The Emergent matrix: a new kind of church?

Christian Century, Nov 30, 2004 by Scott Bader-Saye

While emerging churches talk a lot about being relevant to postmodern culture, they are also aware that there is a danger in relevance. Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God, posed the question this way at the convention: "How do you simultaneously attend to the culture and be a pocket of resistance? You can't be a pocket of resistance without attending ... but I still think people come to church when church is different from the world, when there is something noticeably ecclesial in the broadest sense, when church seems like church rather than a shopping mall."

An Emergent definition of relevance, modulated by resistance, might run something like this: relevance means listening before speaking; relevance means interpreting the culture to itself by noting the ways in which certain cultural productions gesture toward a transcendent grace and beauty; relevance means being ready to give an account for the hope that we have and being in places where, someone might actually ask; relevance means believing that we might learn something from those who are most unlike us; relevance means not so much translating the church's language to the culture as translating the culture's language back to the church; relevance means making theological sense of the depth that people discover in the oddest places of ordinary living and then using that experience to draw them to the source of that depth (Augustine seems to imply such a move in his reflections on beauty and transcience in his Confessions). Relevance might simply mean wanting to understand why so many young people have said that attending U2's Elevation Tour and hearing Bone close the show with choruses of "Hallelujah" was like being in worship (but a whole lot better).

This kind of relevance will also include the recognition that the church becomes relevant precisely by offering something that the culture does not. In a loud and frenzied world, that may mean creating a space where people can bask in silence and rest in liturgical rhythms. In a world of superficial entertainment, it may mean throwing parties that nurture deep and authentic community, In these ways relevance and resistance begin to look more like dance partners and less like competing suitors for the church's soul.

Perhaps "'relevant-resistant" is another way of naming the "incarnational" church. To incarnate the reign of God means to take on local flesh, to speak the vernacular, to dive deep into the cultural particularities of a time and place. But as Jesus shows, to embody God's word in a time and place is both to participate in the world of the fallen and to offer an alternative to that world. The emerging church, to be anything other than a hip blip on the radar of American religion, will need to live the tension of "relevant-resistant" no less than it lives the tension of "ancient-future."

WHAT WILL BECOME of this movement at the end of the day when the fog machines and video projectors are packed away? Will the emerging church be able to sustain its focus on theological renewal without being coopted by trends, hype and marketing? Will it turn out to be just another instance of narcissistically reinventing the church to suit one's own preferences? Or will the gaze begin to turn outward toward transformative mission?