My Emerging Father-in-law
Written by Mark Van Steenwyk : March 4, 2008
When you hear the word “emerging church” what images come to mind? Young, attractive, urban hipsters sipping lattes with an extra-shot at the local organic fair-trade coffee house while discussing deconstructionist philosophy? Or perhaps it is similarly attractive, young, urban hipsters worshiping in dark sanctuaries, candles lit, with provocative images projected onto dual screens? Maybe it is young people living in intentional communities trying to reimagine monasticism in a fresh way.
Let me share a new image of the emerging church: my father in law. Bob is in his 70s, but looks much younger. He and my mother in law (a nurse) live in rural Minnesota in an old one-room schoolhouse that was converted into a house over 30 years ago. He is into natural medicine, eating healthy, and exercise (though he doesn’t exercise that much these days). Bob spends much of his day watching cable news channels. He is disgusted with the war, frustrated with the evangelical right (which he calls “revangelicalism”) and longs for a better way of being evangelical.
Bob is an ex-convict. He did time in Stillwater Prison for armed robbery. But while he was in prison, charismatic renewal hit. He became a leader in the prison church. He met my mother-in-law in prison (who was volunteering in the eye clinic as a nurse).
Bob has, for over 30 years, a progressive evangelical take on the world. His experience in prison was infused with a late 70s Jesus And in the last 30 years he has seen his faith co-opted by conservative politics.
My relationship with Bob has always been pretty good. But things went to a whole new level when, one day at a restaurant in Perham, Minnesota, he looked at me and said: “Almost every pastor I’ve known needs to go to jail to understand. But I don’t think you need to go to jail.”
Bob longs for a renewal in the church. One that centers around the teachings of Jesus, but takes the complex world in which we live seriously. He longs for a Christianity that is integrated, that is holistic. He longs for the emergence of the church.
Now, every time he visits, we chat about the Emerging church. Is it a movement for him? Or is it a movement for the urban educated hip elite? Can the emerging church (or, specifically Emergent™) speak into rural America? Can it speak to the Latin American worker? Or how about the imprisoned? The handicapped?
Sure…our hope is that by preaching a new Christianity of orthopraxy and radical contextualization, we will see change. My problem isn’t with our ideas and our message, but in how we speak into the world, and to whom we address our message. We seem to practice ecclesial Reaganomics: that if our message connects with those in ecclesial power, it will simply “trickle down” to the masses.
We, my emerging church brothers and sisters, are trying to instigate change. But we need to be careful that in our efforts we don’t aim “high” but “low.” It seems that, in the past couple of years, the emerging church has tried to climb the ladder by fostering partnerships with denominational offices and lofty institutions and publishing houses. We’ve sought celebrity and acclaim and respect. Those that seek to emerge among the marginal–those foster partnerships with the homeless with immigrants and the uneducated–have a lesser voice in this conversation.
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Mark…send me the information in an email and I’ll put it up. Or you could submit it as an article.
You wrote the following, which I think really hits the heart of the issue
“But we need to be careful that in our efforts we don’t aim “high” but “low.”
Exactly. This is what Jesus did didn’t he? Jesus even crossed over “The Law”
to save those who were regarded as unclean…less than human…a degraded
portion of God’s creation. But notice that as Jesus began to draw crowds,
both “The State” and “The Church” institutions sought to kill him. Why? Because Jesus is a threat when He cannot be brought to bow to these institutions.
When his followers became too great in number, Rome simply declared itself
to be “Holy”. So ask yourself, did The State that killed Jessus change at that point? No. It was still ( and is still ) the same old “State” of politics/war/greed/power. This is what happened when The Right came into
politics with Jerry Falwell and The Moral Majority in the early 1980’s and defined
being a christian as: pro-war/ pro-government/moral police to the world.
Your friend remembered (as I do ) a time long ago when being a beliver was
very unusual and ‘fringe’…a Jesus-Freak. But once The State gets ahold of the
’seal of approval’ of The Church ( “Just War Doctrine” etc) it will not relinquish
it without a fight. Seek to define what is truly good and right. Laszlo
I think we all already know this, but the emergent church is not really a unified movement. I would argue that the main thing (perhaps the only thing?) almost all emergents share is their distaste for the evangelical right who care more about abortion than they do about Jesus. If emergence is an anger towards the way that most evangelical churches do ministry, then I think we do have a movement going on. I do not, however, think the emergent church should be breaking off from the protestant church. You can see more thoughts on this on my blog. I have been dealing with the ideas being thrown around at Scot McKnight’s blog (www.jesuscreed.org) on how to explain emergents to those outside of the emergent movement. Basically, I really believe that those inside the emergent movement really need to try and seek change from within the church that is already established in cities and neighborhoods. I understand this is hard, but I think it is the way we need to do it. We need to be the change in the church that brings the church into a new era. We do not need another reformation that separates us even further from the Catholic Church.
I love your last paragraph. Without taking away from how you defined marginal, I’d like to add that segment of christendom that seeks to remain isolated and aloof from mainstream conversation inside a traditional setting - they don’t give a rip about publishing houses, lofty institutions, or denominational offices. For those that find themselves where I described (which is where I find myself), there’s ample opportunity to emerge among the “marginal.” In fact, if you “aim high” in that setting, you just might shoot your own head off. May where we aim be about bringing life to people.
“Sure…our hope is that by preaching a new Christianity of orthopraxy and radical contextualization, we will see change.”
Not sure exactly what it means, but I like it!
Mark, for every father-in law like yours there are many more. There is a vast group of mature Christians out there who are searching, but they don’t know where to go or who to connect with. They’ve seen movements of God co-opted to use as a tool for control and the Truth of Jesus marketed for gain. How is the Emergent Church and other new going to reach out to these people?
Good Article
And if the emerging church movements’ arms are too short to reach into those contexts (those of rural Americans, Latin Americans, people with handicaps, people in prisons) then its ideas and its message are a little anti-climactic and unimportant, simply reaching a new elite with new ideologies and secret codes (those riding on the reactionary pendulum swing against old, evangelical conservativism). If my pentecostal little sister and brother-in-law, my southern baptist mom and dad, my church-burned older sister and brother-in-law, the hispanic immigrants, hippies, and cowboys in my small mountain town in Colorado can’t benefit from its message, I’d feel kind of selfish taking part in it only because it relieves my young/white/churched-kid disappointment in the status quo (which is quickly becoming some quasi-version of an emerging fad). I think you are right, we need to be less concerned with being legitimized as a movement in the eyes of the same ole, same ole, and seek legitimacy instead from “the least of these,” those we are in danger of tripping over and leaving by the way-side.
nicely done, mark!