This post was originally posted at my personal blog at Sets N Service, I’m posting it here to get some feedback and see how close or how far off some of you consider my thesis to be…I’m sure it needs work and a good deal of nuance.
WARNING THIS POST WILL MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, BUT I HOPE THE MESSAGE WILL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THE EMERGING CHURCHES AND YOURSELF IN A MORE HUMBLE AND INTERDEPENDENT LIGHT! Please realize that there is a conscious lack of nuance in this thesis, but I’m hoping that it might cause some new questions to develop in an area few have looked into. If I’m wrong please offer me correction…
Like the New Perspective the Emerging Churches are quickly becoming a dividing line issue for many in the Church today. And like the New Perspective to be sympathetic or nuanced about your opinion on the issue is to open the door to suspicion and uneasiness, to doubt of ones own orthodoxy by others. Fears have been raised about the newest kids on the block, and as Traditional Churches watch more and more of their 20’s and 30’s exit their doors only to enter many of the Emerging Churches doors their sentiments toward them are not warming. Disdain, rumors, and heterodoxy charges are in the murmurs of the mobs…what will be the outcome of this tension? how did the Church in the West get here? Are Traditional Churches – Evangelicals, Reformed, and Presbyterian included here – ready to stomach the fact that they may have inadvertently created the Emerging Churches movements? If you’re Emerging or Emergent this notion is probably a rank stench, but I believe there is substance behind it, please keep reading.
As I compose this post I realize that probably everyone will disagree with what I’m saying here, that it will be hard to find confidants with this message, but I believe its thesis has substance behind it. What are the Emerging Churches? They are the by-product of a youth-ministry development and sucess story over the last 30 years, they exist because traditional churches have created little to no space in the social, pastoral, or financial expenses of their communities to reach 20’s and 30’s who have emerged from youth groups. What we have is a number of consecutive generations who have been weened very painfully from the suckles of an immersion style ministry of light trusses, sound boards, bands and dramas; of catchy messages, exciting trips where spiritual stories take shape, of community development groups where intimacy is built, of radical missional focuses, and relational evanglistic techniques. These 20’s and 30’s have been forced to translate immediately and seamlessly into a larger adult amalgam where many if not all of the old immersion culture they felt is now focused on an audience who are on a cultural map 20 years beyond their own. Forgive the run-on sentence but only a run-on sentence could express the real truth, the Traditional Churches culture and shared philosophy of ministry because it is hardly if even at all focused on these generations, has created the ecclesial phenomena known as “The Emerging Churches”. Certainly there are more than just dechurched in the midst of Emerging Churches, and certainly the dechurched stories are more complex than what I’m stating, but I believe that the thesis I just laid out is the chief cause of the Emerging Churches overnight growth and genuine fulfillment of need in Western culture.
And the truly humbling reality of all this for Traditional Churches is that the very ecclesial culture that created it, is now alienating and disavowing her child because all it sees is a bunch of disenfranchised young adults grouping together. Instead of moving forward toward reconciliation and mutual upbuilding by acknowledging that the compartmentalization approach to ministry (childrens church and youth church 40% of the budget – Adult 55% of the budget – young adult 5 or less % of the budget) so popular in the Traditioanl Churches philosophy of structure, add to this the consumer approach that so many seeker-sensitive models along with the traditional churches bought into, these have both created an empty block of attention and nurture for 20’s and 30’s Christians. These are the sins of the fathers (the Traditional Churches) and repentance needs to begin with the fathers.Many of the Traditional Churches are instead answering the question of where the Emerging Churches came from by looking to birthing affects due to postchristian, postmodern cultures or cities beyond their realm of influence rather than acknowledging their own ecclesial ethos’s contribution.
The Traditional Churches disdain the Emerging Churches but they created them. Consider how the conversation began and who it began among. If you turn to Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger’s account you’ll see it began among youth pastors burdened down with the reality that 80% of their graduates were leaving the churches. And why you ask? My thesis is that the style of ministry they had grown accustomed to and the praxis emphasis youth ministry embodies so well has given them an expectation that simply cannot be met in the next season of life as young adults with only 5% of the churches social, pastoral, financial resources dedicated to reaching them. There is a genuine need that the Emerging Churches are addressing, its not a mistake that their demographic is white (which is another whole discussion to have,, immersion culture for youth ministry just isn’t as developed in Black or Latino communities and transgenerational ministry is much more present for them than white communities of faith), young, and disenfranchised. And just so Traditional Churches don’t get to proud in this discussion, I would caution you to take account of your own demographical curve. The largest audience for most Traditional Churches are young families, this is no secrete.
