Post-Protestant: What I'm Talking About

Lent
Polycarp of Smyrna

Context

For those of us who have grown up in the evangelical world it kinda feels like there was a big family argument before we were born and we grew up being told that our great uncle was a really bad man and we shouldn't have anything to do with him. Then as we got older we found out for ourselves that actually he wasn't a bad man at all, in fact he had a lot of wisdom.

from Matt, discussing Liturgy

How to Know You are "Post-Protestant"

Ordinary Time

"I just realized that I have more reasons for not being a Baptist than I have for not being a Catholic."

- Anonymous (until I have permission to quote him)

House Church: Misconceptions

Advent
Ambrose of Milan

Lots of people think that "house church" automatically means "a bunch of people prancing around like hippies and doing whatever the heck they want." I've been doing a little reading (and the Abbot has been explaining some things to me very slowly) and have discovered, much to my chagrin, that in many, many cases, those folks are right.

I had no understanding that when I say, "I'm a part of the Vine and Branches Christian Community, and we also happen to meet in a house," we are hyper-protestant, and think that each one of us is fully qualified and called by God to throw off all ecclesiastical "authority" and interpret the Bible, our only text, in the way that seems "right to the Holy Spirit and to us," and that, generally speaking, we believe the same things, like the same things, are the same ages, and do all the same stuff - a completely homogeneous group. (Check out a recent post by a friend of this blog, Darrell Pursiful, which opened my eyes to this: "When is a House Church Not a House Church?")

Holy cow! I had no idea!

Vine and Branches is quite probably the most "structured" house church you're going to find. We pray the Psalms together, discuss the lectionary text appointed for the day, make intercession for the Church and the world, and celebrate the Holy Eucharist at a small altar. We do this three weeks out of four; the other week we invite our friends for a party. See more details on Alan's blog, where he discusses "the liturgy of a small catholic church."

I'll let the Abbot speak for himself (oh, and he will!), but for my part, not having a church building has nothing to do with either throwing of the vestiges of an "institutionalized" church (that's not a dirty word to me), and certainly nothing to do with believing the ownership of a church building to be an intrinsic evil. It's about mission: in my considered judgment regarding this cultural moment (the time and place of the post-Christendom American South), having a "church building" makes us too reliant on a model of mission in which we try to get non-Christian people to come to the Church to receive religious goods and services that can make their existing lives as they already understand them to be more pleasant and happy. It's a bloody Jesus vaccine. It doesn't have to be that way, but it's very tempting for the church in this culture to do, and we gotta break out of that and instead go out and take Jesus into the world and be salt and light, not some kind of deranged religious version of a public utility.

Instead of focusing on programs or getting people to "come to church" to hear the good news, we see our mission and ministry and way of evangelism as going out to be with people who aren't believers (or apostate Christians, but that's another story) and taking the presence of Christ with us. We believe our greatest tool for spiritual growth, a gift of Christ to the Church, is learning to live together as the Church with a mission in God's world for it's redemption and recreation. We are agents of redemption and change in one another's lives, and unless we live close to one another, on purpose, in regular ways, our Christian growth is terrifically stunted. Full stop.

Can you have a building, and do that, and be about those things? Yeah, I think it's possible, but I'm not sure many pre-existing churches/congregations are really trying to do that or know how to invest the theological and relational capital. I think that Saint Patrick's Church does it, and work to do it. That's a big part of why I hang out with them. They rock. And so do we. I'm sure there are some other communities out there (and around here) that are like that as well, but these are the ones I know.

Technorati Tags: emerging church, christian community, lexington, house church, anglicanism, mission

Howl

Ordinary Time

When the church is true to its calling to exist as a separate polis, a radically alternative society that expresses its values through bodily practices, it will relativize the legitimating metanarratives of the Powers that Be - those stories that a culture of death tells in order to justify its own values and bodily practices.

Consumer choice is dark determinism
Megachurch means you will always want fries with that
Freedom is slavery

If your faith is a private and apolitical thing, you have been owned by the thing called America.

Housechurch people will be this generation's Beat Poets.

(If you're upset because you believe in Freedom, Calvin, or French Fries, direct your nasty letters and hate mail to Josh Hearne, the official 'Captain Sacrament' Criticism Reader.)

