which will similarly be valuable to me.
I think connecting people with others is very important because starting one of these churches can be quite a lonely and daunting process.
5. Training - we need to find new and creative ways to train emerging leaders. I think the denom’s and other groups need to cooperate on this as we’ll just reinvent the wheel if we don’t.
More and more emerging leaders can’t do a ful time bible college…we need to find new forums and places to train.
there’s some initial thoughts…more will come
August 5th, 2004 at 4:09 am
I would say a couple of things.
Learn that the path that brought you to where you are today, won’t bring you to where you need to go tomorrow. As Lyle Schaller has said, it is “discontinuitous change”, nuancing what you have, won’t work.
Stop using the word postmodern to repackage the old ideas and the programs of the past. We see right throw the pamphlet’s done in earth tones and fonts with cross’s in them.
Realize that programs like NCD and other ideas are not as universal as you want them to be.
Deal with the cost of seminary and bible college. It is expotentially more expensive then when you went and summer wages have not even started to come close. Either subsidize or reimagine. The current system is broken.
August 7th, 2004 at 10:42 pm
The best thing a denomination could do is to welcome them and communicate they’re not afraid of them. So many churches hold out Saddleback or whatever as the model of what a new church should be. Just acknowledging the Emerging Church would be awesome.
I think part of that is a culture that allows questioning. You have to be okay with that if you’re going to support new forms of church.
I like what the Anglican church has done in releasing Mission-Shaped Church (http://www.chpublishing.co.uk/product.asp?id=68225).