Some Really Good Observations

I wish I had been the one to make them, but such is life.

• DJ Chuang points out that the need for leadership still remains, regardless of the structure or lack thereof in a fellowship:

  a lot of me loves the conversations about the emerging church and how it's asking great questions + rethinking + exploring ideas + reconfiguring + having an edgy attitude + prying out raw honesty + deconstructing + admitting brokenness.. and looking at the leading conversationalists, while the dialogue is open to all b/c of freely available technology, it still takes an articulate person to join and to parlay with the meandering mix of feelings and thoughts..

  and it still takes the leader to form the community, to guide the conversations, to manage the people that want to gather for exploring and/or sharing their spiritual journey.. I've yet to see a more corporate model of leadership where a plurality of leaders, much less the whole (or majority) of a community group (aka "church") gives the direction or vision or cohesion to making that journey meaningful and going somewhere ...

• Clifton Healy shares some "Reflections on Liquidity and Ecclesiology:"

  I've been rummaging among some of the Emerging Church, Liquid Church (or other prevailing trademark), websites. I came away sympathetic but unmoved.

  Not because I don't think the Em Churchers are sincere, or that they aren't deeply reflecting on mission and ecclesiology, nor that they've succumbed to uber-relevancy. I do believe they are sincere. It is evident that they are reflecting deeply on church and witness. And though I might question their enthusiastic embrace of the mislabeled "postmodern" milieu, they nonetheless appear to be endorsing it in something of a critical way ...

  ... But I am unpersuaded that the rejection of much of historic Christianity by the Em Churchers is as reflective as their embrace of "postmodernity" and of its tenets.

  First, though it has become accepted to refer to our era as postmodernity, I am hardpressed to understand how postmodernity is so far removed from modernity as to be able to see that it (postmodernism), indeed, has succeeded modernity ...

  Secondly, one of the tenets of postmodernity bought into by the Em Churchers is the primary nature of reality being "liquidity" (or, relativity) ...

  ... But on what grounds does the Em Church make these judgments? How can the Em Church escape the same criticisms it makes of the "modern," "solid" churches? Aren't such judgments as arbitrary and self-justifying as the ones the Em Churchers criticize? If not, why? And if they have a solid and unvarying standard of judgment, doesn't this undercut their claim to fluid morphing?

  ... But more importantly the Em Churchers make an assumption about worship that they do not seem to have derived from Scripture: that the purpose of worship is to meet needs ...

  My hope and prayer is that the Em Churchers' flirting with the historic Church will lead, as it did in my own journey, to an embrace of the historic Church which is alive and well--and meeting needs--today.

• WaterCarriers points to a message from David Orton of Lifemessenger Ministries that compares the advent of the emerging church to the rising of the Davidic order:

  ... Now the difficulty the prophetic person faces, as with Samuel, in making the transition from the old order to the new is a change of mindsets. Apparently it is possible to pronounce God’s judgements on the old and even proceed to anoint the new but still be governed by the old. By old mindsets that judge after the flesh rather than after the Spirit. By dependence on Saul – a human king who is distinguished by superior strength and stature.

  Surely, this is the current situation in the church. Like ancient Israel we have cried out, “Give us a king like all the other nations”. And we have become like the world, judging the things of God after the flesh, and therefore, depending on human programs over God’s presence, on activity over adoration, on man’s structures over God’s Spirit ...

  ... This is the hour for the emerging church – for men and women after the heart of David – for brokenness of heart, for 24/7 intercessory worship, and above all else, for the pursuit of God’s presence over our programs.

  As with Samuel the time has come to shift gears. To align ourselves with the new Davidic order – to anoint those who have a heart for the presence and who will play only to an audience of one. To judge only after the Spirit and go with the move of God.

  It is time to fill our horn with oil and be on our way.