Emerging Grump

It occurred to me that, being on the Emergent Blog Roll, I probably ought to say something about the whole Emergent movement. Like many others on the list, I've been influenced by philosophical and theological trends of the last fifty years, and like many others, I've come to be an educated critic of the tradition into which I was converted. So to those extents, I'm a kindred spirit with folks like Noetic Penguin and Seraphim.

Yet every Sunday, round about 11:00 AM (it's variable when one has a three-month-old son), the folks at Bogart Christian Church see me walk through the doors for a time of singing and prayer and hearing our pastor Ben Parker preach from the Scriptures. Moreover, we enjoy being there. Moreover, although we've had to move away from one church we've loved and left another that didn't love us so much, we don't plan on abandoning that little small-town Georgia church for a new church plant, a house church, or any of the other alternative modes of worship that Emergent-types tend to prefer.

So what gives?

First, my examples are a bit deceiving--because I know NP and Seraphim, I used their names, but even a quick look at NP's blog or Seraphim's blog will reveal at least love for even if not conformity with established churches. Neither necessarily devotes much time to attacking "The IC." (That's "The Institutional Church" for those not versed in Emergent-talk.)

Second, even those Emergent-types who prefer not when it comes to traditional Sunday gatherings things to teach those of us who prefer to live as young gadflies within, I know that our ministries to the current power structures are similar. As I grow older, I hope sincerely that more gadflies will find our little gathering worth some stings as I become more a part of that assembly's establishment (as one tends to do if one sticks around long enough--an establishment with a different ideology is no less establishment). I know that some of those stings will come from "outside" the organizational paradigm to which I've become accustomed, and I'd be a better theologian if I took them seriously, so why not start now?

But to take "them" seriously in the future (I haven't the first clue what "they" will look like when I'm fifty) means taking our own critiques seriously enough to present them as true correctives while maintaining the discipline of idol-smashing when our own ideologies become more precious than our own ideas ought to be. And when we fail in this discipline (as establishments always do), we'll have to be ready to let the young smash them for us.

All of this bad prose is to say that our relationship to the current establishment, mine as a gadfly and the "true" emergents' as outsiders, can only minister to the Gospel as long as we remember that we're serving the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah. As cliche as that sounds at times, our situation always must be relative to the grand mission and the grand story that makes us and to which we, when we're faithful, contribute. Our idol-smashing hammers must not themselves become holy relics lest we become the monsters we've set out to slay.

Of course, I've said nothing new here; any Emergent worth her or his salt would say likewise. All the same, I figured I ought to justify my presence on the Emerging blogroll with a bit of commentary.