So, in light of Tony’s posts, some of the comments, and also the beautiful thing that is happening this weekend at the TransFORM East Coast Gathering (which you can follow on Twitter) I want to reflect upon what I think Emergent has offered, is offering, and will offer to the church.

For the purposes of this post, I’m not strictly referring to Emergent Village, though I’m using the word Emergent as Tony did in his posts. I’m referring to networks and movements like Emergent Village, TransFORM, The Underground Railroad and broader counterculture movements, the new monastics, the Jesus Freaks, 24-7 Prayer, the lovely new Anabaptists that are influencing so many of us, and various other networks and groups around the world that I’d love to meet, just to name a few.

I think there are deep gifts that these movements have offered, are offering, and will offer to the church and world. A deep sense of mission, learned to a large extent from folks who lived and developed their theology outside the Western world (Newbigin and Bosch, among others), is a (the most?) significant one in my mind as it seems to be in Tony’s, and though it bugs me to no end that missional and other similar words have become buzzwords for churches that don’t know the thought behind them and thus continue with what they were already doing while relabeling it, the emerging church as a whole has resisted doing that.

In my experience, the emerging church has deeply and authentically sought to learn what missional living and missional church look like. Once it has learned that a missional life is an incarnational life, it has sought to learn how these things relate to the world, and specifically to cultures and subcultures in which it finds itself.

It has tried to create indigenous ways of experiencing and communicating with God and with those cultures in a deep desire to live lives after the heart of Jesus, and allowed these things to shape its communities from the ground up (in worship, spiritual practices, leadership, location, and any number of other factors). It has tried to integrate activism on local, national, and global scales (I passionately disagree with those who say that we, as a whole, haven’t done any justice work beyond talk, as many of us have joined movements that already existed¹, were started independently of us², or that folks in this movement started themselves³) without being colonialist about it, and that is a deeply significant thing.

Certainly it hasn’t done any of these things perfectly, and no similar thing ever will. But it truly has tried to holistically live what it has learned about mission in its spirituality, in its ecclesiology, and in its desire for justice; and I really think this has shaped the overall trajectory of the movement like none of the other factors. Different folks come to different understandings of where that desire to be incarnational should lead, and I don’t agree with all of those understandings and expect that not everyone would agree with my understandings, but I trust that people do come from that place and that desire.

I’ll continue to follow the TransFORM conference as it continues this weekend and I wish I could have been there; I’ve already seen so many thoughts pass across Twitter that demonstrate this gift of mission and incarnation that Emergent offers to the church, and it’s a beautiful thing. Much love to all of you who are there, and I hope to be at the next gathering like this one.

1. Such as Sojourners, Christian Peacemakers, the Christian Community Development Association, and many other beautiful things related to disease, war, slavery, poverty, and politics.
2. Like Invisible Children, Not For Sale, Falling Whistles, charity: water, for just a few.
3. Advent Conspiracy and One Day’s Wages are beautiful examples; though there are countless small and local things that have broad, under-the-radar reach into deep issues of justice.

The episode also talks of his band, The Black Peppercorns, a group that played in pubs and bars and sang songs that blurred the lines between sacred and secular and saw folks in those bars have genuine encounters with the Spirit. Many of us who listened to the episode are interested in this blurring of the lines as it is a passion we have inherited from folks like him and others before him throughout the history of spiritual music. Sadly, though, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to find this music as it wasn’t accepted by the Pentecostal and charismatic scenes from which he came.

Now, if you’ve spent time in Pentecostal circles this won’t come as a surprise to you. It doesn’t come as one to me, but it does sadden me, both because I have a deep passion for the work of God in the real world, and also because I think it’s one of the biggest weaknesses of the Pentecostal movement throughout the majority of its history. Especially in recent months, it has become clear to me that the Pentecostal and charismatic movements are like this because they have a weak missiology.

