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Reviewing Deep Church by Jim Belcher
Jim Belcher, the author of Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, and I have much in common.
We both did masters degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary.
We both have a heart for church planting.
I teach a class on the Emerging Church based on the intensive that he references in his book. (35)
We get frustrated when people talk past one another, defaulting to caricatured stereotypes rather than embracing a posture of openness.
And we both value looking for a “third way” to approach dichotomistic thinking.
He is right when he says,
It seems that every time someone criticizes the emerging church, they pick the worst-case scenario or the most extreme statements. (49)
He is also correct in noting,
It seems the emerging church, for rhetorical purposes, uses sweeping generalizations about the traditional church that are unfair. (76)
The larger Body of Christ would indeed be served well by discourse that is deeper, more specific, and marked by a sense of humble openness. Belcher’s chapters on Deep: Truth, Evangelism, Gospel, Worship, Preaching, Ecclesiology, and Culture, are essentially his attempts to facilitate just that – a worthwhile enterprise in my opinion.
While Belcher’s book is truly helpful in this regard, I’m not sure he really hits the mark in terms of articulating a true “third way” as a means of engaging these topics. Very often, his conclusions in these chapters are a combination of a chastened version of the EC position he articulates and an expanded version of the traditional position he articulates (usually w/ reference to Tim Keller and his church!). I suppose this is a kind of “third way,” maybe even precisely the one Belcher desires, but I’m not certain it’s the most helpful kind of third way for the Church to pursue.
The mistake, I believe, comes in the assumption that one can simply pit the positions of the EC against the positions of the traditional church. The main problem here is that many in the EC camp are themselves trying to articulate and maneuver a “third way” between the modern categories of conservatism and liberalism, a feature that Belcher seems to either overlook or discount w/o comment. An indication of this is his quick dismissal of the Anabaptist tradition from which many in the EC draw as one which is able to circumvent many of the dichotomies addressed in this book on account of its fundamentally, Christendom-rejecting, stance. Belcher never seems to ask, “How might people in the EC camp already be searching for a third way in response to classic approaches to these issues?,” but assumes that their positions are simply reactions against the positions of traditional churches.
Belcher sets himself on this course in stating,
We need to define it [the emerging church] as a movement, particularly its theology. The best way to do this is to look at what the emerging church movement is against – the things they are protesting and the rasons why they are calling for change. (38)
For the life of me, I can’t grasp why someone would want to define a movement by what they are against (even it it is a protest movement) rather than what they are for. We certainly regard what the classic reformers were for as far more more important than what they were against! But more than this, Belcher fails to identify missiology as a core motif for the EC. For many, if not most, in the global EC movement, it is an attempt to participate with God and God’s mission in the world that is reshaping how they understand the sorts of topics that Belcher raises in his book, not vice versa.
These criticisms notwithstanding, I am glad that Jim wrote this book and don’t doubt for a second that it has an will continue to help many.
**Jim has recently decided to resign from his position as lead pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA. You can read a letter he wrote to the congregation regarding this transition here and some additional discussion about this sort of trend here.
The Death Rattle of Christendom by Jason Coker
This is a piece that my friend Jason Coker wrote recently. I linked to it in other places, but it’s so good that I wanted to repost it in its entirety. Visit Jason’s blog for more of his excellent insights and writing. You might even consider supporting him and his family in terms of the ministries and projects they help lead by becoming a member of his blog community. Here’s the post…
She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered, turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment
Dear Fyodor,
It’s getting rough for the old girl. Despite the rattle of death in her chest, there’s still a hint of the former beauty and dignity behind those eyes and, as anyone would tell you, she’s as feisty as ever. Still, the truth is she’s dying and there’s nothing to be done about it. As we sit around her bed praying and waiting, her moments of lucidity come with rapidly decreasing frequency.
Everyone here is dealing with the ugliness of her death in their own way. My sister refuses to let her go. She stands just beyond the door, arguing in harsh whispers with the doctors and nurses. She won’t believe the facts of the case, and it’s easier to argue over the interpretation of charts and data than to look straight at the old girl herself. I don’t blame her. Looking is hard.My older brother looks but doesn’t see. “She’s just a little out of shape,” he says optimistically. “If we can get her up and out she’ll be back to her old self, ruling the roost!” And so he hangs a dress on her and rolls on rouge and glides her round the ward in a wheelchair festooned at the handles with curly ribbon and helium balloons so she might speak with the people. I tell you it’s horrible. Such a thing would be bearable (commendable even!) if compassion was his aim, but it’s not compassion he seeks from her fellows in the ward. No, it’s her rulership he hopes to re-animate and so he props her up like some animatronic relic – a broken-down ecclesiastical Chuck-E-Cheese promising fun-and-games for all the good little children.
