The more I read about the Emerging Church, the more I find that I identify with many of its distinct pillars. While I’m cautious about labeling myself as a member of the Emerging Church (I have a thing with labels…I get claustrophobic); I certainly embrace and enthusiastically so – its emphasis on decentralized servant leadership, the importance of narrative, reformation of praxis, reconsideration of scriptural interpretation, covenant relationship, and personal and social transformation by God’s Spirit.
It certainly is a joy for me to live out this style of my Faith as a current church servant-leader within a traditional, denominational, church. While early on in my pastorate I received a lot of strange looks (and I still do from time to time), now I’m beginning to see some lightbulbs go off in different people in our congregation who are opening their minds to consider a different Way. I’m not necessarily looking for uniformity of belief and opinion (which in itself is different from many mainline churches and denominations), but I’m more so looking to spark critical thinking and conversation.
My own internal conversation and transformation is being spurred by reading books like Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church by Reggie McNeal, Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne, They like Jesus, but not the Church by Dan Kimball, Choosing the Kingdom: Missional Preaching for the Household of God by John Addison Dally, Servant Leaders, Servant Structures by Elizabeth O’Connor, Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation by Carol Howard Merritt, and The Leadership Jump: Building Partnerships Between Existing & Emerging Christian Leaders by Jimmy Long.
However, my beef with this genre of literature and the movement as a whole is that while I’m excited and finding great articulation for what I feel God doing in, to, and through me; it seems as if every voice that is speaking on the emerging church and where the church is going in this post-modern society is from an anglo-European/White perspective. Every book! Now, of course I hold out the very real possibility that I’ve just not found yet the authors or nationally recognized speakers who are articulating, presenting, and defining the emerging church from an African American, Native American, Latino, Asian, or African perspective, but at the rate that I’m reviewing available literature on the topic, one would think that I would’ve bumped into a slew of folks by now.
With all the liberation, inclusive, hospitality, covenant relationship, ancient-future talk that emerging church “leaders” are offering up right now, I think they might want to be wary of replicating a model of Christian orthodoxy that once again marginalizes and disregards non-White voices.
I’m prepared to make that a part of my spiel when I attend the upcoming Beatitudes Society meeting in DC this week. I know there are White Christians in this movement who are sensitive to this issue, but perhaps they don’t know how to authentically engage this topic and are unsure of how to submit themselves to non-White Christians who can lead them to a more robust embrace of a radically diverse Faith existence.
For this reason I truly appreciate the interview Ooze TV conducted featuring Soong-Chah Rah who speaks specifically about freeing the church from White captivity. I will soon add his book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity, to my bookshelf. (It will be a great placeholder until I publish mine on the topic…I mean can a brotha get a word in!? -smile)
Related posts:
- Pat Buchanan: “This country has basically been built by White folks” In this 10 minute interview last night on the Rachel...
- Never Ever Go To Church Again I was blessed to be invited to present a workshop...
- September 11th: A day for PEACE. A day for COMMUNITY. On September 11th, I was blessed to commemorate an unforgettable...
- Malcolm X on White Liberals An excerpt from a 1963 speech by Bro. Malcolm X...
- Father Michael Pleger on White Entitlement This sermon got Father Mike removed from his church –...
Heber,
First of all, thank you for the mention. And second, thanks for the push! Keep pushing! We need a church movement in a new generation that is as diverse and beautiful as our culture. And we'll keep seeking out new voices.
Bruce Reyes-Chow hasn't written his book yet (go, Bruce, go!), but we are working to make sure the voices on God Complex Radio are diverse. We've had wonderful people like Steven Ray, Shawn McMillan, and Michael Livingston on, and Margaret Aymer is going to be on today. Of course, we are always open to suggestions as well!
It will be good to meet you on Wednesday!
Hi Carol,
Thanks for the comment and the names of others who I can start googling and such. I'll also start checking out God Complex Radio. It looks like your show is on itunes. I'll subscribe today.
I'll keep pushing and agitating on the issue – hopefully, not in an "annoying little brother" kind of way, but definitely in a way that communicates my deep love for the church and the radical diversity expressed in The Way of Jesus.
I look forward to meeting you on Wednesday. Your book has been a tremendous blessing to this 20-something year old pastor of a church where the average age is 65.
I believe in order for people to be genuine in their convictions they have to view it from their own perspective. The beauty of Christian literature is that over the course of many generations individuals from different walks of life across the spectrum have been able to interpret their experience with God. If our European brothers and sisters have been inspired to write about their new found revelation so be it. This may be a way to reconcile some of the injustices that have perpetrated in the name of religion.