Technorati Tags: megachurches, allen ginsberg, beat poets, house churches, calvinism, consumerism, america, postmodernism

Relevant?

Ordinary Time

Alan had a great idea the other day, and I'm going to run with it.

First, however, his little paragraph on "liturgy" is a good answer for when folks ask a certain question. Sometimes when I'm explaining the use of prayerbooks and set liturgies to folks, they respond with, "So you have to read this, this and this?" Now, it's an honest question, and there's nothing wrong with it; it just shows that when some people think "structure," think they rigid and overly confining. (There is, after all, a good kind of "boxing-in.")

Go check it out. Now here's my quick take:

When a church says it's "relevant," I assume they are less faithful to the proclamation of God in Jesus Christ.

I think they mean to say, "our sermons and expositons of the Scriptures appeal to the values and lifestyles of people in our society."

I don't think the Christian proclamation is very appealing to the typical American lifestyle or its values, and it shouldn't be. "Relevant" means, "we're offering you a way into what you think is a good or better life," and "Jesus makes good things better." Has anybody seen that recent popular devotional book, Just Add Jesus? That's just the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

(You know, kind of like this. HT: Kendall Harmon)

I would never consider being part of a church that calls itself "relevant," for those reasons. But, I could change my mind about the whole thing - which is why I'm asking y'all. I also realize the question isn't overly diplomatic, but I thought it was more fair to state my position at the beginning rather than say, "Oooh, what do you guys think" and then pounce.

What do you critters think?

Technorati Tags: theology, mission

On Being Important

Ordinary Time
6th Sunday after Pentecost

Dave Walker made me laugh the other day with his "My Emerging Church credentials," (go ahead, click it, there's a funny cartoon and I know you like pictures) so I got to thinking, how can I help other people to be as self-important as me in the "Conversation"?

This is how it's done, near as I can tell. Understand that it's much harder if you don't have cool hair.

Even so, I believe that I am quite possibly the most significantly self-important voice in the emerging church “conversation.” I don't know why more fundamentalists are writing me to tell me I'm not saved. Oh well.

Anyway, understand that it’s all about image control. I am important on the Internet if other people talk about me. Full stop. If people you don’t know talk about you as if you are an important and influential voice in the emerging church, you are. Well, Technorati ratings and Google searches help, too...

This is how you do it.

1. Talk about Brian McLaren. Lots. Get "worried" about the "state of the Church" when you do. I met him, I like him, I enjoyed the 2 books that I read, and think he made some good points. I don’t think of him when I wake and when I lie down. But if I talk as if I did, I will be an Important Voice.

2. Start slagging off the “Institution.” I don’t think that’s a bad word myself, but if I pretend, I become more important.

3. Use words like “gospel,” “postmodern,” and “relevant” a lot. Hormonal American seminarians with limited vocabularies will immediately think you to be "missionally" brilliant and/or real damn dangerous. They will get really upset with you while you cook dinner with your housemates and make jokes about pretending to be in love with Brian McLaren and starting your own Emergent Opus Dei.

4. Complain about how there aren't enough girl bloggers in the Emergent church. Even though you're a white male. Apparently all the men folk beat them with clubs when they blog. Okay, rant time: What? Don't you guilty liberals realize that the only thing it takes to be part of the "emerging church" (which I still insist doesn't exist) is to declare yourself a "missional leader" and say you have your own "cool" and/or "relevant" and/or "postmodern" and/or "house" church? My goodness, if I have people come over to my house to have coffee and pray on a regular basis, evangelicals try to tell me I have a house church! It gets even more interesting when I realize that some of them find it threatening and some of them think it's great, even though I don't think I'm "running" (what the heck is that, anyway?) a "house church" myself!

Uh oh, I'm all worked up now. I hope Alan censes the fireplace altar this evening...

But seriously (again), I'm trying to caricature a caricature. You can check out what I think about this "emergence" thing for real over on the right sidebar, and I was pleased with Catholic blogger Aimee Milburn's short and generous take on "emerging churches."

(You know you love this. Don't even pretend you don't.)

Technorati Tags: emerging church, brian mclaren, house churches, mission