I haven’t answered the first question I raised above, what will be the outcome of the tension? I firmly believe that the Emerging Churches aren’t going anywhere because the culture and values of Traditional Churches haven’t really changed, and the need for 20’s and 30’s for an immersion style of ministry where social, pastoral, and financial resources are focused upon them will continue. The community people are calling trendy is going to stick around, its been around for at least 30 years now. But there will be struggles they face. For instance I’ve witnessed personally from three separate Emerging Church communities that they are loosing young families to Traditional Churches because, well again, people like the majority focus of church resources. They value it so much that they say they “need it”. And their focus on praxis and the weak, illustration heavy, dialogical nature of youth sermons will continue to mean that the content of teaching in the Emerging Churches will have at least the propensity of being weak and shallow, redundant. I’m hoping that these two communities, Traditional Churches and Emerging Churches can reconcile and unify, but I’m not holding out…
I’m sure that most won’t appreciate this thesis but its one thats been brewing in my observations upon the Emerging Churches and the Traditional Churches response to them for quiet some time now…What are your thoughts in reply to this thesis?
October 27, 2008 at 6:14 am
Very interesting site. Are you keeping up with my enjoyable blanket Do you want a fresh joke from net? Why was Santa’s little helper depressed? Because he had low elf esteem.
June 16, 2008 at 4:44 pm
You may be on to something! I was born in 1957, raised in the United Methodist Church, Converted to the RC church at age 14 and the Episcopal Church at 18 (I discovered Anglo-Catholic Ecclesiology without the requirement of celibacy!)—and I liked the Anglican willingness to think through—and well maybe—and maybeeeee-but….still a creed, still sacraments, still liturgy etc. I was jumping off a springboard of baby-boomer rebellion against my parents leave it to beaver mainline-liberal protestant, social gospel, with shadings of evangelicalism. Mind you, in 1975 most Episcopalians I knew would disown the term protestant for themselves, and some of the priests even smoked weed! Cool Huh?
But then the prayer book wars and the women priest wars, and the creed wars, and the ordination of gltb wars, Bishop Spong, Lambeth, and Whammy!!! We have a good old fashioned psycho-reformation on our hands. OK, Our Churches (Episcopal) do emphasise 20 and 30 somethings—and I frankly wondered on my fiftieth birthday if I was allowed to attend without a special permit from the vestry! And the Cathedral in our town tries something new every Rally Day in the fall from Zen Garden meditation to Fatima “dancing with the son” followed by organic snacks….So now I go to the old upper crust 1928 prayer book church uptown that all the other Episcopal parishes hate. (They build two habitat houses a year–the bastards!) Rich people are not always evil, traditional worship is not necesarily irrelevant. Especially when a brigade of bagpipes parade down the aisle on the fourth of July! Anyway—-You are right—the church is scary right now—Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail—but it still ravages—and–how do we put the faith into the hands of my grandkids’ kids? I want them to have orthodoxy but I don’t want pharisees. I want them to have fervor for the Lord but I want them to have substance, I want them to speak prophetically to this world–and not lose hope when it doesn’t listen—in short, I want them to be the faithful of tommorow. Most of you here are younger than me—I am from the ME generation—but we still have baptisms to live out. I think that the blogger and every one of you have made excellent points—and I suppose that is the big part of it–that we keep doing the faith. If you read my comment Lord love you because I am kind of a scatterbrain—but–that is just the way of things. Keep The Faith
Loving you in Jesus,
Janine
April 24, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Darryl thanks for laying out your terms as well, and thanks for the Youth For Christ thoughts also.
April 22, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Darryl wrote:
“I think parents are the ones who ultimately need to be intention, not pastors, youth pastors or sessions. I was for a time in the CRC and parents there thought they were doing their job if they turned their kids over to the Christian Day school and Sunday school. What many sociologists know about education and religion is that if parents aren’t involved, especially dads, kids don’t get it.”
I am in full and hearty agreement.
April 22, 2007 at 4:10 pm
To Mark: I think you’re right that the OPC needs to be more intentional about youth. But at the same time, I think parents are the ones who ultimately need to be intention, not pastors, youth pastors or sessions. I was for a time in the CRC and parents there thought they were doing their job if they turned their kids over to the Christian Day school and Sunday school. What many sociologists know about education and religion is that if parents aren’t involved, especially dads, kids don’t get it.
