From TIME magazine’s article on Brian McLaren:
At a mere 48, McLaren, a nondenominational Maryland pastor, qualifies as elder statesman of a movement called the “emerging church.” Its disciples, mostly 35 or younger and including mainline Christians and Catholics, have in recent years moved from cyber bulletin boards to pulpits of their own. Their goal: to deconstruct traditional church culture yet remain true to Scripture.
Bingo. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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Aaron, I too think it’s a great McLaren quote. Many McLaren fans, however, still seem committed to using his thoughts and material to deconstruct how we understand/use scripture. I don’t pick that up from him each time I see him in person, but I still see it happening in relation to his writings.
This great pastor also has employment with a congregation at a building and is a paid minister. He profits from the books he publishes. Nothing wrong with it, either ! Great thinker, helpful man.Not Jesus. Let us never loose that.
Looking through the article and seeing the other evangelicals they feature, I have to say I don’t feel like I have much in common with most of them. At all. If this is what the world thinks of evangelicalism, I would be happy to be called post-evangelical.
“to deconstruct traditional church culture yet remain true to Scripture.”
I’m more interested in what is constructed & true to scripture.
I think we would all like it if what were constructed were true to scripture, and I think we should celebrate the points at which it is. At the same time, though, we should be willing to admit that not everything is that way; we are constantly in need of self-evaluation and reform. Sometimes that will require taking apart things that seem to be fine, in order to find out that what lies beneath is not at all fine.
True, I’m just glad I’m seeing more ‘positive’ expressions of the emergent movement. We need to balance this self-evaluation with a need to constantly living with a kingdom focus. And this kingdom includes a lot of traditional churches who are our brothers/sisters in the Lord who have no desire to change the way they do church.
I think for many of us “church” has become a hindrance to kingdom focus. My personal goal is to deconstruct traditional church culture in order to reconstruct one that is radically congruent with God’s mission as recorded in Scripture.
Right, but what do you do with all the people who love Christ, live missionally and belong to the traditional church. The ‘traditional church’ will be deconstructed in time as these people die off and are replaced with a new generation of believers expressing their faith, one we believe is radically congruent with God’s mission. I love what is happening in the emergent space, I believe what is going on is a great shift in re-thinking the Kingdom, but I don’t know if we should have the pride-centered belief that we are somehow better and they are a hindrance. I pray God gives us a calling and we obey, but that calling isn’t the call he’s given everyone.
As bad as the Church can be at times, I think we need to learn to forgive it and love it, and to understand its function in our relationship with Jesus.
The only think I’d really like to deconstruct is my own tendency toward sin.
Some things are inevitable, and just like death and taxes, there will always be some things about the Church that are a pain in the ass. If we focus on those things, we might be missing the point.
D, your point is very well taken. I think that it is inconsistent to dub the traditional church as substandard for all people. We have no more right to force our cultural presuppositions on them as they do to force theirs on us.
I think the point of deconstruction is to uncover what of the church is culture-based and what is God-based, with the ultimate goal of reconstructing church so that it may powerfully and more effectively embody the mission of God in culture.
I just had a cool thought. What if we stopped being critical of traditional churches but instead loved and encouraged them to keep being church for the people of their culture? Could that loving kindness one day be repaid with them encouraging us to be church for our emerging culture? Can two groups, truly seeking after God, be indefinitely be divided?
Aaron-
That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while!
Is this what a Kingdom focus looks like?