What is the Emerging Church?

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What is the Emerging Church?

• Our Research
• Listening to the Voices
• Connecting the Dots

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What is the Emerging Church?

• Our Research
• Dieters Story
• Listening to the Voices
• Connecting the Dots

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Listening to the Voices

• I read the Gospels over and over. Nothing I was
  doing on Sunday was what I thought Jesus would be
  doing if he were here.
• Joe Boyd, Apex, Las Vegas, US

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Listening to the Voices

• Visions (York, UK) worked for clubs on Friday
  nights, providing visuals for local promoters,
  and had worship on Sunday nights. From an
  integrity standpoint, they would not do anything
  at the club on Friday that they would not do in
  church on Sunday. Their life in the world must
  remain consistent with their faith commitment.
  Correspondingly, they would not do anything on
  Sunday that they would not do at the club on
  Friday their faith had to be expressed in ways
  that was native to the culture around them.
  Living in the culture as a local, and yet
  pointing to One beyond the local, helps keep the
  Emerging Churches worlds intact.
• When worship and witness are in sync, as with
  Visions, it creates a 24-7 spiritual life for
  their participants, overcoming the secular
  aspects of their lives with reminders of God. Sue
  Wallace (Visions, York, UK) explains, The reason
  we embrace culture in worship is not only to make
  the place feel like home to those coming into
  it from the outside world, but also to make us
  take our worship from our church space into our
  world. When you are in a shop or a pub, and you
  hear a track that has been used in church, it
  forges connections and makes you think about
  God. When we bring our own culture to God in
  worship, then that experience extends to our
  daily lives when we are away from the community.
  These secular worship expressions become
  reminders and clues of God everywhere.

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Exercise

• At your table, modify your list, if need be

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Listening to the Voices

• Once, we were getting kicked out of a park
  because of our interaction with the homeless.
  You cant feed the homeless here, you need a
  permit, the policeman said. Burke replied, We
  are not feeding the homeless. We are having a
  picnic. Were eating with them.
• Spencer Burke, Newport Beach, US

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Listening to the Voices

• Sitting in pews standing up sitting down the
  same format each week. It just wasnt working for
  us. As artists, writers, creative people, the
  single, fixed configuration of soft-rock worship
  and three-point linear preaching was a body we
  not only felt uncomfortable in, but that was
  dying around us. We were frustrated. We sat each
  week surrounded by some of the brightest talents
  in film, TV, theatre, art, social work and
  politics... But made to watch in virtual silence
  because we didn't play guitar and didn't
  'preach'. These were the only two gifts that were
  acceptable as worship. It just seemed such a
  waste. We just thought it was outrageous that we
  had all these gifts that were being used in the
  corporate world, in the market economy, and were
  being snubbed for poorly done soft-rock and 2-bit
  oratory in church. We saw that if worship was
  about gift, then what we brought to worship had
  to be integral to us, something meaningful from
  who we were.
• Kester Brewin (Vaux, London, UK)

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Exercise

• At your table, modify your list, if need be

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Listening to the Voices

• Karaoke is the model of Alternative Worship we
  have adopted. One woman was awful and sounded
  like a gerbil! Everyone cheered her on You go
  girl they shouted. These are gospel values,
  singing their hearts out to God. They give their
  best. This is much better than auditioning a
  worship team. I would much rather have the
  gerbil-voiced woman! I have one woman who plays
  accordion out of tune. She is awful, and yet we
  love listening to her.
• Karen Ward of Church of the Apostles, (Seattle,
  US), explains

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Listening to the Voices

• I would not make a good CEO, and I realized it
  would cost me too much to try and be that. It
  seemed like the most alive and best things about
  me would not thrive in the role of pastor. I
  also found out that I loved to write sermons and
  that I could preach, that people were really
  compelled by my sermons and my classes and my
  prayers and how I talked about God and the Bible,
  it just didn't seem like the church was the place
  to do that. To be a pastor, you had to be more
  CEO-ish, and less an artist and interpreter of
  the faith.
• Debbie Blue, co-pastor, House of Mercy, St. Paul,
  US

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Exercise

• At your table, modify your list, if need be

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Listening to the Voices

• We needed a way of life, a way to pattern our
  lives on Jesus. Historical practices are ways to
  do this. It makes sense of the world and provides
  a framework for our lives.
• Jason Evans, Matthews House, Vista, US

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Listening to the Voices

• It's funny how we talk of 'bringing things to
  God' - like he wasn't there all the time. What
  we're really doing is bringing our attention to
  bear on the relation between things and God that
  already exists, and maybe making a few conscious
  adjustments to our own place in it.
• Steve Collins, Grace, London, UK
• .

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What is the Emerging Church?

• Emerging Churches are those who take the life of
  Jesus as a model way to live (one), who transform
  the secular realm (two), as they live highly
  communal lives (three). Because of these three
  activities, they welcome those who are outside
  (four), they share generously (five), they
  participate (six), create (seven), they lead
  without control (eight), and function together in
  spiritual activities (nine).

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What is the Emerging Church?

• Emerging Churches are communities who practice
  the way of Jesus in postmodern cultures.