THE FOLLOWING is an excerpt from my soon-to-be-published little book, Engaging the Culture:
Recently, while sharing with a group of young leaders from another church, I put up a slide with containing a diagram that, with two simple lines, showed how the church engages (or fails to engage) culture. As I introduced it, I referred to it as a “model”. The word had barely left my mouth when my listeners all began to moan with one accord and one of them burst out: “That’s not very postmodern!” I was baffled. What I was about to describe to them was a whole new view of church and culture which I had captured in some simple lines. How could that not be postmodern? They only laughed as I tried to defend myself, red-faced and mumbling words like “deconstruct” and “meta-narrative.” I finally just went on, careful not to use the word “model” again.
Later in my time with them, however, as we discussed the implications of quantum physics as I have done here in this book, I had an insight. Their context for the word “model” originated in the church world. They had started their own church (which would be described by some as alternative but, to them, was simply authentic) and they had been asked by many skeptical voices, “Well, which model are you using?” They heard the word “model” as the modern tendency to plan it all, institute it all and force it all into manifestation (or simply to copy someone else’s success rather than letting God grow up in your context). I use the word model in a scientific sense: an approximation that simplifies a complicated reality; a view of the systems in place that allows us to interact with them. Yes, I meant model in the quantum sense, and that brings me to the buzzword “emerging”.
The word “emerging” (or “emergent”) has been creeping onto the covers of Christian periodicals for a couple of years now in America (and longer in the U.K.). Most people probably associate it with an age group of leaders and followers who are just now coming into their own in the church—emerging from obscurity. This group will tend to have a different style and different preferences and therefore generate controversy and require magazine article-length explanations! But there is so much more to understanding “emerging” than simply making room for something that isn’t your style or stepping aside for the young guys to have a chance.
God’s truth, by nature, always waits at the next horizon of church life. Just as soon as we think we have finished the manual on how to do church, God allows everything to change and then waits until we again start running after Him. The nature of the invisible plan of God—whether you invoke quantum physics to explain it or simply read the Bible—is that it wants to manifest! Truth is not just an idea; it has within it a drive toward incarnation. Every bit of God’s huge plan for his church waits invisibly to be discovered, cooperated with, and to emerge!
What I call a model is a fleeting glimpse of the way things are, not yet manifest, and the way God wants them to be on earth. That is so much more than a plan or blueprint. In fact, the myriad workbooks and seminars that the church has generated containing steps and programs for growth in the Christian life are, at best, just models of the emergent! Having seen something of the invisible potential of the Kingdom, we are desperate to cooperate and find ways to actualize its possibilities. We must have some kind of tools to do so because the spirit is a world that operates quite differently than the natural one and we tend to lose our bearings easily without some type of construct in our mind. In the spirit, you give to receive; die to live; humble yourself to be exalted. Let’s face it: the Kingdom is counter-intuitive! We need a model when we are in the middle of the deep sacrifice, death of the flesh, or otherwise humbling experience, so that we can remember to cooperate! We need a few steps; a couple of arrows and just a few alliterative catchphrases. (I’m not being sarcastic: we really do. But we can keep it to a few.)
If we understand that, like the models we have of the atom, these constructs are just helpful tools at understanding emergent realities, we will not abuse them and camp out on them. We will allow them to breathe, flex and flow. We will not worship the models instead of the invisible God who can be contained in nothing, but who does bless us with all the handles we need to cooperate with Him! The “cheesy” and superficial only show up when we have forgotten the big invisible picture (or, when we have never seen it to begin with, God forbid!) Things only get trite and stale when we have begun worshipping the creation, in this case the model, instead of being blinded again and again by the light of the all-encompassing Creator!
Our local church does have a model. It is a diagram with circles and arrows and flow and explanation. The criticism might be raised by someone that it is not “emergent” because we are planning it. I say nothing could be farther from the truth. Too many people are claiming to be the emerging church simply because they have thrown away the plan! The emerging church, however, is one who has seen the invisible and is doing their best to help it manifest. They have seen truth beckoning on the next horizon and made the commitment to pursue. The models God gives us may flow and flux as all living things do, but as long as our eyes are fixed on the invisible (I am reminded of Abraham, Moses and all the Hebrews 11 endurance laureates), we will be allowing God’s next move to “emerge” into manifestation through us! We are all a part of the emerging church—for there is no other kind.