Mission, if you attend a typical Pentecostal church or university, consists of foreign missions. Missionaries study culture, study languages, and so on. But you, as an attendee or typical Western minister, don’t learn to think of your own culture as a place in which you are to do mission (including but not limited to the study of language and culture, real contextualization, and so on), and you don’t learn to think of mission as a participation in what God is already doing in the world, unconfined by the walls of the church, walls which are themselves not pleasing to God. Sadly this movement does not have a Lesslie Newbigin or David Bosch to say these things, at least not yet.

This is one of the main reasons that I haven’t been part of a Pentecostal church in several years, both in a direct sense as I could no longer support the ecclesiology and missiology that is present there, and in an indirect sense as I found what I was looking for within the underground and emerging church on its better days, and a desperate desire for it even on its bad days.

But having said that, as Mike mentions in this podcast episode, many of us who came from Pentecostal or charismatic circles and into the emerging church miss the days of intense encounters with the Spirit of God. Focus on this is somewhat uncommon within the emerging church. This is sometimes because folks come from backgrounds that don’t have an active theology of the supernatural, and sometimes because folks have had really bad experiences in Pentecostal or charismatic settings. I can’t blame them for this. There are awful, dangerous things that can be said and done there.

But in spite of that, Mike asked Kevin Prosch how he would advise folks like us who want genuine supernatural experience with God, but have found a home in the mission and ecclesiology of the emerging church. This was the weakest of Kevin’s answers, I thought, and I felt like an opportunity was missed. It may be that he doesn’t have answers for this, and I can respect that as I don’t feel like I have solid ones either.

I have no interest in excesses of the Pentecostal movement, and even when I was there I wasn’t a particularly demonstrative person. But there are things I miss. I was encouraged when Tony Jones presented a paper and a couple of other posts discussing what Pentecostals and Emergents can learn from each other a couple of months ago, and I’m also encouraged by this podcast episode and conversations that I’ve had with Mike along these lines. In writing about it, I’m hoping to continue these thoughts and see if there are genuine things we can begin to do with them.

In any case, we were finally able to go spend a week during Kiera’s Spring Break, and see some of the things they do. Though it was not a normal week, since there were students from two area colleges who were there, we still got to experience praying with Source folks,¹ the Fallout’s art gallery,² some great meals, hospitality, and conversations, and some of the work they do and have done among the poor and oppressed of the city.

Peter has led the Source since 1995, and at that time transitional housing began for folks who wanted to come off the streets, or live in intentional community in South Minneapolis. The Fallout Arts Initiative began in 2001, and it includes a gallery that hosts art shows, a small concert area, a co-op where folks can use supplies and studio space, and also the beautiful prayer room for the Source, which is always open and often hosts prayers from Northumbria’s Celtic daily office, among other things.

The Source has a deep resonance with the Celtic monastic identity, which existed and thrived away from the influence of the Roman church for a good part of the Middle Ages. These monasteries existed as small communities of prayer, work, hospitality and study in the midst of the people, often planted at the crossroads that people traveled upon. Rather than the imperialist methods that the Roman church employed at the time, these communities were much closer to what we now see as missional church, striving to live the kingdom of Jesus holistically among the people they loved.

The Source has lived in these ways among alternative subcultures,³ homeless and transient youth, and the art scenes of South Minneapolis, and in doing so has developed a beautiful sense of missiology⁴ that intertwines prayer, mission, and justice in a truly indigenous community, and sees that the gospel necessarily involves bringing good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed.⁵

While we were there, we had the opportunity to meet one of the folks who came through the Source’s transitional housing a few years ago. In his early teen years, he became addicted to meth, got into the drug and sex industry in Minneapolis, and lived on the streets until deciding in early adulthood to move into the Source’s housing. Today, a few years later, he has housing and has taken various culinary classes.

During our visit, the Source held an art auction and benefit for Haiti, with proceeds going to an organization that is currently feeding 20,000 folks a day. This person I just spoke of catered the event, doing research to learn what Haitians eat and preparing four of these entrees for everyone who came to the benefit. Everything was wonderful, but the beauty of it was seeing the peace in his life, and seeing him able to give back to the Source and be genuinely honored there. Too often, as you know, ministries that work with folks on the street end up (sometimes intentionally, sometimes less so) colonizing and patronizing them, rather than letting those folks give back to them and shape them as well.