To setsnservice: I guess a traditional church in my mind is one that is multi-generational, maybe not intentionally so, but is so just by the way it regards the Christian life as going from youth to old age. I also sense that the focus on youth ministry that Youth for Christ started has not taken account that youth grow up and become middle-aged and grand parents.
April 16, 2007 at 10:43 am
Mark,
I think the inclusion of a deeper concern for families being adressed as families with the gospel in our churches is probably the way that all parties can grown and mature the best. That is what is appealing to me about the covenantal values of the Reformed faith. I’m hoping that we carry these values over into living expression in our bodies…
“What is needed are very intentional ways to be sure that our young people know they are first and foremost a part of the family of God (and for us old farts in the congregation to admit that they are as well!).”
Sage like wisdom
April 16, 2007 at 10:40 am
Darryl,
By using the word traditional I was intending to identitfy those churches that 20’s and 30’s have grownup within. That is what they identify in their minds as the “traditional church”. So I was speaking to them in light of their sentiments. I agree with you though that it may be better to label it differently if we want to be more historically careful and call them ‘neo-churches’…but I think the OPC are also ‘neo-churches’ (forgive the jab). I’m hard pressed to say that there is a traditional church in the sense of one whos social structure goes back into history without change. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean by traditioanl churches though. In my mind the the traditional church is the one which represents the parent cultures of the nearest previous generations, its traditional in a memorial sense…but I’m probably not being historically careful with that.
I found what you said about connecting the Emergign Churches with Hybels and Graham to be fascinating. I’m not sure the line is an easy straight one to make, but I think its there in some fashion. I’d love to hear more details from you on that.
I’m not sure I stated a solution in the original post other than a hope that the two communities could come together. But I’m going to give some thought to you closing comments, to be sure. Thanks.
April 15, 2007 at 3:03 pm
I have to say that, for the most part, I agree with your assessment, Darryl. First off, you are correct in terming the churches Tony discussed as “neo-traditional” rather than “traditional.” More on that below.
I’ve thought for a long time that the real counter-cultural answer to the “youth problem” or “young adult problem” in our churches is not more and “better” targeted programs that segment those populations, but rather churches that have a vision for the church as one family of all ages.
I say this as one who benefited greatly in my own youth from the care of some outstanding youth ministers. Nevertheless, I think in the big picture the whole youth ministry movement spawned by parachurch organizations like Young Life and Youth for Christ may prove in the hindsight of history to have been one of the worst ideas of evangelical revivalism. (Sidenote: I believe Graham started in Youth for Christ, not YL, but same difference in the end.) Evangelical churches glomped on to the trend and now in your typical evangelical church (traditional, neo-traditional, or whatever) you have essentially a separate church-within-a-church. Doesn’t sound like Christ’s plan for his body, does it?
That is why I agree with Darryl that churches with separate youth ministries are neo-traditional and not traditional; for the vast majority of church history churches got by fine without youth ministries. As he points out, youth ministries (and “young adult” or “college and career” ministries) are relatively new, and actually a new (or “neo-”) tradition.
Where this may be leading, Tony, is that perhaps your thesis puts the cart before the horse (or more directly, asks the cart to pull the horse). Perhaps the answer for both “neo-traditional” churches and emerging churches is not pump up catering to youth self-absorption and segregation, but instead look for ways to build integration and fellowship among believers of all ages.
On the other hand, I would issue a challenges to the OPC, if its situation is as you describe it, Darryl. If the only reason most OPC churches don’t have separate youth ministries is because they are too small to afford them, that is not sufficient. I would hope that many of them would think intentionally about their youth/young adult populations. Doing so does not mean having to hire a youth pastor or start a separate youth ministry. However, there is such a thing as a separate youth culture in the world today, and I’d put down money that your OPC churches, rigid as they may be, are not keeping their young people out of its influence. What is needed is neither capitulation to youth culture nor ignoring its consequences. What is needed are very intentional ways to be sure that our young people know they are first and foremost a part of the family of God (and for us old farts in the congregation to admit that they are as well!).
April 15, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Perhaps the better word is neo-traditional rather than traditional. Some truly traditional congregations actually get along without youth ministers and have a view that adolescence and young adulthood are times of transition that need forebearance rather than celebration. The OPC has congregations like this. It is not because we are so devout or virtuous. Usually, it is a function of our small size and the inability to afford a youth minister. But we haven’t generally established ministry priorities around modern marketing’s demographic segmentation.
