Brian McLaren: Hope and Obstacles

I thought McLaren’s message summed up alot of what I’ve been hearing is the emergent church’s ecclesiology. That is, a sort of focused interdenominational organization of Christians who have common goals and tasks. Why shouldn’t they work together and get them done? I’ve been trying to become more conversant with this movement and so I tried to understand exactly what sort of doctrine or theology it was advocating or affiliating itself with. This podcast really explained that the churches within the emergent church are more brought together with common tasks rather than beliefs.
I think when the church (the bride of Christ, not a particular denomination) does something for the benefit of humanity it still needs to ultimately be rooted in the glory of God. And in order for this to happen in a collaborated effort, we need to have basic tenants of our faiths so that we are working together to honor the same and true God.

The Church needs hope. We need people who speak words of hope, and this podcast was great! Responding to Jeremiah’s comments above, I think that the Emerging trend is NOT just about common tasks though- these may comb different strands together in the same direction, but there seems to be another revolution in the air around the place and primacy of doctrine and fixed interpretation of biblical truth.

I worry that some of this is reaction formation- the pendulum swinging from the old to the new, but to some of us, it also feels like freedom!

I beleive that any new movement (and I am not sure we can call this a movement yet, particulary in the UK) needs to have a heart- a place from which things flow. All of us Christians would hope that this is Jesus living in us, but because of our tendency to obscure Jesus by all sorts of overlays and misinterpretations, then we need to find a hermeneutic that facilitates our engagement with Him, and to enable our focus on the work of the Kingdom.

That is what the emergent Church thing has done for me- given me some more goggles to put on to think again about who I am, and where I am going, and most importantly- who God is in my life, and the life of my community. Out of this understanding, as the Bible makes clear, should come ACTION- and this is where the visible signs of the Kingdom are made known to the world about us.

It is this relationship- vision (inspiration, passion, hope, a new way of seeing) flowing into Action that seems to define this thing for me.

In the UK, we Christians are a little more desperate than in the US. We are no longer a Christian nation, and few of us go to church. Faith has less relevance, and the void left behind is filled by all sorts of other things. Thinking Christians from all traditions have been forced to ask themselves some hard hard questions. The interesting thing is that many of them (Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Evangelical Alliance, Baptist etc) are asking the SAME questions, an even starting to postulate the same answers. Christians no longer can stand aside as a collection of aging religious clubs, but must start to live out the gospel in our new context. We must understand this context, and break out of th old sterotypical tramlined approaches given to us by 200 years of protestant modernity. This is the dynamite of our time.

The emergent conversation (to use a new cliche) seems to me to be informing this questioning on several different levels. Some will define themselves AGAINST it, others will take elements of it that make sense and bring these into their doctrine. Others will use these thoughts and ideas to take them on pioneering expeditions- and bless them for it.

Exciting, isn’t it?

Hi all
just a note about tech access—as i wait for the download of this MP3 file… (when i began an hour ago the download bar said 3 hours to go… which tipped me over into this screed)

has there been much discussion of the costs and benefits of the Emergent/emerging conversation(s) being so very highly tech-dependent?
i’m new and a bit reluctant to blogging…(one previous attempt lost in space or…maybe i could just never navigate my way back to wherever it ended up…?)
but quite interested in Emergent/ing converse
(read Gen Ortho and the BMcL book w Tony C and liked, have bookmarked sites, subbed to the EV list etc)
but really feeling a bit dissed by tech barrier bars…
discl: i’m a small church pastor in rural far NE NY state… part of a bicultural family, my wife is Filipina 3rd gen methodist, i’m post-greaser, post-hippy, post-institutional church lobbyist, post-busdriver, housepainter, post more than mosts.. with srs and bros and kin v literally all over the theological and geographical maps…
(hence some of my interest in converse that at least tries for the john 17 inclusive thang)
have been most of my life an ngo campaigner, w approximately equal parts ‘progressive’ (antiwar etc) and ‘regressive’ (farm movement—higher prices, no bovine growth hormone or GEOs, against free trade and esp ‘intellectual property rights’ etc) and merged progressive-regressive alliances (esp Jubilee campaign—what is so regessive as a two year time out without work and so progrssive as freeing all the slaves cancelling all the debt reordering all the economy… what is so intbetween as reconciling all the relationshipsfreelyfreely w God, w neighbor w land….
what is so progressive as—leviticus (c:?) before we get to ch 25…
deuteronomy before and after ch 15… etc etc etc)
My spin on technocratic danger is based (best i can discern) on experience… tradition… (Ellul..Wendell Berry… Amish means tests for techadaptaion—does it serve or not serve the community?)
and Scripture… (tech, as interp by Ellul and EF Schumacher in liter form… W Berry…and others…is right there w Mammon as a sometimes chief competitor w God…)

