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Winter 05 Conversation:

What is an Emergent Wesleyan?

 

III. Emergent Wesleyans are Congregation-Focused

By David Drury

 

 

Perhaps no other quality among we Emergent Wesleyans is more consequential to the Kingdom than that we aim to be Congregation-focused in our ministry.  I use the term “congregation” here because of its more broadly accepted definition.  Many of us would like to say we are “community-focused,” but that term can be used in multiple ways.  One can mean the community of Christians that make up the local church, the community around us in our cities and towns, or the value of “doing life together” in community.  Or all of the above.  For the sake of this reverse-apologetic to the church at large, perhaps the term “congregation” is the best bet—since it’s where things begin and where the others flow from.

 

There is another reason I use the term “congregation.”  Lesslie Newbigin used it.[1]  Newbigin’s thought has become influential among Emergent thinkers for a variety of reasons… but perhaps his concept of the congregation as the hermeneutic of the gospel is the most lasting.[2]  I should allow him to speak for himself on the matter:

 

“How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross?  I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.  I am not, of course, denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel…. But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community.”[3] – Lesslie Newbigin

 

We feel compelled to direct the mass of our energies for the kingdom into the local congregation.  Whether it comes from a more academic and philosophical journey, or from an intuitive sense that it’s all about “being the church” we Emergent Wesleyans want to refocus the epicenter of the Kingdom to the local Body of Christ in local communities.  Newbigin perhaps put the best framework together to describe this compelling draw, and his six-point admonition for the church’s “true calling” is elaborated upon and applied here for our purposes.[4]

 

SIX CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EMERGENT WESLEYAN CHURCH BORROWED FROM NEWBIGIN:

 

1)                  WE LONG TO BE A PRAISING COMMUNITY  The church is to be a place where people can move from the overwhelming mode of “skepticism” that the world works under (the “plausibility structure” as it is called) into a community that exists in perpetual praise.  The very act of praise is a violation of a suspicion-driven lifestyle.  In this way we are counter-cultural to our core.  But we are also engaged in the process of “worship evangelism” as Sally Morganthaller has called it.[5]  Our praise attracts others (in all it’s forms, starting so often in our singing but extended through all our praising activities as Christians).  Praise is fundamental to the very idea of worship and of God – since we are voluntarily presupposing and ascribing worth to something that is greater than ourselves.  And Newbigin claimed that this praising should be the church’s “most distinctive character.”  He divided our praise into two parts: a) “the Christian congregation… is the place where people find their true freedom, their true dignity, and their true equality in reverence to the One who is worthy of all the praise that we can offer.” And b) “The church’s praise includes thanksgiving… for we have been given everything and forgiven everything and promised everything…”  So we as Wesleyan Church are “a body of people with gratitude to spare, a gratitude that can spill over into care for the neighbor.”  We have made some great progress in our congregations of re-centering our identity on praise.  This is why advances in worship in our Wesleyan Churches are not peripheral to our theologies.  Worship theology is ecclesiology, in fact.

 

2)                  WE LONG TO BE A TRUTHFUL COMMUNITY.  Some are concerned that the Emergent conversation specifically and Christian response to postmodernism generally are on the slippery slope away from truth.  I know within the Wesleyan Church, which has been relatively conservative in theology and biblical focus, people have had that concern.  In reality, our conversations on the issue of truth should be and most often are discussing the very real challenge of believing and living out the truth in the postmodern world—where truth is sand running through the fingers of each and every individual.  In contrast to that, we do not see ourselves as individuals searching for truth (which could be considered the “Modernity Project”).  Rather, we are communities of truth.  Newbigin said that “through the constant remembering and rehearsing of the true story of human nature and destiny, an attitude of healthy skepticism (toward the reigning plausibility structure) can be maintained, a skepticism which enables one to take part in the life of society without being bemused and deluded by its own beliefs about itself.”  In this way we point to the truth.  We remind ourselves of the truth.  And most importantly we continue to live the truth in all it’s myriad colors.