So part of the reason I’ve written about the week is that it was a great week for both of us, spending time with a real mentor in a season of our lives in which we have few mentors, and watching the way a group we really believe in lives. The other part of the reason I’ve written is that I’d love to see the Source, and Peter, be a bit known among us emerging folks. Source is not well known among the emerging church, though it has similar values and passions. The deep experience in mission, spirituality, and justice that exists there is a deep well from which we can draw things to put into our own contexts.

In light of that, I think there are great opportunities for different areas of the emerging church to begin learning from and talking with each other. Folks who have a deep love for theology can learn from and talk to folks who don’t think much about it. Folks with a deep love for liturgical smells and bells can learn from and talk to folks who paint in prayer rooms with spontaneous drum circles.⁶ And of course, folks with trendy black glasses can learn from and talk to folks with dreads.

Do you see these possibilities, and the vast number of others here?

1. Source is a 24-7 Prayer Boiler Room, and thus the prayer room is an artist’s dream and is always open, in addition to the regular weeks of consecutive prayer.
2. The Fallout runs an art gallery, and a co-op where folks can rent studio space. Artists don’t have to be “Christian,” to participate in these or to have their work displayed.
3. In the 90s when rave was a bigger subculture than it is today, they hosted raves that were well-known in the city, and even today they attend rainbow gatherings and continue to host concerts among the scenes that are there.
4. This sense of missiology is accompanied by a strong knowledge of it. Peter was among the first folks several years ago to introduce us to books like The Shaping of Things to Come.
5. Luke 4
6. It’s often genuinely hard for me to understand the appeal of liturgical structures, while it’s very easy for me to appreciate the spontaneous and charismatic, but I do see a lot of people that I respect who benefit from them, for example.

But I’ve continued to think about these issues over the past few days, as more and more wonderful people give comments on the discussion that range from wonderful and full of grace to insane and full of judgment, and especially after reading this thought on the next decade of the emerging church.

Now, this post is from Brother Maynard, who writes some of what I consider to be the best thoughts out there on the missional church. I greatly value his words, and of course those of the many others who speak to us about mission. Anyway, in the post I mentioned he writes this:

As for the emerging church, the need to be “relevant” to the culture that was sparked by missional concern before spending ten or fifteen years re-theologizing will return for some. The emerging church will fracture between the liberalizing theological stream and the missional stream, which is to say, the part of the emerging church that returns to the roots of why the began to be emerging. The liberalizing theological stream, on the other hand, is made up of those who didn’t enter the emerging church for primarily missional reasons, or whose emphases changed once they began redefining their theology.

I was genuinely saddened to read this. For years, I have watched these two streams move within the emerging church in general and Emergent Village in particular. In this post I’m not interested in wondering why this fracture would happen if it does. Rather, I strongly believe that there are many of us out there who love and live within both streams simultaneously, and with some hope that some of these folks might speak about this on their sites, Twitter, Facebook, and wherever else – and thus possibly avoid a fracture like this.

I came into this conversation, as I’ve said before, through churches and ministries that arose within underground subcultures – goths, punks, hippies, and so on. They were missional, emerging communities because that was the only way that church made sense to them. Worship and life together, inclusive of music, teaching, setting, and ways to engage the world among extreme metal scenes, goth scenes, punk scenes, and so on, when they are indigenously birthed, are incredibly missional things.

Many of these underground folks didn’t have the theological background to give that kind of context to these communities, but other missional streams have combined with those to bring other fantastic people into these conversations. Some of these streams brought in theologians and ministers versed in Newbigin, Bosch, Wells, etc. as well as doing their own amazing thinking and living.

These people are wonderful. I love them, and want to learn from them and be with them and be shaped by them.

Other theologians and ministers realized that there were broader cultural changes that were starting to come out from the university philosophy and English departments where they had lurked since the evils of fascism brought certainty to its knees. They started to realize that changing the ways that we did church did, by definition, change our theology of church, and they were willing to see where that led. Some of these folks came from liberal traditions, and brought those frameworks with them, and everyone found freedom in asking questions of anything and learning from various frameworks.

