Winter 05 Conversation:

What is an Emergent Wesleyan?

I. Emergent Wesleyans are Emergent

I can hear a distant but collective “Duh!” in response to the title of this article. Isn’t that redundant and self-evident? Well, yes. And, no. It is tempting to rush past that first identifier as simply current or merely trendy and later get into a mess of contradiction and debate over inconsequential subplots and irrelevancies. That word actually means something. At our core, we Emergent Wesleyans are Emergent. So, what does it mean to be Emergent?

A popular answer in message boards, blogs and over-coffee-conversations is: “No one knows—don’t define me yet.” At some level this is itself a definition of emergent. In a message board I started at EmergentWesleyan.com called “Defining Emergent” the participants spent about half their time conversing on whether defining emergent in fact betrays emergence. Talk about confusing to a non-emergent! This kind of semantic debate starts to sound a whole lot like a seminary club and not much like the real world to a passerby.

In the real world words have the value we give to them. And people have begun to give the word “Emergent” a certain value and definition. Some of these values and definitions are found in the books of leading edge postmodern ministry writers like Brian MacLaren and Leonard Sweet.[1] Just as often, and sometimes much earlier, they are found in the online-writings of “Internet Personalities” and “Web-E-Zines” like Andrew Jones or Theooze.[2] These points of reference may mean nearly nothing or nearly everything to you, but I cite them here to give context to the non-Wesleyan Emergence that we Emergent Wesleyans are finding resonance with. Of course even earlier than these the word “Emergent” has found value and identification in the underground conversation happening around us. It may be a few of your college friends who e-mail one another about their struggles with established Church. It may be that odd pastor you know who gets together for coffee with a few other odd pastors and chats about who-knows-what. It may be your friend’s teenager who is a part of a blog-ring of next generation types who have a much greater grasp on the emerging culture than their own youth pastor. It’s people like me. It may be people like you. Or you may become it soon.

So, why define emergent and why use the term as our identifier? Isn’t it dangerous to categorize ourselves this way? Well, you might say that this little conversation is an attempt at Reverse Apologetics. Apologetics in the Modern Age had to do with giving reasons for one’s modern faith (apologizing for the reasons, in effect) to those that had no faith. A primary “target” for this apologetic would be an atheist or agnostic secular person. There are few of those “targets” left for the Apologist. Modern Apologetics doesn’t work much anymore.[3] In reality, an apologetic is now needed to give stories (rather than just reasons) of our postmodern faith (apologizing for the stories, in effect) to those that still have a Modern Faith. And for the purpose of this conversation, this is primarily those in the Wesleyan Church – they are my “target” in some ways.[4] Reverse Apologetics is a generous attempt to explain ourselves to the Modern Faithful. It is also an attempt to expose them (rather than convince them) to the realities of the world we live in. So this ongoing conversation includes my stories and ideas intended to help you understand where I (and I suggest where we) are coming from. Perhaps you are coming from Modern Christendom. If so, for you this is a Reverse Apologetic. They are not reasons for an atheist, but stories sent from we missionaries (what we call “missionals”) to postmodernity back to the “home church” that sent us out (whether they meant to send us out or not).

The Emergent organization that first began using the term “emerging” to describe this movement (or as we would rather say, this “conversation”) describes Emergent as, “a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” We Emergent Wesleyans find resonance with this mission in the following ways:

Emergent – It seems that something is surfacing in the hearts and minds of those following Jesus. It is embryonic in some, fully budding in others. It is emerging from what has gone before. We see ourselves emerging from and out of what has come before.[5] Not opposed to the Modern Church arbitrarily, but certainly different from it, like a child to a parent. We are in many ways indefinable because we are unfinished. This conversation’s attempt at definition itself is going to be very difficult and perhaps premature. We can’t yet be nailed down well. So that’s why the term Emergent works for us. We’re emerging but not fully grown. Have patience.

Generative Friendship – This conversation is generating (generative) so many new possibilities for us. Ministry has taken on such new implications. It’s as though the horizon expands 360° now instead of being a narrow window. And we feel this will generate much more kingdom-like activity among disciples. The generous nature of emergent friendships also resonates with us. Most if not all of us see a great value in generously welcoming those from other traditions of the faith to teach us and learn from us as well. The generative friendship we find with those from all walks of life is not a stylistic choice—it is a part of the Christ-envisioned mission to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Missional – As postmodernity has turned modernity on it’s head modern missions has also been flipped upside-down in the realization that those of us that make up the “we” of the Euro-American Church are no longer the epicenter of the Body of Christ. Instead of only “sending out” people to teach everyone else how to do Christianity our way[6] we instead are learning a great deal from local Christians around the world as they have responded to their own culture by adapting those forms of Christianity that are wholly social, and living in a counter-cultural way in those areas that Jesus taught us to live.[7] I’m not a theologian, but a pastor in a local church. So I’m not the best one to represent missional theology. However, in reading Leslie Newbigin and thinking through the Postmodern shift many of us have gravitated to using the term “missional” to define a way of Christian life that appreciates how Modernity has tainted many of our churches to the point of being “off-mission.” This is the great travesty we desire to correct, since congregations are “the hermeneutic of the gospel.”[8]

Loving our world – Most of us are abandoning arbitrary and quantity-oriented measurements of “success.” Instead, we see the example and teaching of Jesus as leading us to loving our world as the primary goal. This has dovetailing implications for our Wesleyan heritage that we need to bring to the broader Emergent table, but at its core we Emergent Wesleyans have a Great Commandment[9] theology and a Golden Rule[10] philosophy that must result in a Good Samaritan[11] lifestyle.

