A common question (for me) came up again the other day, so I thought I might ponder a bit on this post.
Aren't Seeker and Emerging like and oil and water?
Yes. And no. Sort of.
Let's think this through...
The most recent version of this question came as my wife was scouring "pastor wanted" ads over at Church Staffing. She found a self-described Purpose Driven/Seeker church looking to hire someone to pursue their vision of having an Emerging ministry.
Most probably the folks that wrote this ad fall into one of a few possible categories:
A. They don't really know what Emerging means. There's a large category of people out there that seem to think "Emerging" is a new style of worship, or perhaps a new method of organizing church services. They fail to grasp the basic message inherent in the term Emerging - we need to come out of and away from the past, not just tweak it. To many, an "Emerging" or (what's often erroneously considered a synonym) "postmodern" ministry just means lighting a few candles and turning the lights down. That's just simply not going to work, folks.
B. They want to start an Emerging congregation to serve as a hold-over until these congregants "mature" into the "normal" church service. This, as best I understand it, is what happened to Axis at Willow Creek. Click on the Willow Creek link and scroll through their Ministry Quick-Link and this is what you'll see:
In other words, they fully expect that the only people interested in postmodern culture and/or emerging church concepts will be "20-somethings" - a kind of "big kid" youth group. Once you "grow up", as it were, then you'll be a part of "adult" church, I suppose.
Now mind you, I'm not trying to take cheap shots at Willow Creek. They do a great many things very well. Emerging just isn't one of them. Churches that want to start an "emerging ministry" are missing the point, too. In fact, it could safely be said that option B is just a variant of option A!
But I don't want to give the impression that I think Seeker can have nothing to do with Emerging. That would put me in the currently standard mode of "whining Emergent dude" - I don't want that!
I think the two models can co-exist, but not in the same facility and not under an pretense that one is better than the other. The two models are different; one is not inherently better than the other. One happens to be very good at reaching Boomers, the other at reaching the rest of us. But I think they could work hand-in-hand under the right conditions. More on what those conditions might look like later ...
So for now, when I see ads looking to hire a guy to start an "emerging ministry" I'll continue to do as I have: check out their website, read around a bit and verify my suspicions - they know not what they seek.
Hatushili
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Emerging Seekers?
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5 comments:
FYI, to our non-Portuguese reading audience: (roughly)
"I found your blog through Google. Interesting, I liked this post. My blog, on personalized t-shirts, shows step by step how to create a well-personalized T-shirt. Until later."
I'm not sure what Rodrigo found interesting about my post. I'm not sure if Rodrigo is merely interested in selling us his T-shirts or not...
But I can honestly say I've never had anyone leave a comment in Portuguese before, so long live Rodrigo!
[Note: if you visit his T-shirt blog, be prepared - it's entirely in Portuguese, too!]
Hatushili
LOL...this guy made my day! I only wish I had a profound comment to add...
By the way your translation is very close! I didn't realize you spoke Portuguese or Spanish (although i should have assumed such, seeing as you are a language junkie!)
Commenting now on the actual post:
I picked up the same vibes when reading the comments made from Rick Warren in The Emerging church book. The way Rick advised churches to add emerging flavored services & programs to a church really flew in the face of what Dan Kimball was trying to get across, that is as you have said, Nathan, is that one is NOT less mature than the other or less spiritual, only different.
Like you have said before, post-moderns can smell a poser a mile away. A church trying to attract emerging generation through candles and dimmed lights alone is going to gain nothing more than a smaller electric bill. In addition, the categorizing of the emerging generations into neat little subsets and groups ABSOLUTELY flies in the face of postmodernism. Emerging generations are not looking for community with a group of people that look, think, and act just like them; diversity and multiculturalism is the new social beacon of light they are trying to follow, and I think that is exciting!
Yes, emerging “programs” are actually quite comical and transparent (in a bad way) to those whom they are intended for. What needs to happen is a combining of forces: modern leaders finding and supporting truly postmodern individuals to lead communities of believers and to work in a postmodern setting outside of the confines of their own church ministries and traditions. There it is my incredibly naïve, oversimplified answer to a massively underestimated problem.
JB
By the way, congrats on your 1200th hit!!!
I need to throw you a party!
Does Hallmark have a card for such an event?
re: Portuguese - I don't read or speak Portuguese. I am a "language junkie" though, particularly Indo-European languages. Having studied Latin some and Greek more than any normal person would ever (read: 9 semesters worth), I have a pretty good handle on the foundations of modern Indo-European languages. So using an online translator to get the vocab, I had little trouble coming up with what I figured was a translation that captured the gist of Rodrigo's sentiments.
re: Warren and Kimball - Kimball's right. The majority of Seeker folk don't seem to understand that we (meaning emerging folk and emerging-friendly folk) are talking about a major paradigm shift in ministry. Not just a new mode, per se. That's what Seeker is - a new mode of ministry, grounded in the roots of Modernity. The Emerging crowd is arguing (and rightly so) that we are turning a corner in a culturally foundational way. People are quite literally viewing the entire world through lenses very different than those of generations past.
It is not, in my humble opinion, overstating the case to say that a paradigm shift of this magnitude hasn't happened in Western culture since the advent of the movable type printing press (ca. 1440). Not surprisingly, then, we all find ourselves totally inadequate to the task - there's no one around to ask how to handle such a huge shift. So we feel it out, search it through. We write, a lot! We talk. We engage in this 'conversation' to figure out the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But we don't operate from the premise that this is just the newest in a string of ministry models. We need to do zero-based evaluations: put everyting on the 'up for debate' table and make sure placing it back on the 'not up for debate' table is based on something more than mere preference.
re: my 1,200th hit - thanks for noticing! I only wonder if half of those aren't myself. But once in a while I get some word from those of you that regularly read, but almost never comment. You know who you are; thanks for the encouragement. BTW, no Hallmark doesn't make cards for this. So a simply monetary donation, preferably in cash, will be fine! : )
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