These people are also wonderful, and I love them and want to learn from, be with, and be shaped by them as well. So as I said, it grieves me to think about the possibility that these streams could fracture. I want these friends to stay friends, and continue to seek the kingdom of God together. I don’t care if any of us do it in “official relationships,” but I want to seek ways that we can genuinely do it.

Starting with me, maybe. I agree and disagree with lots of things that various people in these conversations say. I don’t fit in any particular stream, because I fit in several different streams. I’m quite comfortable in communities of metalheads, punks, addicts, and other outcasts who are raw and authentic before God and each other, and there is a beautiful grace there that can take folks to the heart of God. Also, I love learning about and seeking to live in the mission of God, and the deep implications that it has for theology, Christology, ecclesiology, and justice – and want to see this shape the church.

Likewise, I’m quite comfortable in deep theological conversations, especially when they are accompanied by good, deep mugs of beer. I’m certainly not officially a scholar, as my formal theological education ended when I got a bachelor’s degree, but I’m comfortable with reading and dialoguing with scholars on all levels, and read as much, and more broadly, in theological circles than I did in college. I greatly enjoy and value “re-theologizing.”

Perhaps more to the point of recent discussions, I fit on various sides of the more public debates in these conversations – those along theology, scripture, culture, morality, politics and ethics, among other things – and I’m quite convinced that many, and maybe all, of us in these conversations do as well. I think we all know this, but I fear that we may forget to remind each other of it, and that we’re in this together.

This conversation of emergence and mission is a fairly broad one. It is much more broad than the groups of underground and alternative ministries, and it probably can either become still more broad or less broad, depending on whether or not we are enclosed, either by ourselves fracturing, or by the heresy-hunters causing more who might join us to be afraid of us. We’ve seen that the heresy-hunters aren’t all that effective, though I think they’ll be much more so if we do allow ourselves to fracture.

I want to see if, by remembering that most of us flow within multiple streams, we can keep these streams – the missional folks and the theological innovation folks, as well as the underground scenes and the new monastics and the anarchists and whoever else – and other streams who are yet to join these conversations. This has been one of the biggest strengths of the emerging church for many of us. Here’s hoping we can keep it up.

I responded to one of the similar conversations earlier this year, and because this one is quite a bit different I want to respond to it as well. I do want to note, first of all, that Andrew is one of the folks I have admired the most for the longest, as a pioneer in both the underground/alternative church¹, and in the broader emerging church. His voice, and his life, is powerful and essential.

Andrew has stated that he wasn’t, in fact, announcing the death of the movement but rather its transition into a much more mainstream role, perhaps akin to that of Sanctuary International, which used to plant churches for underground folks but now is in more of an advisory role, or perhaps just as part of the broader church world.

In spite of his statement, though, the title of his post is Emerging Church Movement (1989 – 2009)?. He is certainly a smart enough man to know that, in Western culture at least, two dates separated by a dash refer to a lifetime, ended by a death. We all may be incorrectly interpreting his words as a statement of the death of the emerging church, but he has certainly framed his words for us to interpret them that way by using that kind of title.

Moving along. Tony’s post reflects upon the nature of being a radical movement, and what happens to radical movements as time passes and as mantles of leadership pass. He also reminds us that, at least in the context of Emergent Village, the controversy has not subsided (Andrew’s voice has always looked at a broader scope of the emerging church, which I greatly appreciate). The money quote from Tony, I think, is this:

If anything — and I think that TSK may agree with me on this — the question that looms over the ECM is whether it will become domesticated as the first generation of leadership passes the mantle to the second. But, the truth is, the answer to that lies not with me or TSK, but with you. Yes, you.

This is, I think, more important for folks who will be in that second generation of leadership, whoever they are. So far, I can only perceive that from a distance, but again in the context of Emergent Village it seems to be going well, as the organization moves further into decentralization and local mission. I know many of the folks who will take the mantle of leadership, as Tony says, and they are fantastic people.

