emerging church

Until 31 December, Bristol-Myers is donating $1 to AIDS research every time someone goes to their website and lights a virtual candle. Go on - light your candle! It’s something you can do.

Norbert is a “refused asylum seeker”, living in Wales. He is dstitute, living on the streets. Church Action on Poverty is hosting his daily advent diary on their website. It’s not a uniformly gloomy story - there are some great moments of extradordinary meetings, friendships and colour. But it’s real - and it’s happening now. Read it - and pass the news on.

This is my current “read”. It’s good! What’s most interesting about it is the stir that McLaren has caused among the conservative evangelicals who can’t fault his emphasis on grace, but are deeply uneasy at his refusal to inhabit a particular “position”. One subtext among his critics is that he’s too gracious! He blurs boundaries and refuses to be sufficiently judgemental (in their view) about other positions and opinions. The book belongs within the sort of ructions caused by Steve Chalke’s criticisms of penal substitution.

McLaren is a postevangelical. Insofar as I would consider myself defintely post - and postevangelical rather than postliberal - what rings bells with me is the stress on passionate faith, personal encounter with God but the conviction that God doesn’t actually go in for the big, safe, theological systems that we’re far happier inhabiting. For those of us with a Reformed heritage, “system” is strongly characteristic of our theology! Yet Brian isn’t a “system” theologian - which is not to say that he isn’t systematic! It’ a good read - mischievous, deliberately provocative, tiresomely self-conscious, ironic, passionate and faithful. I like what he’s saying - but mainly because he agrees with me! Yet here’s the thing: he has a way of seeing faith andf the missionary and evangelical tasks in ways that will communicate with the millions of people for whom Church as they have known it just doesn’t scratch where they itch.

Here’s another good book that’s on my bedside table at the moment. It’s the Archbishop’sofficial 2006 Lentbook (so what’s it doing on my bedside table, rather than his???). Miroslav Volf is the Henry B Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School. He’s a Yugoslavian.

It’s a great read. There’s much that echoes Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? He sees western culture as graceless, and suggests that what we need is to relearn giving andf forgiving. Intensely personal and magnificently readable, it would be a good book to have as a discussion basis for a Church group.

What’s the difference between a vision, wish-fulfilment, blind optimism, hallucination and derangement? I ask because I’ve run “vision days” for churches in which I know what they’ll come up with: a church full of children, with people dropping in and wanting to join, full rotas, full bible study and prayer meetings … in other words, “Bring back the glory days!” And why is that wrong - if it’s wrong? I think it is. I think that is a case of nostaligia and wish-fulfilment. It’s driven by an inability to cope with the radical changes in society that have seen the Christian Church plummet not only in public affection but in the sense that the Church matters or is valuable. What most church people can’t cope with is that the Church has simply become irrelevant. Oh - and the other thing that makes me doubt it’s a vision is that I know exactly what they’ll come up with beforehand! There’s nothing new, surprising or difficult about it.
So what makes a vision a vision? It seems to me that it is about new possibilities under God. Now of course, that opens up the sense that anything is possible - cos it’s God we’re dealing with! But vision is not the same as “blue sky thinking”. We don’t start with a blank sheet of paper. We start with a particular group of people within a particular context. A vision, then, has to do with possibilities for us - for the people we are. If we’re all over 70, it’s no good having a vision of us starting an enormously successful “camp for Jesus” campaign by having a week’s retreat on a snow-capped mountain! A vision takes account of our limitations. The possiblities that we discover under God may be deeply surprising - but they won’t be outlandish.

For instance, we can’t have a vision of the URC suddenly becoming an Emerging Church. It ain’t gonna happen! People who have been Christians and church members most of their lives aren’t going to be turned on by new, very different forms of worship and spirituality. But the URC might become a place that facilitates emerging forms of church - that funds, resources, encourages and nurtures them. That’s one thing I hope and pray for, anyway.

So what are the possibilities for the URC - or indeed, any mainline churches?

If you had one vision - just one - with which you’d like to infect the church, what would it be? A group of us are meeting at the Windermere Centre from Monday 20 November - Thursday 23 November to brainstorm our vision for the United Reformed Church. We’re doing it in the conviction that the URC has reached a kairos. We’ve got to get this right now, because if we miss the boat this time, there ain’t gonna be a next time. It’ll be an exciting and important time.

The point is that we can’t carry on as we are. If we do, we will simply die - quite literally of old age! We’ll be about half the size we are now in 5 years’ time. It’s noticeable, too, that with an ageing church comes associated issues about energy, physical abilities and capacities for communicating across the gap between church and non-church people.

That’s what we will be doing. So what’s your vision for the church?

Mike Walsh has started blogging. His blog, the unlikely evangelist, is well worth a visit. He’s doing some important things with bible study. Go take a look and leave a comment.