 

3)                  WE LONG TO BE A MISSIONAL COMMUNITY.  There are two ways, we are shown, that the word for Church (ekklesia) is used in the New Testament: a) the Church of God (or of Christ) and b) the church of a certain designated place (the church of Rome or the church that meets in so-and-so’s house.)  The significance of this is not lost on us.  Both identities are our pillars.  My congregation can become so focused on our community in service that we simply reflect the community while not also reflecting Christ.  Likewise but flipped: my congregation can become so focused on our own needs and discipleship to reflect Christ that we ignore our responsibility of service toward the community.[6]  A deft balance between the two pillars is needed.  The church is God’s embassy in a specific place, as Newbigin said.  And for we Emergent Wesleyans, a rediscovery of our strong history in Wesleyan tradition in this area (though a not-so-strong recent history) is part of the fun of the journey.  We’re using the term “missional” as a verbal shorthand for this kind of thinking and living out of the gospel.

 

4)                  WE LONG TO BE AN EQUIPPING COMMUNITY.  Drawing on the biblical language associated with it, Newbigin called this essential calling of the church preparing people to be the priesthood in the world (2 Peter 2:5, 9).  He explains, “The office of a priest is to stand before God on behalf of people and to stand before people on behalf of God.”  Jesus, of course, is the only High Priest but the church is to continue in this role, collectively (not just trained minister’s mind you).  In our age our people are over-informed but under-equipped.  This call back to the equipping nature of our life and work as Christ-followers echoes Paul’s words in Ephesians 4:11-12 where the “ministers” of the church are given as “gifts” to the church in order to equip the saints[7] for works of service.  In this sense the portion of our Wesleyan Mission “To exalt Jesus Christ by… (among other things) Equipping the Church” is exactly our call.  This call to equip means “enabling members to think out the problems that face them in their secular work in light of their Christian faith.”  Newbigin suggests groups of similarly aligned professionals to do this job, since Minister’s do not seem well equipped themselves to do it.  At the same time, he calls into question the “ministerial training as currently conceived [which] is sill far too much training for the pastoral care of the existing congregation and far too little oriented toward the missionary calling to claim the whole of public life for Christ and his kingdom.”  This call to equip also entails a celebration of diversity in the sense of 1 Corinthians 12.  Denominations themselves are the worst problem in this regard, as they gather together people of like gifting and propensities.  Referring to such compartmentalization of the church, he says, “A bagful of eyes is not a body.  Only when a congregation can accept and rejoice in the diversity of gifts… can the whole body function as Christ’s royal priesthood in the world.”

 

5)                  WE LONG TO BE A RESPONSIBLE COMMUNITY.  With our aim to institute a new social order that transforms the culture rather than simply shouting to it from the sidelines, we have an earlier aim to establish a new social order within our own congregations.  Perhaps the problem of individualism is to blame for it, but for whatever the reason the church has not only stopped being responsible to the community around it, but also has stopped being responsible to the community within it.  How can we point to a preferable future social order without first being a “foretaste of a different social order” as Newbigin envisioned (actually, as Christ envisioned and this old man merely reminds us about).  With our biblical and poetic talk of justice and peace in the future comes the responsibility to bring it to fruition among ourselves now.  These things must become what Newbigin calls an “already experienced treasure.”  So, this means that our vision to turn around poverty in our communities must start by helping the poor in our congregations (much like the Acts 2 church did in having everything in common.)  This means that our hope that racial reconciliation and harmony will occur in our communities must start by placing minorities[8] on our local Wesleyan boards, on the stage and on the staff or our Wesleyan congregations.

 

6)                  WE LONG TO BE A HOPEFUL COMMUNITY.  With Newbigin, we feel that “The gospel offers and understanding of the human situation which makes it possible to be filled with a hope that is both eager and patient even in the most hopeless situations.”  The world around us is hopeless on a theological level.  But most consequentially for the moment they also feel hopeless on an emotional level.  This is why we feel that local churches are the hope of the world.  As local embassies for the Kingdom, we Wesleyan congregations offer hope to the hopeless.  Newbigin reminds us that “everything suggest that it is absurd to believe that the true authority over all things is represented in a crucified man.  No amount of brilliant argument can make it sound reasonable to the inhabitants of the reigning plausibility structure.  That is why I am suggesting that the only possible hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation which believes it.”  The local congregation, then, living and breathing as the Body of Christ, equipping people to praise Him in a truthful, missional and responsible way becomes the only plausible apologetic of hope in a postmodern world, or any world for that matter.[9]

 

I hope you will excuse my overt dependence on one voice to teach us these things.  Many others could instruct us on these core aspects of our identity.  And that would add a choir of compelling song to the one voice of Newbigin.  As Emergent Wesleyans our longing heart’s desire is to join the choir and bring our congregations to society in the public sphere – like a symphony in the park in springtime.  To exist, “for the sake of those who are not members, as sign, instrument and foretaste of God’s redeeming grace for the whole life of society.”  I bet you can guess who said that one too.

