Last week I talked about Post-Modern Pilgrims by Leonard Sweet. This week I will continue the discussion, and talk about the next book I read: The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations by Dan Kimball.

While the two books both cover a discussion of the postmodern culture, they are quite different in how they approach it. As I mentioned last week, Sweet's book was written early in the discussion of how postmodernism affects the church. As such, it's written more to explain the feelings behind postmodernism, giving examples of how we can see postmodernism affecting culture, and it asks a lot of great questions about how the church needs to change its thinking.

Dan Kimball's book, on the other hand, was written in 2003. While only separated by three years, Dan's book is written more as a reflection of his and others' experience with attempting to engage the postmodern mindset. But the book isn't too heavy on practicality. He purposely stops short of making strong suggestions on how to conduct worship gatherings, because each group needs to determine their own specific direction.

The first half of the book is "deconstruction." It explains postmodernism rather well -- in fact, a lot of the summary I gave of postmodernism in my last post came out of this book, not Leonard Sweet's book. But more than that, he analyzes problems the postmodern mindset has with the modern church. The second half of the book is "reconstruction," trying to get a glimpse of what the emerging church will look like -- where it is that we're going.

Another term I feel that I need to discuss is this "emerging" thing. Like "postmodern," a lot of people aren't really comfortable with it, and I'm not sure I like the term, either. But it represents the transitional point at which we are at -- we are not fully out of modernism, and we are not fully into whatever "postmodernism" represents. We're somewhere between the two. Likewise, we don't really know where the church will end up in all of this: it is all a work in progress.

So "emerging" refers to the idea that we don't know exactly what the church will look like once it's "emerged" into postmodernism. "Emerging" doesn't specifically refer to any style of worship, in terms of music, or liturgy, or schedule. It refers primarily to changing our church culture to move away from the "seeker-sensitive" model of gatherings into a more "vintage" model of gatherings -- one that represents our rich heritage, and incorporates deep spirituality and building strong community as focal points of our gatherings.

But as Kimball explains, "rethinking the emerging church involves rethinking almost everything we do. The worship service is but one part of it."

"Postmodernity and the spiritual relativism it brings completely pulls the rug out from under most of our current, modern ministry strategy and methodology." What does this mean? It means that we can take nothing for granted. (Sound familiar?) It means that we can't assume any of the programs or approaches that we used to use will still work.

Most who read that sentence will know that I'm thinking about how that applies to things like how we schedule our gathering time, what styles we use, etc. But we also have to be willing to think about that in terms of the approach we're used to taking. Do we need flashy high-production-value presentations in the postmodern culture? Kimball would say no. I'm starting to agree. They might not hurt so much, but they might not help so much, either. If we have it, no big deal, but in terms of what we pursue, it has to be something different entirely.

Our pursuit has to be discipleship -- being an apprentice of Christ. Our pursuit has to be worship -- being obedient and submissive to God. Our pursuit has to be community -- serving each other in love.

For too long we've been heading down the road of the church being a vendor of religious goods and services. We must shift that mentality to that of the church being a group of people who are sent on a mission.

Kimball had the following table, about how the values of the church need to shift, that I think is important enough to include in its entirety.

MODERN CHURCH (Seeker-Sensitive)	EMERGING CHURCH (Post-Seeker-Sensitive)
Worship "services" in which preaching, music, programs, etc. are served to the attender	Worship "gatherings," which include preaching, music, etc.
Services designed to reach those who have had bad or boring experiences in a church	Gatherings designed to include and translate to those who have no previous church experience
Services designed to be user-friendly and contemporary	Gatherings designed to be experiential and spiritual-mystical
A need to break the stereotype of what church is	A need to break the stereotype of who Christians are
Stained glass taken out and replaced with video screens	Stained glass brought back in on video screens
Crosses and other symbols removed from meeting place to avoid looking too "religious"	Crosses and other symbols brought back into meeting place to promote a sense of spiritual reverence
Room arranged so individuals are able to see the stage from comfortable theater seating while worshiping	Room arranged to focus on community, striving to feel more like a living room or coffeehouse while worshiping
Lit up and cheery sanctuary valued	Darkness valued as it displays a sense of spirituality
Focal point of service is the sermon	Focal point of the gathering is the holistic experience
Preacher and worship leader lead the service	Preacher and worship leader by participating in the gathering
Uses modern technology to communicate with contemporary flare	Gathering seen as a place to experience the ancient, even mystical (and uses technology to do so)
Services designed to grow to accommodate the many people of the church	Gatherings designed to grow to accommodate many people but seen as a time when the church which meets in smaller groups gathers together