And computer-intensivity of the E-conversations is in my view only a tip of iceberg…
Viewing websites—we have assumptions about money and spending that must seem astounding to low income people here in the global north and worse than astounding to those in the global South (now i am talking church related websites in general, w Emergents neither in my view again neither better nor worse but i was sure hoping for better than the Ecumenical-Interdenominational Composite Index)

and what do we say… how do we focus on …
money-mammon relationships in general?
the ave/median Emerging/ent participant judging from our websites… must have a giant book budget to keep up… ?

if we are serious about what would Jesus do—
what about promoting free downloads of everything we feel is of great importance?
what about free downloads of books, or at least long articles, in simple to handle formats???
i see just a v little of this out there in weblands—at least w titles i want to read…(Jesusradicals.com or dot org and Housechurch.org or dotsomething have a lot of Ellul and Vernon Eller—both v good—as free downloads…Religion online has some good stuff but more that i think is not so good…

ok—pardon a thousand times requested if this screed exceeds norms of length…)
now the download bar says only one hour and a quarter to go… and if my wife or daughter don’t order me offline by then… i look forward to hearing the talk,
grace and peace,

tim atwater

Tim,
There are alot of free books you view online at desiringgod.org. Go to the resources section.

Jesus’ counsel to be in the world must mean that we walk through a sinful, fallen culture, giving it hope only because we remain in conversation with God as we walk through it. We are writing our best self-definitions, one centered prayer at a time. Our hunger for the inmost God thrills us and defines us. Such prayers tell us throughout our lives who we are. Such prayers at last leave us undistinguishable from Christ himself!

Calvin Miller- Into the depths of God

Cosette

The tortoise & hippo analogy related to the church & culture is full of hope.

I find, increasingly, that better questions, thoughts, and imagination lead to better answers, ideas and creativity.

We need better of everything these days. Too many people are disillusioned by the church and its constituency!

May the gospel of Jesus Christ birth new life in us all.

Later that same day (of my earlier post) I did listen to the whole presentation by Brian McLaren, and found it entirely wonderful…

Sorry if my earlier post sounded whiny…I do appreciate the free download offer…even if does take three hours on my dial up connection…

and thanks Jeremiah for the website info… i looked quickly and will go back again…
even if its not exactly EC… i greatly appreciate the free download approach…
which are in the best NGO traditions (as someone still relatively new to institutional church life… i am still struck by the constrasts between our church (UMC-Cokesbury publishing… where there’s a catelogue every month and everything is always for sale… and NGO cultures (smaller and lower-end at least) where lots of stuff is free downloads… esp organizing kits stuff, like posters, background info, etc…

The issues i tried to raise the other day are still there for me… (probably some of this comes with the turf of being an adult child of an economist…and a visual artist…)
(i believe) Money-Mammon issues are the big hairy gorilla in the background of all our church reunification conversation…
The texts most suppressed are still those most closely linked to economics…

Brian weaves so many major themes together and i love all the deep ecclesiology discussion a lot….v beautiful illustrations…

but unless the conversation includes those without much money or tech savvy
the EC (like many other creative ventures before) runs a big risk of foundering in rarified company…

And…yes…i would like to be part of the solution…not just a whiner who identifies a fairly obvious problem…for which there may already be lots of remedial work going on that i’m just not aware of yet… so i’m reposting just in case there may be a strand of discussion about all this somewhere already… someone, please direct me there…

as one lodged by calling within the socalled mainline (w both evangelical and social j gene lines) ... i greatly hope EC will help us continue the conversations…

grace and peace,

tim atwater

I’m from Brazil and I don’t speak and read English very well, but I would like to know more about the difference between emergent and emerging. I’ll be glad if it could be in Portuguese. Thank you

I loved the quote “ a people whose imaginations are funded by the gospel” which he attributes to a Dr Bamerman or something.
Does anyone know who this is?