emergent thinking
I chatted for a while after church today with a couple of friends. The church is Christ Episcopal, where I play the late service every Sunday, after going to the early service at my own church and teaching Sunday school there. But these friends weren't people I knew from playing at Christ.
Nope, these are friends from my church, Trinity Baptist, and from the extended family associated with it. But they've found themselves going to Christ Episcopal on Sundays, without necessarily being Christ Episcopal. Ah. That's the distinction. I go to Trinity, and I am Trinity. There's something about being really plugged in to a church family that makes you that church. In the children's sermon this morning at Christ, the rector (who is much better with adults than children) was trying to express this distinction, along with the truth that a church isn't merely a building or programs. I kept wishing he'd do the old hand motions we all know: Here's the church, here's the steeple. Open the doors, and see all the people. Your hands tell the truth. The church is made up of its people.
I was thinking about how these friends fit into another large family that sort of overlaps with the first. There's a whole bunch of us who are interested in what's called the Emergent Church, so called because it's felt to be emerging from the constricting cocoon of traditionalist modernism to become a dazzling butterfly in the multifarious meadow of postmodernism.
You'll not find them in a church building at all. You'll rarely find them together even on a Sunday. Instead, you'll find them at a coffeehouse on a Saturday, or at someone's home on a weeknight. They'll share not only their spiritual journeys, but their common frustration with the traditional church as it's practiced, a sense of futility about the himham of the average Sunday service, with its announcements for the Wednesday bake sale and the greeting of guests and the sermon with three points all beginning with the same letter. (And when has a children's sermon ever been satisfying, even for the children?) It's not just a matter of starchy traditionalism, either: there's just as much frustration with the churches of slick pop and Power Point as with the wheezing hymns and boilerplate bulletins, because they're all trapped in the cage. The emergent church folk say that the church needs to get out of the cage and go roaming free in the world where it belongs.
This means no to buildings (and building funds, and building campaigns), yes to coffeehouses; no to Vacation Bible School and yes to family vacations; no to covered-dish suppers and yes to supper at the McMains's house; no to Sunday school lessons delivered as lectures from a stage and yes to conversation, exhortation, and dialogue; no to organ preludes and choral features and instrumental offertories and yes to singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs in a way the disciples would instantly recognize.
Do you see the flaw yet? Maybe it will fall into place better when you begin to notice who these people are: the vast majority are what the advertising world calls "creatives." They're musicians, artisans, architects, graphic designers, actors, poets, writers. The cream of the floating world.
This all falls into place once I start asking what my spiritual involvement would look like if I actually got involved with an emergent community as my primary thing. (Most emergent communities I'm aware of spend lots of time talking about emergent communities. But that's no different from the equivalent time at my church spent in committee meetings, except the coffee is better.)
For example, I'm a gifted speaker. Every Sunday I prepare a pretty darn good Sunday school lesson, delivered as a lecture from a stage. It's a major source of spiritual growth for me, and, I hope, a source of insight and challenge to the folks who hear me.
Also, I'm a gifted musician. Right during the time of flux in which I was begging to serve at Trinity, Christ Episcopal approached me, and so now I do there what I'd wanted to do at my own church: play music with some really great musicians every week. I perform a meditative prelude, often an inventive take on an old Sacred Harp tune or ancient chant; I play keyboard for the worship team that leads in Gaelic hymnody, revival-tent oldies, Milhaud, Elgar, contemporary pop, authentic gospel, groovy 60s and 70s stuff (last week I did the Rhodes part for "Day by Day" from Godspell), and, just this morning, a floridly melismatic R&B number sung by a beautifully competent Alicia Keys sound-alike.
Now. I'm also involved, to some degree, with Catherine's spiritual family, a loose, let-it-be congregation that comes the closest I've ever seen to fulfilling every single ideal of emergent thinking. They're wonderful. Though not self-consciously postmodern — their feet are planted in the sandals of the 70s — they are as dispersed theologically as they are geographically, with a collage of Christian thinking and disciplines enlivening each other in a way that would make St Paul, author of Romans chapter 14, smile.
What if a community like that were my exclusive home, my place for spiritual growth and involvement? No doubt, it would be satisfying to some extent. But what of the great teaching, the scholarly Biblical examination that I love so much, and that I try to replicate and honor week by week in my own teaching? What of those preludes, postludes, offertories? What of the Bach and the Milhaud and the Copland? There can be no doubt that the traditional church is second only to the medieval church in providing people like me a venue.
The fact is, I'm a gilder. That's what most of us are, we creators, we inhabitants of the floating world. And, much as we love to see the church break out into the open field, the plain fact is that a you can't gild a lily. Gilded lilies, even if they were possible, would be ridiculous. Perhaps our postmodern society still has a place for the gilded cage.
