Transcript Document

“Whither (or Wither) the Church?”
Some would say:
… whether the church?
WHAT IS THIS NEW WORLD?
AND WHO ARE ITS INHABITANTS?
Who is the New Audience?
1.
Gen-Xers
Millennials
3. The hyphenateds
4. The SBNR’s
5. The Nones
2.
Gen-Xers and Millennials
Generation X
Millennials
Born 1965-1976
51 million
Born 1977 – 1998
75 million
Paul Knitter on “double belonging”
 “…more and more people are finding that they can be
genuinely nourished by more than one religious
tradition, by more than their home tradition or their
native tradition.”
-- from Knitter, Without Buddha I could not
be a Christian
“In the last five years alone, the
unaffiliated have increased from just over
15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults.
Their ranks now include more than 13
million self-described atheists and
agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as
well as nearly 33 million people who say
they have no particular religious affiliation
(14%).”
— Pew Report, October 2012
JOHN COBB TO THE UCC ANNUAL CONFERENCE:
• “The more progressive denominations on the whole
have been losing members and resources. There
are many reasons. But I think the deepest one may
be that what we do and say does not seem to be
terribly important. This is true with regard to our
children whom we bring up in the church. They may
have a positive attitude toward it, but they do not
see any reason to give much, if any, of their time
and energy to its support.”
NEW FORMS OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
ReIMAGINE is a center for life integration.
Fueled by the life and teachings of Christ we aspire
to revolutionize how people live their lives and empower leaders
who will revolutionize their communities.
<www.reimagine.org>
Shane Claiborne
“How can you worship a homeless Man on
Sunday and ignore one on Monday?”
“To refer to the Church as a building is to call
people 2 x 4's.” – Shane Claiborne, The
Irresistible Revolution
“Most good things have been said far too
many times and just need to be lived.”
“Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar,
marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst
when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and
powerful.” – Shane Claiborne, Jesus for
President
THE FUTURE OF FAITH
Faith in a postmodern world…
• Post-foundational means that we are free to tell a
narrative about ourselves and God, without having to
first ground the language about God.
• Postmodern means that the “modern” beliefs in (and
valuing of) individualism, rationalism, and unlimited
progress no longer hold.
• Post-Christendom means that Christianity no longer
seeks to dominate over other religions. The distinctive
features of one’s belief and practice do not negate or
supersede other paths. We are stronger, not weaker,
through religious difference and diversity.
Emerging Leadership in Emerging Communities is…
1. Scouts who go out and find those who are hungry for
community
2. Hosts in the emergence of new communities
3. Discerners: they see, state, and honor the spirituality
within those they meet – both inside and outside the
church.
4. “Cultural creatives”: those who hear and understand the
pulse of our age
5. Bridgers of conversations and groups and identities
6. Lovers of what the church has been and Welcomers of
what she is becoming
Pastor as Host. The host…
•
makes guests comfortable
•
anticipates their needs
•
matches folks up and gets
conversations started
•
establishes a tone or ethos
•
leads by example
•
at her best, transforms the lives of
those she hosts
A new set of spiritual disciplines:
• The spiritual discipline of coming alongside (cf.
Parclete, the Holy Spirit, in John 14)
• The spiritual discipline of listening
• The spiritual discipline of sitting with the
questions
• The spiritual discipline of “living in the grey” (cf.
Tillich on faith and doubt)
• The spiritual discipline of Hermes: translating
the language that nurtured us into the language
of those around us – including, most definitely,
those outside the church!
Religion in an interreligious age…
(1) It’s about a faith that you can wrap your life around
(2) It’s about being part of a community on the Way
(3) It’s not a zero-sum game (with other persons or
religions, or with our culture as a whole); it’s not “you
win, I lose”
(4) It’s as simple as “understanding and acceptance,”
and as complex as the emerging universe
(5) It’s about living!
Our experience (and action) at Claremont…
 Phase 1: A traditional Christian seminary
 Phase 2: Becoming the Christian member in an
interreligious consortium
 Phase 3: Rethinking and re-imagining: where are authentic
and growing Christian communities? Who attends them?
How can we train leaders for effective ministries both within
congregational structures and outside of them?
Web generations
 Web 1.0 – static content. Circa 1990
 Web 2.0 – user-generated content. The present
 Web 3.0 – “the semantic web.” Learning systems.
Reading and comprehending natural language.
Automated thought. Not here yet…
Church 2.0 – Emerging Communities
 Open-ended
 Participants constitute the service and its content
 Pastor as host
 ‘The congregation knows more than the pastor’ (Mark
Glaser)
 Blend tradition and the present
 Most young people are already here.
Faith 1.0
 Propositions
 “The truth once given…”
 Those who go back to Faith 1.0 are the most vocal.
