Last night I decided to read through some old blog posts. My blog is the closest thing I have to a journal. Reading through old posts imparted to me a sense of development and growth to which I might otherwise be clueless. Much has happened in 2.5 years.

Some of my posts made me cringe–they were unreflective and shoddy. Others made me feel a sense of craftsman’s pride. Several posts issued hopeful challenges; these posts called for change or response. I’d like to highlight one of those old posts. On December 15, 2004, I wrote a post in which I made 5 suggestions to the emerging church. Here they are, abridged:

1. Don’t forsake working with existing networks of churches.
2. Take your time learning from traditions before you implement their practices and beliefs.
3. Rethink Pneumatology.
4. Challenge homogeneity.
5. Be Different.

Since that earlier post was written, two things have changed. First, my understanding of the emerging church phenomenon (or is it, perhaps more apt to say: “phenomena”?) has grown. Second, the movement itself has grown (both in maturity and in numbers). I now realize that my critiques (especially with point 1 and 5) were too simplistic. But I’ve also seen the movement address the sorts of concerns that I, and many others, have raised. The emerging church continually challenges its own homogeneity. It continues to ask the hard questions. And while the criticism that the emerging church is simply seeker 2.0 can always be levelled at some, it is increasingly becoming a baseless and weak criticism. In every point, I have new reason for hope. Except for, perhaps, number 3.

I’m still concerned about our lack of deep pneumatological reflection. To say it in non-theological-nerd language: We in the emerging church haven’t really thought about the Holy Spirit deeply enough.

Allow me to state my original critique:

Unless our praxis is shaped by the Spirit, then we will end up with yet another set of static models. Postmodernism allows us to conceive of dynamic systems that work as open sets. Let’s utilize this philosophical freedom to conceive of ways of being and doing the church that orients us towards life and growth, rather than falling into new ways of limiting one another. This area is of utmost importance, since how we conceive of Pneumatology effects our understanding of authority, leadership, decision-making, mobilization, cultural engagement, etc.

Quite frankly, many of my emerging church friends (not including the post-charismatic or post-Pentecostals that I know, like John Musick) are only accidentally pneumatological. Their pneumatological reflections seem to be limited to common grace. In other words, they tend to say: “God is at work in all sorts of areas in culture. We, the church, need to get on board with these expressions of the beautiful, the true, and the good.”

While such cultural expressions are indeed the work of the Spirit, I’m sometimes afraid that it can sometimes be easy to miss the uniquely powerful ways that the Spirit is made manifest through the Church.

I tend to think that the emerging church, in our desire to be intellectually and culturally rigorous, have jettisoned too much of that messy, ignorant-seeming, Holy Spirit “stuff” that seems to be the domain of pietists and Pentecostals.

More on this soon…

About Mark Van Steenwyk

Mark Van Steenwyk is a member of Missio Dei. He is a speaker, writer, educator, and grassroots organizer. With the support of the Central Plains Mennonite Conference, he travels to radical and intentional communities around the country to help network and offer support.