Some of the shifting values in this table really resonated with me. I really connect with the shift from the "need to break the stereotype of what church is" to "need to break the stereotype of who Christians are." To me that speaks volumes. It would also make a great slogan -- not breaking the stereotype of church, but breaking the stereotype of Christians.

There were more tables in the book that were also excellent, but the following is a combination of what I think is the best parts of them. These were more values that we need to shift, but there were separate chapters (and tables) on preaching, evangelism, discipleship, and leadership. Below are some of the best elements from the chapters on evangelism and discipleship.

MODERN CHURCH (Seeker-Sensitive)	EMERGING CHURCH (Post-Seeker-Sensitive)
Evangelism is an event that you invite people to.	Evangelism is a process that occurs through relationship, trust, and example.
Evangelism is primarily concerned with getting people into heaven.	Evangelism is concerned with people's experiencing the reality of living under the reign of his kingdom now.
Evangelism is something you do in addition to discipleship.	Evangelism is part of being a disciple.
Evangelism is a message.	Evangelism is a conversation.
Evangelism uses reason and proofs for apologetics.	Evangelism uses the church being the church as the primary apologetic.
Missions is a department of the church.	The church is a mission.
The Bible is a book to help solve problems and a means to know God.	The Bible is a compass for direction and a means to experience God.
Discipleship is an individual experience.	Discipleship is a communal experience.
Discipleship is based on modern methodology and helps.	Discipleship is based on ancient disciplines.
Discipleship is knowledge and belief.	Discipleship is holistic faith and action.
Discipleship is education.	Discipleship is spiritual formation.
Being a disciple and evangelism are two distinct things we do.	Being a disciple is being on an evangelistic mission.
Spiritual formation primarily occurs through presentation and teaching.	Spiritual formation primarily occurs through experience and participation.
Discipleship is something that happens after people attend the worship service.	Discipleship is the center of the mission of the church.

The irony is that the changes we need to make, as individuals and as churches, have little to do with being culturally relevant, and everything to do with reconnecting with our original mission and calling. For example, while postmodernism will demand that we shift evangelism away from an "event" to a process that occurs through relationship, the reality is that this is how it is supposed to be anyway. The very things we need to do to connect with postmodern culture are the same things that would have worked better in the modern culture. The postmodern culture will force the church to be the church. This, I think, is a good thing. But the question is how do we get there, and what will it look like?

We must begin by no longer measuring our success with the three B's - buildings, budgets, and bodies. Kimball writes:

Success is more than having an alternative worship gathering that has become the hottest thing in town, attracting hundreds of younger people. The emerging church must redefine how we measure success: by the characteristics of a kingdom-minded disciple of Jesus produced by the Spirit, rather than by our methodologies, numbers, strategies, or the cool and innovative things we are doing.

It's clear to me that if we hold onto our current programs for the sake of the programs, and we hinge our idea of success onto the success of the programs we've generated, we won't get where we need to go. Instead, let's make room for God to work. Let's encourage each other on our journey as we seek God deeper. Let's be the community we're called to be, so that even outsiders will "bow down before God and worship him, declaring, 'God is really among you.'"

Dan Kimball has a blog where he shares a lot of great stuff, if you're interested in this stuff (you must be if you've read this far!) check it out at www.dankimball.com.

Labels: books, church, emerging