Another factor to consider is that the Emergent church is simply doing what Rick Warren and Billy Hybels did 15 to 20 years ago, that is, planting churches to appeal to disaffected young adults or young families. The cultural expression is different — different music (I guess) — but the strategy is the same. The established churches aren’t working for the younger set so lets establish ministries designed for the young and hip. (Yesteryears hippies are todays pomos.) In point of fact, this strategy goes all the way back to Billy Graham’s evangelistic crusades. Few seem to know that he came out of Young Life and was first a youth minister. His original style was very “contemporary.” He held on to his age group and those remaining of the Greatest Generation still love to listen to George Beverly Shea. Some day, when Hybels and Warren are in their 70s, they will also have a following among those on Medicaid and Medicare. I figure the same will happen to Bruce McLaren.
For this reason, I wish the proponents and detractors of the Emergents would stop with the hype about its novelty and cutting-edgedness. This pattern of appealing to the young is long in the tooth, at least three generations old, and is a “tradition” in and of itself. The trouble is that it produces no generational succession, so it is a tradition of being anti-traditional. Each generation reinvents the church planting wheel, an obvious difficulty for anyone wanting to think of the church in terms of a covenant people.
In my estimation, the way to fix this problem is to stop ministering to the young without the expectation that their tastes, responsibilities, and interests will one day mature. Instead, we should look at the young as little grown ups who need to acquire a faith that will stick to their bones beyond the obvious tumult of finding oneself and sustain them through the hardships that make adolescence look like a walk in the park.
But I suspect our Lord will return before these snowballs start flying in Hades.
April 12, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Art,
While you were speaking for yourself, you could have spoken for me just as easily in most of what you say.
But in terms of trends I’ve seen, not your larger more profile types of emerging churches but rather your local 6+ year old churches they do struggle with reaching families and young marrieds, one of the commentors on my blog suggested that perhaps that was due to their anti-programmic stand that many take…not sure; but its a trend concern. I guess we’re coming out different here. I’m open for further discussion for sure
April 12, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Mark,
Thanks for the thoughts brother, one thing I’ve heard or seen expressed by a number of Emerging Christians is a real heartache for those lost from youth ministries because the transition is so hard…Chap Clark, Youth Ministry Guru, said the leading definer of youth culture is abandonment…I can’t help but wonder that in our programmic, push the kids aside and have them baby sat mentalities in Traditional Churches, that we are just setting them up for one of the worst abandoments they can experience. The church abandoning them. Hmmm, its terrible man. The way youth ministries are often treated like day cares, and the reality of there being little to no backdoor followup on youth as the exit the church and enter adult services has got to change…
Thanks for the comments man. I’m glad the first part of the thesis wasn’t that surprising. I guess I thought it would get under the skin of Non-Emerging people because it makes them have to deal with being intimately connected with Emerging Churches as a movement. Something you know I have a big passion for is encourgaging unity and humility in the body. Polemics needs an overhaul in Reformed and Conservative circles, whew…
April 12, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Sophie thanks for chiming in and commenting. As Art acknowledged I was trying to say more than just Emerging Churches are the new singles ministry. They flow out of immersion style youth ministries that have praxis oriented messages, strong emphasis’s in missions and Evangelism as a way of life, and are certainly more keen to emerging or postmodern culture than Traditional Churches. But I think you were reading the main point I was making pretty clearly, I think there is an organic connection between the growth and expansion of Emerging Churches and the lack of focus and resources from Traditional Churches on 20’s and 30’s somethings.
I do need to be more careful with one of the comments I made toward the end of the post. Sophie I didn’t mean to convey that all Emerging Churches struggle with young families or are only places for singles to meet. Such is not the case, although many Emerging Churches do have a greater propensity to have these as ongoing issues of pastoral concern.
Thanks a lot for jumping in, and for catching the main point.
April 12, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I was traveling to Atlanta today, sorry to get to these comments late after they’ve built up.
Stephen, wow it sounds like the Lord is doing some things in South Africa. I’m going to make some time and search through your blog for more info as well as google CESA, I’m very intrigued. I am also surprised and interested by your remarks about the Emerging Churches in South Africa; one misconception I’ve heard voiced is that they’re just an American, UK, and NZ phenomena. They most certainly are not.
April 12, 2007 at 9:26 pm
I’m not going to speak for Tony, so this is entirely from my perspective, he might disagree….and if he does, then I shall shun him for four years (and in case you missed the Office tonight, that is a joke).
It boils down to this, The emerging church came into being because of a lack of focus in traditional churches on 20-somethings.
I would stop you right there because I think it is much to simplistic to say that this is what is all boils down to. I believe that the emerging movement is much more multi-faceted than, “my church didn’t focus on my age group.” It has more to do with praxis, ecclesiology, and the postmodern shift then it does a church not having a college group.
