Why I Decided NOT to Critique the Emerging Church

I’ve been pretty quiet about the emerging church stuff for nearly a year now. Early on in my own journey as a pastor, I had some big questions about how we ‘do’ church and experiemented with lots of different things. I completed a years internship with FORGE and both read and visited as many different expressions of church that I could.

During that journey, I became excited about the possibilities I saw and the creative ways that people were engaging in mission in their local communities and gathering to worship. My intention was to gather as much information as I could about these emerging faith communities, honestly critique them in a way that showed their strengths and flaws, and then propose a way forward for us at MBC in terms of our expression of church.

But something unexpected started to happen. I realised that honest critiques of the emerging church were hard to find - all the ones I read sounded no different to the critiques of the traditional church. Yes, the words were different, but the struggles were just the same. Struggles with who was included and who wasn’t, what worship should look like, what form mission should take, questions of leadership, what place theology took in the life of the community and so on. They were all there.

Increasingly, the emerging church movement started to look like a fad. A movement created by spoilt, consumeristic Christians, wanting to turn their backs on traditional church for the sake of their own ego and need for attention. And the traditional church began to look like a drunk old man surviving on distant memories, totally ignorant of it’s smell and slow decay.

Yet the emerging church also held a vitality and momentum that was seeing discipleship happen in new ways that placed faith right in the midst of the real world. The traditional church could tell amazing stories of God at work through history and held mountains of experience ripe for rediscovery.

As I wavered between great admiration and then great disgust for the church I realised that my critique wasn’t about the emerging church at all. In fact, it couldn’t be. Because the emerging church doesn’t exist. Nor does the traditional church. All we have, whether we like it or not, is church.

There are millions of different expressions of church, and I like some far more than I do others. But that doesn’t make them any more or less church. I’m fairly certain that the expressions I struggle with, God likes quite a lot. I’m absolutely certain that the average guy that I meet down the street, who has no church experience, couldn’t care less about what form a church takes.

But I don’t think that leaves us off the ‘critique hook’. Instead, it demands that the knives of criticism be put away and the conversation about how we can be more faithful as the body of Christ begin. What can we learn from each other about worship, about leadership, about prayer, about mission, even about God?

For me, I tend to think of God as inviting people to be part of the divine community. Our mission is to carry and deliver that invitation, then gather with those who have, or are thinking of, accepting that invitation to community. The form of that mission and gathering isn’t really that important, but all should be acknowledged and celebrated.

I don’t think I am alone in this thinking. In the last twelve months, I’ve been interested to see some of the harshest critics of the traditional church, give up on their emerging church experiments, stop their blogs, and returned to established congregations in search of healing. Going it alone, in isolation from the rest of the body has caused more harm than good. Likewise, established congregations have let go of some of their long held traditions in favour of contextually relevant mission, searching for fresh enthusiasm for the call from God.

We are one church, serving one God, but in a multitude of ways. It’s time to give up on the ‘my way is God’s way’ attitude and accepted that we are all on the same journey - flaws and all. Let’s critique in a way that helps others in their journey, rather than kick their feet out from under them. You can be sure that we’ll need their help at some point too.

My critique will still happen, but it won’t be of the emerging church. It will simply be of church. Actually, it will probably be just of me, in the hope that you can help me on my journey and, perhaps, I can help you on yours.