Emergent Brethren

I’m grateful in a lot of ways for Starbucks. No, one is not the coffee. I go there often, but I’m not a coffee drinker. I’ve been a tea drinker ever since high school when a former Brethren missionary from India taught me to drink tea “the British way”. I do like the teas at Starbucks, but that’s not why I’m posting. I also like the culture, the ability to meet friends, to hang-out and make new friends, as well as to have a place to work when I need to get out of the office.

Another thing I’m grateful for is the writings on their cups; The Way I See It series. Recently, I got a cup with #254 of the series. It is written by Terry Kellogg, executive director of 1% for the Planet, a network of companies that donate a portion of sales to environmental causes. He writes, “I have spent a lot of time living where two bioregions intersect. There’s often amazing diversity in these zones, as species native to one region seem to thrive in the presence of those from another. . .“  Terry goes one to write about how there can be a beneficial relationship between business and the environment.

What grabbed me from the quote above was the thought of how two different types of plant species can co-exist at the same time and place. Yet, if you go very far in one direction or the other, you lose the unique mix. This thought reminds me of what Dan Kimball and Brian McLaren have been teaching for years, that we are living in that inbetween, transition time between the modern and postmodern times.

From conversations I’ve had, some of  us can’t wait for postmodern culture to develop more fully and want to jetison modernity ASAP. But like the mixture of species thrive together where environmental zones meet to create a unique mix, can we find and blend the best of modernity into the ways we want to see church move forward into?  What do you appreciate about Modernity that you feel is beneficial to the church? How can we create a unique blend between the two so that we can bring with us the older Brethren, while reachin those who are outside the church? Is this possible in your mind?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Peace!

Jeff Glass

I am not Presbyterian, I am not Calvary Chapel, I am not Vineyard, I am not Pentecostal, I am not Catholic, and I am not Brethren. I am myself, a sinner saved by grace, a convert to the way of Jesus, a child of the Living God.

Having come to the church by conversion, not birth, I have like many, meandered through denominational identities. One of the results of that experience is that the only name that I’m willing to keep is Christian. And to be honest (or better said accurate), the last ten years has heaped so much social baggage onto the title Christian, that even it, usually makes me wince. I most prefer just to say that I am a follower of Jesus. If you don’t know this then you should; Christian youth culture burgeons with similar sentiment.

Postmodern theologians regularly postulate, that the world is becoming post-Christian… they are probably right about that. But also true and equally important is the fact that the church is becoming post-denominational. Those of us who’ve come to Christ because of a change of heart or mind, rarely feel connected to the history and evolution of the denominational hierarchy that hosts or owns our property. Postmodern converts identify with God, and one another, based on a set of shared beliefs, not the name of a schism or its founder. This is an uncomfortable truth for folks that have life-long lived with the name of a denomination etched into their family and its history. But to reach the emerging generations, we must allow them to keep their identities, and not expect them to adopt ours.

And in a way, what I said at the beginning of this discourse is wholly and hugely inaccurate.

I am Presbyterian, and Calvary, and Vineyard, Pentecostal and Catholic. And yes, I am Brethren as well. Not the Brethren of the past, but the Brethren of tomorrow; and so are the emerging generations of which I am a part. We are a mosaic of traditions, tapestries of faith and practice, and although we understand the importance of the past, we are far more interested in the needs of the future. And we will only take with us, that which we think rings true.

The world is very different than it was forty years ago, and the global amalgamation of Christian ideas has left us needing a church whose theology is refined beyond denominational differences. We long to embrace our cousins from every corner of the family of Christ, and differentiate ourselves by our praxis, not our assumptions.

And praxis is meat of the matter for the emerging generations. It’s what we do, not what we think that defines us. In this way the Emerging Church and Brethren culture have much in common. Lay led, service oriented, egalitarian, ecologically sensitive, intentionally peaceful and dedicated to simple living; all these things are true of both Brethren and Emerging. Indeed, the Emerging Church and the Brethren persona is a match so natural, that their corollaries seem a machination of Divinity.

The question is what do we do with this opportunity? Can we find the courage to embrace the emerging generations and allow them to inherit our mission and revitalize the church? Or will we insist that they adopt our identities, and force them out on their own, to form their faith families without us.

http://www.urbanmosaic.org/

I just bought some books today and one of them was “Organic Community” by Joseph Myers (author of The Search to Belong). I have a feeling that this book will help the development of the Veritas community (www.veritaspa.org) as we are striving to be an organic community formed and grown more by relationships than programs and grown by those relationships and not so much by advertising (though we are still doing some of that). The first Foreward is by Randy Frazee and I was struck by two quotes he uses. The first one being, “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils” (Francis Bacon) and the second is “There is nothing more perilous than change” (Machiavelli). I am struck by these two statements. We in the church seem to be stuck in the middle of these statments. Some don’t want to change but by not changing they bring, what Bacon calls, “new evils” and others want to change but don’t always see the effects of said change. Frazee goes onto say, “Because change is so difficult, we often delay moving in the new direction due to the mistaken notion that while things may not get better, they certainly won’t get any worse. Now, instead of making the necessary changes, we also must deal with the negative effects of postponing that change.”

That I believe in a nutshell is where I am right now. (see my previous post) Somewhere between risk, change, and the status quo.

But aren’t we all?

Ryan