 

 

 

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© 2005 by David Drury – Click here for the Writer’s Attic



[1] Lesslie Newbigin was a long-time British missionary in India with a broad following in the ecumenical movement of the latter half of the 20th century.  His life’s work was primarily pastoral.  His life’s legacy remains in his books and the following that has come to be known as “The Gospel in our Culture Network” or with similar names around the world.  One of the great Newbigin ironies is that this life lived with such local focus in the East equipped him to speak so translocally to the West.  Wilbert Shenk has summed up part of this man’s uncommon gift by saying “Lesslie Newbigin was a frontline thinker because of an uncommon ability to sense the emerging issue that must be addressed at that moment.”  Perhaps the best entry point for someone unacquainted with Newbigin is the more biographical coverage done upon his death in 1998 by TransMission magazine which you can access for free at www.Newbigin.net or directly at the large PDF file found here.

[2] The word hermeneutics means “the philosophy concerned with human understanding and interpretation of texts.”  For our purposes here it’s extrapolated to mean the interpretation and understanding of the gospel—which Newbigin claims can only be done effectively flowing from and into local Christian congregations.  Many theologians would make screaming objections to this.  Of course, many theologians have only a passing interest in what happens in the actual church down their street.  (Here I’m not thinking of the theologians who happen to be in my own family or who are among my friends.)

[3] Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society © 1989: Eerdmans Publishing Company. (pg 227) Emphasis added.

[4] In Chapter 18 (“The Congregation as Hermeneutic of the Gospel”) of The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin one can find the fuller description of this vision for the church.  While this part of the series is applied directly to our Emergent Wesleyan conversation, in some ways it is simply a distillation of Newbigin’s six characteristics found there.  To say this is indebted to Newbigin is a gross understatement.  It is Newbigin translated for our own identity.  All quotations from Newbigin in this piece are from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society unless otherwise noted.

[5] See Worship Evangelism by Sally Morganthaller

[6] Newbigin summarized this feeling (perhaps prophetically) in 1989 by saying, “If the local congregation is not perceived in its own neighborhood as the place from which good news overflows in good action, the programs for social and political action launched by the national agencies are apt to lose their integral relation to the good news and come to be seen as a part of a moral crusade rather than part of the gospel.”

[7] If you thought Peter’s word “priesthood” was disturbing then I suspect you’ll find Paul calling you a “saint” to be doubly so.  Isn’t it funny how our theologies and divisions in the church remove us from the bold and uncompromising language used by these first Apostles?  I would not be surprised to see a resurgence of “saint” and “priests” language re-emerge in this church which is emerging.

[8] Here I’m thinking primarily of those of non-anglo races.  But in many parts of the Wesleyan Church women still constitute an oppressed and unsupported minority.  Evidence: 2004 marked the first time that we elected a woman who was an ordained minister to our General Board of Administration (Dr. JoAnne Lyon) and we still have no District Superintendents who are women.  But, I suppose we could look to our General Officials, District Boards, Local Boards and Local Staffs to find even more evidence of that problem.  All this is evidence that we have a cultural problem in advancing women to positions of influence and authority over us in the Wesleyan Church.  (I am reminded now that about half of my Father’s ministerial students at a Wesleyan University are women – so it apparently isn’t a problem of having enough women being “called” to the ministry.)  As Emergent Wesleyans come into the frame more fully we will find ourselves reaching back to correct this disparity so much after others have already corrected it.  By the way, 2004 marked the first year we also elected a non-anglo member to our General Board of Administration as well (who was also a woman though not ordained.)  Maybe 2004 was not such a bad year after all.

[9] Newbigin has also made the stunning observation that Jesus did not leave behind a book or a creed, a system of thought or philosophy, or an organization.  He left behind the church.  It is the legacy he bequeathed us.  If Jesus left only this behind, then perhaps it is enough for the purposes of the gospel.