Based on that faulty starting point, I think your critique is off the mark. I’m not sure what singles bars and emerging churches have in common, that seems to be an odd association. And I would challenge your remark that they have no plan for young married couples and people above 40. I think of churches such as Mars Hill Seattle and the Villiage Church in Highland Village, TX to name only two that have a large focus on young married couples as well as older people. I’m sure that there are some emerging churches that do not have this focus, just as sure as I am that many non-emerging churches have college groups that focus on the post-youth group generation. One can’t look at one or two emerging churches, evaluate them, and then hold up the results as characteristic of the entire movement. It’s much more multi-faceted than that.
At the same time, for those emerging churches that do not have a focus on young married couples and older people, I hope that they do learn from the mistakes of their fathers and get on the ball. But, again, it’s a mistake to say that “the emerging church has the same problem that created them.” Perhaps this can be said for some emerging churches, but not the movement as a whole.
April 12, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Tony,
I don’t see why you were so sure that your post would upset people; it’s thesis is very nearly undeniable. Anyone who has grown up in the conservative evangelical church (as I have for nearly half a century now) should be able to tell the story. The adults gladly pay off youth ministers to keep the kiddies happy and out of their hair. The connection you’ve made that I hadn’t thought of before is that the transition from the type of church experience one has in a youth group to adult church is too much for most to take. They either leave church altogether or drift to EC-style churches that keep on giving them that youth group experience.
Sophie’s point is important also. I agree that the EC’s are going to have a similar problem before many years pass when their 20-somethings begin to have families and mortgages and are looking for something a little more than their old high school youth group.
Mark
April 12, 2007 at 9:08 pm
(The comment below is from Sophie Biggens. I moved it here because she posted it under a post that had nothing to do with the Emerging Church. – Mark)
You rambled alot about the Emerging Church, So I’m not sure if I understood your point. It boils down to this, The emerging church came into being because of a lack of focus in traditional churches on 20-somethings. The Emergeing Church has become the singles-bar of this decade. The Emerging Church has the same problem that created them. they have no plan for young married’s and people above 40.
April 12, 2007 at 9:17 am
The church I’m currently involved in is called St. Stephen’s, it’s in the suburb of Claremont in Cape Town, South Africa – part of the Church of England in South Africa (CESA). We’re kind of a rogue evangelical Anglican denomination which broke away from the world-wide Anglican communion and the Anglican church proper in South Africa – we differed mainly over issues of the authority of Scripture.
As you’re probably aware, South Africa is one of those countries that straddles the line between a ‘majority world’ country and a western first world country. We have extremely wealthy people living side by side with extremely poor people. Likewise our churches are still very fragmented. Some are very western and so the whole emerging conversation finds a fresh breeding ground here in some of those churches. Others are miles and miles away from even entering the whole issue.
Unfortunately there are very very few churches making a biblically faithful attempt at picking up the fragmented pieces. My church and denomination is making efforts, but we’re still very western and have a long way to go and so we’re working hard at trying to identify and train black pastors and leaders as well as produce more churches with mixed congregations – and there are a few good examples beginning to spring up.
April 12, 2007 at 5:34 am
Setephen you make a good point, its not just Emerging Churches who are filling up this demographic. I actually interviewed for a pastoral job at a broadly evangelical Reformed church that was largely made up of 20’s and 30’s with 1,600 people in attendence. There are certainly others out there ‘targeting’ them. Redeemer, Covenant Life Center (they have a 1000 people in that demo.), and more.
What your comments do for me as I consider my thesis is that they make me realize that it really does need nuance in that many emerging churches have clearer commitments than just reachign that demographic like being relevant to postmoderns, taking the missiological dimensions of postChristendom in the West more seriously, and focusing on communal living, etc. I think the brunt and force of the thesis still stands but nuance is definitely needed.
Stephen what’ the name of you church?
Blessings, Tony
April 12, 2007 at 1:40 am
I think there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. I belong to a church with multiple congregations, one of which is made up almost completely by young adults. There are churches all around us reporting that their young people are leaving their churches – they’re not coming to us, because the majority of our growth is new converts – but in this area we seem to be growing. We’re not an emerging church though, we’re a fairly traditional Reformed Anglican church.
What being in this church has helped me see is that you don’t have to go ‘emerging’ to reach the young people or the people on the fringe – I think Tim Keller proves that at Redeemer every single week – some of our ministry principles might overlap with those in the emerging church but in the end we’re still fairly traditional. Traditional churches can do it.