Sadly, she scares the children. They weren’t around when she was bright and beautiful. They never attended her grand parties. They don’t know who she was (and let’s face it, as good as she might have been she was also a hard taskmaster, perhaps taking her job of keeping us safe too seriously and – I think – secretly hoping we would never grow up). So the children shrink and shriek and their lack of piety (or pity) has fermented my brother’s optimism into a swill of bitter insistence, rendering him defensive and defiant and refusing the temporary inebriation of grief.
(Can I tell you the truth? I fear her death is more than he can take. He always seemed the stronger one growing up, but I’m not sure he can keep his sanity without her strict order around the house – without her barbed-wire fences to separate the wild vines from the cultivated ones. I don’t think he realizes it was always her intention that we harvest the whole field, and I think all these years later she might even be happy to see us tear down those fences if keeping them meant letting the whole field go to waste.)
For me, it’s her delirious rants that are the most heart-wrenching. She’ll stubbornly hoist herself up to rebuke people who aren’t even in the room – resurrected memories of conflicts and passions long dead and gone to everyone but her own cruelly vivid memories that now, in her mortal distress, seem to have taken on a quality that simply overwhelms her present reality. Perhaps it’s for the best – perhaps it’s mercy – but for better or worse I find I’m not just grieving her death, I’m grieving the robbery of her chance to see the transcendence of death by the legacy she leaves in us. I think she would rejoice in that. I think she would look us in the eye and say, “It’s good to grieve me, but celebrate too. If I live on like this then death wins by making me into a mockery of life. But if I die then the life I lived will be victorious by passing on to you. Now take the best and go.”
She deserves that moment; it’s her birthright. But we won’t let her have it. We insist on preserving her because somehow we think our life is in her, when actually her life (all life!) is a gift that grows in the giving, until one day it grows so fat it swallows every one of us whole, death and all. Who would have thought, Fyodor, that the nihilism you so strenuously decried would lead not to the depraved insistence on rationalized death, but to the dogmatic insistence on irrational life?
You must be wondering how she can possibly endure for so long. It’s the machines that keep her alive. Pray for a death rattle in the chest of those monstrosities so she might finally be free from our obsessions, and enjoy a long night of rest in a well-deserved sleep.
Lessons in Entertai… er… Excellence
As a guy who used to swim in this world, this is simultaneously the funniest and saddest thing I have seen in a long, long time.
Granted, this is apparently a piece of self-deprecating satire by Northpoint Community Church (as others have noted), but sometimes the easiest way to get people to overlook what is most obviously wrong, is to make light of it.
Some comments on the video here.
Alan Hirsch – Making Missional Marketable
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Alan Hirsch. The book he co-authored with Mike Frost, The Shaping of Things to Come, was the first I read that began to help me understand the angst I felt with the attractional model of church so prevalent in the US.This is why I was so thrown a few days ago when I read that Alan Hirsch had asserted that American Christianity is the great hope for the Church in the West. He made comments to this point in the opening remarks of his talk at a conference called “Verge” in Texas. You can view the video (Session 2) here. At one point he said,
If we don’t win the battle of the decline of the church here in the states, then it’s not going to come from anywhere else. We will win or lose the battle over here in the states.
His rationale seemed to be that 1) the Church is the rest of the West is all but dead and 2) that Americans have a built-in entrepenurial (apostolic) sort of spirit.
On this count, I was surprised and disappointed on 2 levels.
First, he seemed to communicate a latent assumption that “the West” maintains a position of superiority in terms of global Christianity. He admitted that Christianity is growing in non-Western parts of the world, but never suggested that our hope might lie in learning from what God is going there.
Secondly, he referenced the American entrepreneurial spirit as the key factor in our ability to “win the battle of the decline of the church.” I was blown away! I was immediately reminded of a quote by Einstein, which, even more surprisingly, he referenced later, but totally misused,
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
It is American entrepreneurialism that got us into the mess of creating a church system predicated on the cultural values of individualism and consumerism. Relying on the same characteristic is hardly a promising solution.
Over and above all these disappointments comes a more biblical/theological one, namely, that putting our hope in anything except for a willingness to sacrifice what is most dear to us, to listen to the voices of those on the margins, and to trust God with our future (which may very well mean the increasing marginalization of the church), is, in any sense, in keeping with God’s desire for the Body of Christ.
There was a 2nd major part to Hirsch’s presentation that really made me nervous.
He made the claim that the dominant expression of church in America, that of the seeker-sensitive/attractional model, has a market appeal to about 40% of the American population. This yields what Hirsch called a “strategic problem” and a “missionary problem.”
The “strategic problem” is that 95% of the churches in the US are seeking to become the kind of church that appeals to this same 40% of the population.
The “missionary problem” is that 60% (and growing) of our population is being virtually ignored.
So far so good, but at one point Alan was commenting on attractional types of churches that are “reaching” the 40% of the American population and said, “Those who do this well should strive to do it better.” Not change what they are doing, just do more of the same, better.