Amen, A-woman and A-everybody…,
Thank you again Heber for another great post. I've been thinking about the topic of the state of the Christian church all year long. I was even talking about it yesterday and I'm about to write a note on my Facebook about the lure of Christians stating "Im spiritual vs Im religious". The reason I have been thinking about this all year long is because after traveling to Brazil and seeing how the Brazilian Evangelical Church is literally trying to undo what the Catholic Church has set up in that country upsets me. The Evangelical church is upset with the Catholic church for adapting "too much" to the culture of the people. I feel like the Christian church as a whole is like that: The Christian church, especially the Black Christian church does not want to adapt to today. Not adapting is literally killing our congregations. I hear way to often the statements "I don't go to church, because Im not accepted" or "people will talk about me".
We are supposed to be followers of Jesus the Christ who loved all of the people around him and yet we have people who yearn for Christ not being able to fellowship because we let our own prejudices get in the way. SMH
If we don't get up and start adapting to the times, NOT CHANGING, but adapting to the times I feel the Christian church will be something of the past.
Charles, the emerging church movements around the world are certainly not all white. I was pleasantly surprised to see the movement in Japan was young Japanese starting their own churches – very exciting to see.
i would suggest getting out of the library and meeting some emerging missional church groups because the book world is very very biased towards a certain type of person most likely to buy the book – giving us a lopsided view of the global emerging church. blogs tend to be better than books also, in my opinion because they are often written by people actually doing it, not just researching and reading the same books as everyone else.
Andrew! Thanks for the comment and the important reminder about the emerging world being bigger than the Western White experience. While this critique was focused a bit on available literature on the topic; you're exactly right to recommend that we get out of the library and connect with missional church groups to get a more accurate picture of what's going on.
The new monasticism site (http://www.newmonasticism.org/) provides a searchable database where people can look for missional communities near them. TransFORM, a missional community formation network, also provides similar opportunities. (http://www.transformnetwork.org/)
It just might be time for a road trip. (smile)
That notwithstanding, it's been my experience that in this country those who define and articulate a position, or idea, or new finding are the ones that are perceived to "own it." And for those of us of African descent, this reality has been particularly harmful in the way of distorting, re-defining, or altogether dismissing our cultural experience. (and of course this is not our exclusive experience, many other people-groups are engaged similarly by the dominant culture) My critique in this post just might be a provocative appeal for myself and others in social minority groups to put pen to pad and in the spirit of self-determination write our own story.
Andrew maybe you misunderstood me, i did not say all the church movements are White, but I actually traveled to Brazil and trained under those in the social justice movement. People who work with oppression be it race, gender, sexual orientation and religious oppression.
As far a reading in books I don't have to read a book to see that we Christians are too often too busy hating and at times not giving enough of that Christ-like love that we are suppose to be giving.
As a Black person in the United States because of my people's skin color, (White) Christians enslaved people who looked liked me in the name of the Christianity. Oh yeah let me not forget (Male) Christians would not allow women to vote for years and some Christians still do not want women behind the pulpit! Hmm am I forgetting anything… let me not forget in the past decade Christians have marched holding signs that God Hates______insert expletive.
Andrew maybe I need to find those biased books to get your point of view, but living in this skin in the U.S. I have SEEN oppression with my own eyes with Christians being at the helm of that oppression. I am thankful that as a Christian I serve a God who can use me to do His work even through my own foolishness and my own prejudices I can still help someone else and He can still get the glory.
PS I am extremely about the Japanese starting there own churches.
Without prejudice, amen to that. We have for too long been enslaved to a white-euro Calvinist model ourselves. Too many black clerics have sold out part and parcel. What we refer to as God is much larger than Calvinism, Judaism and 1st century religious constructs. We must never forget that the Holy Spirit was sent to non-whites as well, consider the encounter of Phillip and the Eunuch (which was recorded in the book of Acts. Thank God that someone is waking up!
Good to "hear" from you, Rev! I pray all is well on your end. And yes, I feel that there is much "waking up" that is happening in various quarters. The unsettling of the systems of this world, I think have brought about an unexpected blessing of inviting people to think in new ways, search for different answers, and explore different perspectives in search of a fuller understanding.
Charles, thanks for responding. hope i was not too harsh or unthoughtful.
as for books, there really are not many that i know of. i have brought international leaders of color to USA for some of our emerging church events under the Boaz Project but there was not much interest in book deals etc.
there are some books but they are not in English. The blogosphere is fairer, but again the language barrier is harsh and in many ways the English language determines the winners more than the color of skin.
[...] shared before my feelings on the Emerging Church (even before I read Mr. Rah’s book) and I have to agree with his [...]