Nope, these are friends from my church, Trinity Baptist, and from the extended family associated with it. But they've found themselves going to Christ Episcopal on Sundays, without necessarily being Christ Episcopal. Ah. That's the distinction. I go to Trinity, and I am Trinity. There's something about being really plugged in to a church family that makes you that church. In the children's sermon this morning at Christ, the rector (who is much better with adults than children) was trying to express this distinction, along with the truth that a church isn't merely a building or programs. I kept wishing he'd do the old hand motions we all know: Here's the church, here's the steeple. Open the doors, and see all the people. Your hands tell the truth. The church is made up of its people.
I was thinking about how these friends fit into another large family that sort of overlaps with the first. There's a whole bunch of us who are interested in what's called the Emergent Church, so called because it's felt to be emerging from the constricting cocoon of traditionalist modernism to become a dazzling butterfly in the multifarious meadow of postmodernism.
You'll not find them in a church building at all. You'll rarely find them together even on a Sunday. Instead, you'll find them at a coffeehouse on a Saturday, or at someone's home on a weeknight. They'll share not only their spiritual journeys, but their common frustration with the traditional church as it's practiced, a sense of futility about the himham of the average Sunday service, with its announcements for the Wednesday bake sale and the greeting of guests and the sermon with three points all beginning with the same letter. (And when has a children's sermon ever been satisfying, even for the children?) It's not just a matter of starchy traditionalism, either: there's just as much frustration with the churches of slick pop and Power Point as with the wheezing hymns and boilerplate bulletins, because they're all trapped in the cage. The emergent church folk say that the church needs to get out of the cage and go roaming free in the world where it belongs.
This means no to buildings (and building funds, and building campaigns), yes to coffeehouses; no to Vacation Bible School and yes to family vacations; no to covered-dish suppers and yes to supper at the McMains's house; no to Sunday school lessons delivered as lectures from a stage and yes to conversation, exhortation, and dialogue; no to organ preludes and choral features and instrumental offertories and yes to singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs in a way the disciples would instantly recognize.
Do you see the flaw yet? Maybe it will fall into place better when you begin to notice who these people are: the vast majority are what the advertising world calls "creatives." They're musicians, artisans, architects, graphic designers, actors, poets, writers. The cream of the floating world.
This all falls into place once I start asking what my spiritual involvement would look like if I actually got involved with an emergent community as my primary thing. (Most emergent communities I'm aware of spend lots of time talking about emergent communities. But that's no different from the equivalent time at my church spent in committee meetings, except the coffee is better.)
For example, I'm a gifted speaker. Every Sunday I prepare a pretty darn good Sunday school lesson, delivered as a lecture from a stage. It's a major source of spiritual growth for me, and, I hope, a source of insight and challenge to the folks who hear me.
Also, I'm a gifted musician. Right during the time of flux in which I was begging to serve at Trinity, Christ Episcopal approached me, and so now I do there what I'd wanted to do at my own church: play music with some really great musicians every week. I perform a meditative prelude, often an inventive take on an old Sacred Harp tune or ancient chant; I play keyboard for the worship team that leads in Gaelic hymnody, revival-tent oldies, Milhaud, Elgar, contemporary pop, authentic gospel, groovy 60s and 70s stuff (last week I did the Rhodes part for "Day by Day" from Godspell), and, just this morning, a floridly melismatic R&B number sung by a beautifully competent Alicia Keys sound-alike.
Now. I'm also involved, to some degree, with Catherine's spiritual family, a loose, let-it-be congregation that comes the closest I've ever seen to fulfilling every single ideal of emergent thinking. They're wonderful. Though not self-consciously postmodern — their feet are planted in the sandals of the 70s — they are as dispersed theologically as they are geographically, with a collage of Christian thinking and disciplines enlivening each other in a way that would make St Paul, author of Romans chapter 14, smile.
What if a community like that were my exclusive home, my place for spiritual growth and involvement? No doubt, it would be satisfying to some extent. But what of the great teaching, the scholarly Biblical examination that I love so much, and that I try to replicate and honor week by week in my own teaching? What of those preludes, postludes, offertories? What of the Bach and the Milhaud and the Copland? There can be no doubt that the traditional church is second only to the medieval church in providing people like me a venue.
The fact is, I'm a gilder. That's what most of us are, we creators, we inhabitants of the floating world. And, much as we love to see the church break out into the open field, the plain fact is that a you can't gild a lily. Gilded lilies, even if they were possible, would be ridiculous. Perhaps our postmodern society still has a place for the gilded cage.
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