In affirming an attractional (or what he is now calling ex-tractional) model of church simply because it succeeds in drawing a crowd, he fails to critique the most devastating reality, namely, that these churches, on the whole, don’t make disciples. By and large, they facilitate the already pervasive nominal christianity that pervades at least 40% of the American population.
Let me try to summarize my push back on what I am hearing and seeing from Alan Hirsch as of late.
1) Putting our eggs in the basket (Easter week!) of the American church is futile, if not sinful. This is exactly how we got where we are and trying harder ain’t gonna cut it. It may very well be that God is at work killing off a defunct ecclesial trajectory and we would do better to repent and ask for mercy than to rely on any ability we think we possess to save the day.
2) Alan is right, there is a descent portion of the American population that has some natural affinity with the sort of church which thrives in Christendom. But, merely because people will respond to an attractional model of church does not make it ok. A pragmatic victory is almost never a biblical one. Attractional models of church are built on the cultural values of individualism and consumerism and, save for the grace of God, are incapable of yielding the sort of disciples the world desperately needs.
I have a serious and growing concern regarding the temptation to make missional marketable. The temptation is especially seductive to those who, like Alan, have a deep love for the church as the Body of Christ and want to see it thrive. But, if God means for missional theology/ecclesiology to benefit the church, it will remain an invitation to repentance, sacrifice, and death. This sort of invitation has never had much market appeal, especially in the US.
What is the Emergent Church?
Last night Amy and I joined a friend for a presentation at Harvest Bible Chapel on the topic of, “What is the Emergent Church?”1 as part of an ongoing apologetics series they are doing.
As someone who gets to teach the course, The Emerging Church in the 21st Century, once a year, I was looking forward to attending and seeing what was said and discussed; especially considering the speaker for the evening was Dr. David Finkbeiner, a professor at Moody Bible Institute.I mean, if you want to get a balanced understanding of what the “Emergent Church” is all about, who better to ask than a professor of systematic theology at a school that officially, “does not endorse the emerging/emergent church” right?!
Harvest would have done well (though from what I could tell – would never so much as have considered it) to have invited at least one person who could have spoken as an insider to the EC discussion.
It was clear from the get-go that the tenor of the evening was going to be critical, bordering on condemnatory. And this, even after Dr. Finkbeiner admitted that there is no simple way to define the EC as a whole.
Dr. Finkbeiner’s focus for the evening was theological method. His premise was that what undergirds the “Emergent Church” movement is a post-conservative theological method. His aim was to critique this theological method overagainst a more traditional conservative evangelical one.
Essentially, here’s what that meant…
1) Post-Conservatives err in their non-foundationalist approach to epistemoplogy which takes things like history, context, and culture seriously, where as conservatives rightfully embrace Scripture as the objective and sole foundation to all knowledge.
2) Post-Conservatives err in asserting that absolute truth, while real, may often times be beyond our ability to fully grasp. Conservatives rightfully assert not only the reality of absolute truth, but affirm our ability to, “with a little hard work,” objectively know it.
3) Post-conservatives err in not championing the inerrancy of Scripture. Conservatives rightly hinge all their hopes on Scripture having been verbally and inerrantly inspired.
So, here we have a guy who is doing a masterful job of towing the line of modern conservative evangelicalism, lambasting those who dare to think, “There might be some stuff we’re missing here.”
As I listened to him describe some of the perspectives and viewpoints of post-conservative evangelicals I found it hard to believe that he wasn’t converting himself!
He quickly and coyly dismissed a broad range of the most helpful aspects of post-conservative theology…
– The idea that we need one another in the pursuit of truth because all of our perspectives are bound by a host of factors
– The notion that theology loses its character when not born out of an embodied witness
– The view that the authority of Scripture lies not primarily in its abstract character, but in its function in the life of the Church
– The insight that biblical propositional truth derives its meaning and significance from the narratives in which they’re embedded
– That post-conservative theology is, at its core, a prophetic call to revisit some of our modernistic assumptions
In each and every instance, the speaker noted that these are the hallmarks of post-conservative theology and then attempted to show why they ought to be rejected.
OK, so that was the presentation and as enlightening as it was, the Q & A time was even better. I quote.
“Is Willowcreek an Emergent Church? I heard they sell Brian McLaren books.”2
“Is the Emergent Church a cult?”
“I’ve heard that Urbana and InterVarsity are becoming more Emergent. Should I keep my kids away from those groups?”
I actually had the opportunity to ask the last question of the evening…
With a little trepidation, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I teach a course on the Emerging Church at the seminary level and I need to say that I think there have been some pretty unfair characterizations of the movement here tonight. I was hoping that before we go you might offer a positive comment about the role the EC has had in the recovery of the importance of the Missio Dei or incarnational approaches to ecclesiology.