The response from Danielle Shroyer is a poignant, powerful one. It compares the revolution that Andrew says is over to a marriage when the honeymoon is over, in that we move deeper, though at times it seems we just move into banality. She says, “But no revolution stays in its honeymoon period forever. At some point, you have to come home and start the hard work of actually making a life together, and you have to do it out of the banality of everyday things like grocery lists and flu season and tax day.”

This is a beautiful thing. I’ve said before that one day, what we know as the emerging church movement will no longer be a way for folks to reach the forefront of what God is doing in the world. I still strongly hold to that belief, but I still believe we have not reached that point. The various emerging church networks that I know about, and the various streams and splinters into which things have moved, from the alternative to the new monastic to the Emergent to any number of other things may or may not still seem radical and dangerous, depending on where one lives and the folks one deals with on a regular basis.

I’ll admit that the thought makes the underground part of me a bit sad. But it happens. It happened with underground subcultures, and will happen again with something else. But regardless of that, I believe that these movements are and remain brilliant places for people to build lives that seek to be on the edge of the mission of God. Lives that seek to love God and love others – the poor, the outcast, the abandoned places of empire – really are radical things that are being deeply built in these movements today.

And that’s beautiful. That’s where I want to be.

1. Andrew was working with punks and hippies in the Haight/Ashbury district of San Francisco, and continued in other places, long before Emergent Village began. This side of him, through the Underground Railroad, was how I became acquainted with him in 2002, leading in many ways to my introduction to the broader emerging church in 2003.

The Justice Project is written by many different authors, and it covers very broad issues – theological, cultural, etc.. These are desperately important issues for us to consider, and again I think the book has potential to take conversations on justice within the emerging church to an entirely different level. But Everyday Justice covers our role in very specific issues – slavery, sweatshop and child labor, and so on. It also has vital importance to our conversations around justice.

The conversation around everyday issues of justice is a hard one to begin with many folks, both because it is hard for people to learn that they are complicit in systemic injustice, and because it is an overwhelming realization when it does come. Julie’s book does a great job in avoiding both of these difficulties, by making it clear that legalism and guilt are not the answers, and also by giving us specific ways to live justly.

It is additionally hard for many folks in the church to have these conversations, because there is an understanding of justice that is reduced from the expansive, holistic nature that is meant in biblical language, and Julie deals with this as well.

In a specific sense, the book deals with issues of coffee and chocolate (which are often produced by slave labor and worsened by various economic policies), clothing (which is often produced in sweatshops and also worsened by various economic policies), cars and food (which have obvious environmental issues and also human rights issues), waste (which has its own consequences but of course speaks to our desperate desire to consume things), and debt (which details our specific economic and political relationships to the debt-ridden nations in the developing world and what needs to be done, though of course our own debt is relevant as well). The chapter on each issue is well-researched both on the broad issues themselves and how we are individually involved with them, and gives specific ways we can live justly with regard to that issue.

Some folks will find the issues to be very familiar through trying to understand justice, but even in these cases it is fantastic to have the research on the issues, and the resources on living justly, together. I think most folks, though, will learn something about all of the issues, whether it is related to just how far systemic injustice reaches and how much we are complicit in it, or ways to continue moving life toward justice.

I spend a lot of time in thinking, learning, having conversations, and trying to seek justice around these issues, and I find the book to be invaluable in all of these things. I’m very familiar with most of the issues, but still learned a great deal.

This variety makes the book really hard to review, but an amazing read. The book is divided into these sections: The God of Justice (theology, postmodernism, church history, etc.), The Book of Justice (justice throughout the Torah, the prophets, the Gospels, and the epistles), Justice in the U.S.A. (issues of race, politics, etc.), A Just World (a global perspective on justice), A Just Church (how the church can seek justice), and Conclusion (just what it says). I read the book straight through, but it could easily be read out of order.