Think of Mark Driscoll: “Scripture commands us to
‘contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to
the saints’ (Jude 3). Therefore, the truths of
Christianity are constant, unchanging, and meant for
all people, times, and places.”
“If relativity is a stormy sea of uncertainties,
faith does not magically make the waters
recede so that we can march through them
on a dry path. What it does do is give us the
courage to set sail on our little boat, with the
hope that, by God's grace, we will reach the
other shore without drowning.”
WHAT IS THE EMERGING CHURCH?
Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures
“The emerging church is diverse and decentralized, averse
to static structures and fixed ideas. Many participants
would resist my calling it a movement, instead
describing it as an ongoing conversation about church
and mission. It certainly is a conversation, which is
occurring in local communities, at conferences, and in
a multitude of blogs…
Brian McLaren stated the agenda succinctly: "If you have
a new world, you need a new church. You have a new
world."
-- Hal Knight
THE EMERGING CHURCH:
Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy
A generous orthodoxy “is not to claim to have the truth
captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall. It is rather
to be in a loving…community of people who are seeking
the truth…on the road of mission…and who have been
launched on the quest by Jesus, who, with us, guides us
still.” It is to follow Christ in “a wild, inspiring, high-risk
pursuit…”
JOHN WESLEY AND THE EMERGING CHURCH, by Hal Knight
The Emerging Church Discussion
(1) “Emerging churches are not responding to a passing
fad but to deep, permanent, and pervasive cultural
change. Subsequent generations will be shaped to an
even greater extent by postmodern culture… Emerging
churches exult in traditional spiritual practices and
imagery, but seamlessly interweave it with
contemporary language, art, and technology…”
JOHN WESLEY AND THE EMERGING CHURCH, by Hal Knight
The Emerging Church Discussion
(2) “Emerging churches are communities that practice
the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures”
-- Gibbs and Bolger
Younger Americans are finding interesting new ways to
mine what this means … new ways of thinking and
being “church”…
JOHN WESLEY AND THE EMERGING CHURCH, by Hal Knight
The Emerging Church Discussion
(3) “Emerging churches are radically incarnational—
they see all of life as potentially sacred, all of
culture subject to transformation and renewal by
the kingdom of God. They reject the dualisms of
sacred/secular, public/private, mind/body,
faith/reason that are so central to Enlightenment
thought.
As Gibbs and Bolger put it, ‘For emerging churches, there are
no longer any bad places, bad people, or bad times. All can
be made holy. All can be given to God in worship. All
modern dualisms can be overcome.’”
JOHN WESLEY AND THE EMERGING CHURCH , by Hal Knight
The Emerging Church Discussion
(4) “Emerging churches are often frequently networks of
small groups, and for some mutual accountability is a
central practice. They also seek to discover what it
means to be a genuine community, a people together in
relationship, rather than a gathering of individuals…
The Hon.
Ebrahim Rasool,
South Africa's
Ambassador to
the United
States – Launch
of Claremont
Lincoln
University, Sept.
6, 2011
“What we celebrate today is our
willingness to graduate from the
platitudes of interfaith dialogue
and engagement for short term
goals, all of which are crucial, to
an experiment that seeks to
transform the teaching of
religion and faith as a
precondition for any religious
ambition to transform and
improve the world.”
“Recognizing the Divine in each other is the lost
skill of humankind. How do we speak to the
divine in the other before we speak to his race
or nationality? How do we greet the divine in
the other before we judge her language, colour
or hair type? …
“…How do we live interdependently with each
other before assigning each other gender, age
and culturally specific roles? How do we relate
to the divine in each other before we get
agitated by the myriad different ways we
believe, worship, pray and chant? How do we
see the spiritual in each other before claiming
exclusivity and uniqueness for our particular
doctrine, theology or ideology?”
Jill Jacob: Tikkun olam
“We come to a definition of tikkun olam as the process of
fixing large societal problems, while maintaining a belief
that our actions can have a positive effect on the greater
human and divine world. When I think about my own
tikkun olam commitments, I ask myself whether the work I
am doing makes our society as a whole function in a more
positive way; whether the work allows even the most
vulnerable members of society to live fully realized lives;
and whether the work contributes to establishing a world
in which the divine presence is more readily apparent. If we
each ask these questions of ourselves, we can help to
ensure that our work is worthy of being deemed tikkun
olam.”
H. Richard Niebuhr and
“Radical Wesleyanism”
“There is no time or place in human history, there is
no moment in the church’s past, nor is there any
set of doctrines, any philosophy or theology of
which we might say, ‘Here the knowledge possible
through revelation and the knowledge of
revelation is fully set forth.’ Revelation is not only
progressive but it requires of those to whom it has
come that they begin the never-ending pilgrim’s
progress of the reasoning Christian heart…”
www.philipclayton.net