Dr. Finkbeiner commented that, “Yes, there has been some focus in those areas, but they still are wrong in how they do theology.” So, no, he didn’t have one positive thing to say the entire evening about the EC.
Left completely aside from the discussion of the evening was the historical evolution of the EC movement, its place in the scope of the collapse of Christendom, and the most relevant bit of information given the scope of the talk, namely, that theological method simply isn’t at the center for 90% of the people who are in any way affiliated with the movement. For the vast majority, what is central is joining God in his mission in the world and finding ways to make the church, not culturally relevant (as too many assume), but incarnationally faithful in the pattern of Jesus.
Between the tenor of the presentation and the questions and comments of the audience, it’s little wonder that conservative evangelicals are so often characterized by fear and close-mindedness. There are many in the EC community who are trying to carve out a way of being the church and doing theology that doesn’t fell prey to these charges. I was really hoping to come away pleasantly surprised by the event. Sadly, I didn’t.
- There is no such thing as the Emergent Church. This is a classic conflation of the terms Emergent Village and Emerging Church offered by those who aren’t all that familiar with the topic [↩]
- Someone from Harvest was quick to announce that Harvest doesn’t! [↩]
We Need WAY More Missional Conversations: A Response to Ed Stetzer
I regret that I’ve never med Ed Stetzer face to face. I’d like to believe we’d be fast friends who share a mutual passion for people coming to know Christ and joining in God’s mission in the world. At the same time, we’d disagree about a lot. For starters, a blog post he published yesterday critiquing the need for missional (among other) conversations.
Ed seems worried about missional conversations that don’t…
involve men and women being redeemed, changed [sic], and transformed by the gospel.
I read that and think to myself, “What? Where in the flip is he getting his definition of missional and who is he talking to? These are the things that are at the very center of missional theology and ecclesiology.” I have worked hard over a healthy number of years to stay involved in every way I can imagine in the missional conversation and outside of the very fringes that you find in any population, I simply don’t know of any missional people or groups that would merit this kind of concern.
Ed says,
It is never a good thing to be defending our lack of converts to Christ while we are busy converting people to our cause. To me, it is the difference between complaining and creating a new (and better) way.
He goes on to say,
I don’t want missional to mean attacks on mega and fast growing churches who are reaching people “wrongly,” while missional churches are reaching few “rightly.”
I think I get Ed’s heart here, but these statements are FAR too simplistic. One of the main reasons for the lack of converts in missional and emerging churches is the popularity of churches who are, in fact, “reaching people ‘wrongly’.” For those who embrace missional theology and are trying to cultivate missional communities, especially in contexts where Christendom still exists, we are fighting an uphill battle… and wearing a 100 lb. pack… and it’s raining… and we’re barefoot… and… You get the point. In a culture which still features the cheap grace of individualistic salvation and consumeristic church involvement, guess what – the message of dying to yourself, submitting yourself to a community and joining in God’s Kingdom mission that will, in all likelihood, threaten your identity and lifestyle is pretty unpopular. When given the option, would-be converts will of course respond,
Thank you very much, I think I’ll just attend St. McDonald’s where I get saved by raising my hand, I can disappear in the mass of people, and the entertaining music & speaking gives me warm fuzzies every time I’m there.
The fact of the matter is that those who identify with missional theology engage in this fight for the very reasons mentioned above – because the converts made by the dominant expressions of Christianity in the US are in no meaningful way redeemed, changed or transformed. I doubt many people are more aware of the crisis of nominal Christianity in the US that Ed, so I find this a surprising oversight. So, albeit with the character and concern of Jesus, I think this is very much a biblically justifiable fight for missional people to be engaged in – the fight for biblical faithfulness and fulfilling of the command to make disciples.
Ed goes on to say,
I am not willing to say that a lack of converts is a sign of unfaithfulness. But, I am willing to say that too many change movements are not seeing lost people’s lives changed.
Fair enough, but this reality is far more poignant and dire when we consider the lack of disciple-making happening in long standing traditions that aren’t thinking about change at all!
Stetzer rounds out his post by saying,
So, let’s continue conversations about being “missional” or whatever, but let’s not do so if it distracts us from the mission. Instead let’s talk about these issues but not let them distract us from our main focus–showing and sharing the love of Jesus to a desperately lost world that needs a message of hope.
To this I say a quick and hearty AMEN! But I am also quick to resist Ed’s false dichotomy by pointing out that having “conversations about ‘missional’ or whatever,” aimed at the faithful practice and witness of the church is VITAL to the manner in which we show and share the love of Jesus. Not having these conversations, or having them poorly, is far more dangerous than seeing them as a distraction.
Between the promise I believe missional theology and ecclesiology hold for the trajectory of Western Christianity and how incredibly misunderstood both remain, I submit that we need WAY more conversations, not less.
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