I believe that by its very existence, this book can, and should, take the conversations about justice that occur in the emerging church to an entirely different level. It has done a number on my thoughts, expanding them and deepening them on all of these issues. None of the core issues here are new to me, but the voices and perspectives are often new to me, and more experienced in these stories, than any I’ve encountered before.

I hope many outside of emerging conversations will read this, especially evangelicals and Pentecostals as many of the stories and perspectives will be new to them, and are incredibly necessary for them to know about. Often the voices are people they will trust, and that’s a valid thing. There is a sad extent, though, to which many in these circles have no understanding of a biblical vision of justice – viewing it as simply punishment, retribution, or strictly in an eschatological sense. Really getting what this book is saying will not allow that to continue.

I think many within Emergent will have similar experiences with this book to mine: we know these issues and stories, but these perspectives and experiences can shake us, if we let them. Often we so badly want to be part of justice, and this gives us incredible things – theological resources, amazing people to learn from, stories to join, and a holistic vision of what God is doing in so many areas in the world so we can be a part of it.

The entire thing is really exciting to me, equally as a part of the broader emerging church, a participant in a local context, and in light of potential endeavors for the future. One of the immediate things that looks to be incredible is the TransFORM: East Coast Gathering taking place from April 30, to May 2, 2010 in Washington, DC. I believe It is a free event.

The event has incredible speakers/workshop facilitators, and all have lived this stuff. I’d love to encourage you to come, if you can make it to DC during that time. I’m going to try to make it. It is being held at, and sponsored by, Wesley Seminary. Most cities have a discount airline that flies directly to DC (AirTran, Southwest, and JetBlue will cover many of us) for a decent price.

In any case, feel encouraged to join the network if you are interested in such things. If you do, I’m on there.

In light of the creation of this network and the potential I think it has, I want to draw your attention to Andrew Jones’ predictions for the next decade of the church. He is always perceptive about such things, and in this case he has great thoughts for where we may be heading.

I find it encouraging and challenging in more ways than I can express, and my hope is that this new network will be a way for many of us to move in these directions. It really is an exciting time to be alive.

There is an amazing group of people involved in the creation of the magazine, and I feel incredibly fortunate to consider some of them my friends, including Makeesha Fisher and Troy Bronsink, and to know of several others, including Paul Soupiset, Carla Barnhill, and Chad Crawford. They all do wonderful things, and make the magazine a fantastic experience.

First, as a designer I have to comment on this aspect of the magazine. I’m not a very good print designer, but I do know good print work, and am inspired by it in many ways. This is good print work. There is great typography for the most part, especially on pages that show poetry or photography (I would have done some of the story pages differently, but regardless); there is great color, and there are great photographs from a variety of sources, from the sky outside people’s houses to the food inside their refrigerators.

The content itself is also great – it really does feel like an artifact of emergence. I love the phrase, and hope it stays with the magazine. Things that stood out to me included Troy’s interview with folks from Paste Magazine, which has brilliant things that I hope to grasp and hold onto about art, mission, and risk-taking, as well as the music they cover and the reasons they do things.

There were also several poems where I found great significance and depth, from people like Michael Toy, Jessica Schafer, and Maria Garner.

So overall, I can’t recommend this magazine enough. I want to encourage you to subscribe to it if you can, and experience this beautiful art.

I especially want to note that those of us in the Atlanta Emergent Cohort are having an event (event on Facebook) with Mark at Tilt Coffee Shop, starting at 7pm on Thursday, August 27. We will hear from his passions and experiences and voice, and discuss these kind of things with him.

Mark is from Minneapolis, where he is a founding member of Missio Dei, an intentional Anabaptist community that is a leader in new monasticism. It seems to be a wonderful community there, doing fantastic things to love God and people in the city there.

Mark also is the editor of Jesus Manifesto, a great online zine that has been around for a couple of years. I first became acquainted with it, and Mark, through this post in 2007, and have been really fortunate to watch and occasionally be a part of the community there. There is a wealth of challenging, powerful content there on nonviolence, resisting the empire, and living in the way of Jesus.

So if you are in the Atlanta area, I want to encourage you to come to Tilt tomorrow.