Since Off the Beaten Track was published I have been having some interesting conversations around emerging church and redefining church. I am in the process of putting something together around the issue. I asked Jonny Baker for his thoughts about my thoughts of the need for a more radical rethinking of church and how this fits into what is currently going on. His reply was “There is no emerging church take on church… It is a range from trying to transition existing churches to a complete reimaginging of church. It’s a series of conversations people are having. If you don’t think it goes far enough you just join in the conversationâ€?
I guess my feeling coming from a missionary minded perspective is that a lot of the “reimagingingâ€? if far more about what is DONE in church (which a friend described as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic) than a true reimagining of WHAT IS CHURCH. There is very little evidence of a wholesale paradigm shift rooted in theology that is “reimaginingâ€? what church is. Off the Beaten Track led to more of this reimagining and the metaphor – “church is both the city on hill and the journey to that cityâ€? So to get me in on the conversation and to get a broader view I have taken the first story from the book and posed a question.
A highly skilled draughtsman decided to try to turn his hand to portraits. After all he was able to reproduce technical drawings in minute detail, and he reasoned that if he applied the same skills to his painting, the likeness would be accurate and exact. He started with his family and sure enough the reproductions were exact, as good as a photograph and yet he and all who saw them knew there was something missing. On meeting a famous painter one day he explained the problem and was advised that he needed to start with the soul not the image. “What do I paint then� asked the draughtsman.
“Forget the rules and the reproduction, remember the past, embrace the present but realise and paint the future� replied the artist.
What do we need to paint in relation to church?
Is the emerging church just painting over the cracks?
fritzon said…
hi
richard, dan from sweden here..
just came back from the pub and decided to run a search on you, and found this.. nice..
need to think about the stuff though..
1:18 AM
Miz said…
There are lots of “conversations” about emerging forms of church that come with a breed of thinker that has disposed of their 90’s youthwork appeal, waistcoats, goaty beards and 501’s. These have been replaced by “emerging church growth”, apple macs, decent coffee and urban skate wear! I feel I can easily fall into all of the above except the Mac addiction.
So is this all about relational workers getting older and struggling with the shape of churches that they tried so hard to make welcoming to young people?! Is it about creating the “adult” church that was promised to the young people but was kept in the box! This in itself is not a bad thing.
So…this is a difficult one. I do think that the “emerging” thing is using a limited palette that makes it very similar to previous incarnations. Here are some snags that i see:
>more conferences for leaders.
>a predominance of men as thinkers
>unnecessarily academic
>obsession with definition
>talk reigning over action
>a strange desire to create product
>blogs
It’s not all is bad… decent coffee is something that all churches appreciate!
7:29 AM
Richard Passmore said…
interesting point about the blogs have you sen Jonys post on the average age of bloggers with loads in the teenage groups. The relational thing was interesting I wonder if it was precisly because of the lack of thinking about redi=efining church that mean we were always trying to walk the tightrope and more thinking may have helped. Maybe that the exsisting notions of emerging church are off key and it should be about – a new emerging theology of what is church rather than rearranging the deckchairs.
Good to hear from you Dan I am coming over in the new year.
12:39 PM
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