Editorial note: This is part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 will appear in the November issue of Ministry.
A new day is dawning, a fresh wind is blowing. A new vision of what it means to be the church is emerging. Those beginning to see it are on the edge of their seats. The picture of this church is not yet completely in focus, though I suspect that the blurred depiction that is coming into focus these days through the mists of change is closer to the truth than the definitive portrayal we have traditionally struggled to maintain. The edges are fuzzy and open to further exploration.
It is difficult to quantify it, or to be assured of its dimensions. It defies categorization, and is more easily felt or intuitively sensed. It has qualities that reflect the mystery of the God whose church it is.
This new church seeks to be more faithful, not less. In it there is a deep concern for understanding and fearlessly embracing the radical teachings of Jesus. This church is more rooted, less market-driven, and more mission focused; it is less segregated and fragmented, both racially and generationally. Neither is it a monolithic phenomenon built on reproducible models and manifested in the same way everywhere. On the contrary, the emerging church is a return to the biblical notion of the organic nature of the church. This church is more of a living body than it is an organized, administratable entity.
This new vision of the church has not emerged in a vacuum. There are cultural factors that have facilitated the phenomenon of its appearance.
The decentralized church
Whether American culture was ever Christian is debatable, but there has been the assumption that Judeo-Christian values have shaped the culture of the West. In recent decades, however, the church has been increasingly marginalized. As postmodernism has come to influence almost every arena, especially in Western cultures, the church— built on the empiricist and rationalistic foundations of modernism—has lost its footing. In many cases we have placed our confidences in the wrong places.1
So now, rather than holding the central role in the culture, the church has been decentered, removed from its pedestal. We no longer hold the easy place of influence and power.2 This transition has been uncomfortable, but in many ways it has been advantageous for us.
The comfort of cultural prominence has made the church soft. Traditionally, the church has always thrived from the margins but faltered when it got too entangled in power. In this sense the challenge postmodernism poses for the church is an opportunity to be more faithful.
The result of this shift is that the church is less clear about its role in relation to a great many of the cultures in which it finds itself. Just as Israel had to reconsider its way of life when carried off into Babylonian exile, so the church today must rethink its role in Western society particularly.
In modernity, the church frequently saw itself as being in partnership with its host culture as both the church and the culture sought to achieve the unchallenged goals of society—commonly known in the United States, for example, as the "American Dream."
The parlance of the church growth movement was "felt-needs ministry." The church's job was to the find out what the community needed and then meet those needs. The lingo of this kind of cultural relevance was on every pastor's lips.
The emerging church does not reject these goals out of hand. After all, who wants to be irrelevant? And certainly Jesus went about with great effect to meet the needs of thousands of people during His three year ministry.
The difference is that the emerging church of today wants to be culturally relevant but at the same time to be counter-cultural in its witness. The church of this new missionary con text does not want to meet uncritically the needs of people in society but rather sees its role as being a mission to the culture.
It is through the witness of an alternative culture that the emerging church hopes to call people to a better way of life—life under the loving reign of God. It is also this alternative culture that trains its members how to live by kingdom principles. The church is the place in which we learn how to live, quite literally, as "resident aliens."3 It is in this contemporary "exile" that we are forced to reevaluate the role of the church in the world. It is also in this exile that we must rehear the gospel.
Rehearing the gospel
The new wind that is blowing through the church is not primarily methodological (though it will no doubt result in doing things differently); it is a renewal, first of all, of theology. It is not emerging out of the old by tinkering or making minor adjustments. It involves a fundamental rethinking of the nature of the church and its place in God's plan.
As such it is predicated upon a rehearing of the gospel. After all, the gospel is the mother of the church. It is because of the gospel that the church exists, and so a healthy understanding of the church is contingent upon hearing the gospel afresh.
Unfortunately, the gospel we know has been so influenced by modernist philosophical categories that what we actually hear as gospel is sometimes barely discernible. Ask many conservative American Christians today what the gospel is, and they will most likely give you some version of Four Spiritual Laws describing how a person can go to heaven when they die.
No doubt there is truth in what they say, but is this really the central message of Jesus? Is this, as such, the ultimate purpose for which Jesus came to earth?
Dallas Willard says that this reduction of the gospel to "sin management" has diminished the goodness of the news Jesus came to proclaim. It is certainly good news that in Jesus our personal sins are forgiven and taken care of. But if this is the whole story, we are left with a narcissistic obsession with our own survival both now and after death. This is precisely the thing Jesus was trying to avoid when He said that in God's kingdom, the way to save your life is to lose it.
After Jesus was baptized and then tempted for 40 days, Matthew writes, "From that time on Jesus began to preach, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near'" (Matt. 4:17).*
The other synoptic gospels record a similar start to Jesus' ministry (Mark 1:14,15 and Luke 4:43). He came proclaiming an astonishing fact—the kingdom of God had arrived.
But what does that mean? Certainly central to any kingdom is the one who reigns as its king. In essence Jesus announced that God's reign over the entire world was finally present among them in the sovereignty of Jesus. People were then invited to enter the kingdom and live under God's loving rule. It is also unmistakably clear that Jesus' message was eschatological, leading the hearer toward the day when the reign of God will become an ultimate reality.
One thing is certain from the life and teachings of Jesus Himself—the gospel is none other than the good news that every person (whether poor in spirit, whether mourning, or struggling to satisfy a gnawing spiritual hunger) is invited to live under the loving reign of God.
In Acts, chapter 1, Jesus is teaching His disciples about the kingdom of God. The first deacons of the church preached the good news of the kingdom (Acts 8:12). Luke also wrote that Paul's message to the churches was the good news of the kingdom of God (Acts 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31). In fact, these are the closing words of Acts: "For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ." These words stand as an open invitation for the story of Acts to continue.
When we actually hear the gospel afresh, as the in-breaking of the reign of God upon our world in Jesus Christ, then as a church we re-envision our role in relationship to that good news. As we see this, it becomes clear to us that the gospel is not merely the management of our sin so we can go to heaven one day. Instead we see that our role and the role of the church is to help bring the reign of Christ to reality here and now, and in doing so to tell as many people as possible about the King and His kingdom, so it can be established and they can also go to heaven. But, if the good news is deeper and more far-reaching, then it has profound consequences for the church. So, what is the role of the church with respect to the gospel Jesus proclaimed?
Jesus' parting words to His disciples certainly give us a clue. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8).
We will develop the implications of this passage to the ministry of the emerging church in the second and final part of this study, which will appear in the November issue.
*All Scripture references in this article are from the New International Version.
1 For a good introduction to the effect of postmodernism upon the church, see Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Grand Rapids Zondervan Pub House, 2000); Stanley Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids Wm. B, Eerdmaris Publishing Co, 1996)
2 See Alan J. Roxburgh, The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality (Harrisburg, Pa.Trinity Press International, 1997).
3 See Stanley Hauwerwas and Will Willamon, Resident Aliens (Nashville-Abingdon Press, 1989).