In the Spirit of Jesus Christ – We are hoping to live this out on multiple levels. First, many of us live in a state of some frustration as Emergent Wesleyans and so it is tempting to resort to un-Christ-like tactics and protest toward the Modern established Church, which we believe is not merely behind the times (obviously) but is so often doing more harm than good.[12] However, we are not tempted beyond what we can bear and we apologize if we have offended your sensibilities in the past. Of course, your sensibilities are not likely ours, so please extend the charity our way as well. Likewise, we see the Spirit of Christ as guiding this conversation. Rather than writing this member of the Trinity out of the equation—we are making room for this Person to be fully included in it. We trust the Spirit to guide us in this emergence, and we gladly have expanded from only trust in ourselves (reason), the church (tradition), or our interpretation of the Bible alone (scripture) to include what we have seen the Spirit speaking into us and the world (experience).[13]

We feel these passions, beliefs and values to be not only appropriate to our age, but aligned with historical orthodoxy’s core tenants,[14] and even more importantly, with the teachings and example of Jesus Christ.

Most of us also feel that they not in opposition to The Wesleyan Church, which is where our conversation heads next. However, while these things are not in opposition to our “tribe” they are still largely missing in it. This is why we are calling ourselves “Emergent Wesleyans” and not simply “Wesleyans.”

This is not all of who we are—but it is a starting point to understanding us, and to understanding ourselves.

Click here to engage in this conversation by submitting your own response

Next up in this conversation: “Emergent Wesleyans are Wesleyan”

I am a pastor and writer living in Spring Lake, Michigan. I’m the husband to Kathryn and father to Maxim and Karina. We’ve planted two churches and now serve on staff in a larger Wesleyan Church working on building our community life. I wrote the alternative 40 Days journey The Fruitful Life for my church which other churches are now using. I’m a long-time contributor to Next-Wave.org and also to Emergent-Wesleyan.com where I’m a member of the founding development team.

[1] It is of great significance that Leonard Sweet was the Keynote Speaker for The 2004 Wesleyan General Conference. Even those in the most established portions of our church see that major transitions, not just minor changes, are coming—whether they would put the terms on it Sweet would or respond with the reorientation we would is less evident. It is of less but still some significance that I do not know what the phrase “Keynote Speaker” actually means or signifies.

[2] Further examples of these are Emergent Village, Spencer Burke’s Theooze, Andrew Jones’s Tall Skinny Kiwi, John O’Keefe’s Ginkworld, Charlie Wear’s Next-Wave, Allelon, and The Gospel in our Culture Network

[3] Some might claim that it never did (sorry – low blow).

[4] You may feel uncomfortable being a “target” but perhaps this is just postmodern payback for our “Church Growth” years where The Church (actually, the Pastor and Board) developed a “Target Audience” for their church. Doug Pagitt has pithily said, “Targeting is done by tobacco companies and snipers, and the one who is targeted is rarely appreciative.” (pg 42 of Reimaging Spiritual Formation) There will be much more on the Wesleyan Church in part two of this conversation: “Emergent Wesleyans are Wesleyan.”

[5] EmergentVillage has described “Emergent” as a term this way: “In English, the word ‘emergent’ is normally an adjective meaning coming into view, arising from, occurring unexpectedly, requiring immediate action (hence its relation to ‘emergency’), characterized by evolutionary emergence, or crossing a boundary (as between water and air).”

[6] This could be characterized as Christian Colonialism which was a classic example of the Modern Church reflecting a homogeneity-driven, conquest-oriented and eventually culture-destroying rather than culture-redeeming missions paradigm. We see missional as a new paradigm (perhaps best described by Leslie Newbigin) in which every disciple of Christ sees their world and the world as their mission. It is wholly incarnational in its intent. In this way we see ourselves as “missionizing” the Western world.

[7] It is important to clarify here that the missions movement itself discovered this, not the “home church” so this is not a criticism of all missions workers. I’m telling their story back to them here as so many have already made this shift in thinking. And perhaps it’s taken us longer to hear them because of our “home church” mentality.

[8] See Leslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society for more on his phenomenal concept cited here.

[9] Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.

[10] Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (Perhaps it is not coincidental that The Wesleyan Church recently adopted as its mission a statement similar to these teachings of Jesus, which we likewise continue to resonate with.)

[11] Luke 10:25-37

[12] More on this in the conversation with “Emergent Wesleyans are Frustrated”

[13] Students of theology will recognize this as a full embrace of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

[14] Brian MacLaren’s book Generous Orthodoxy is a helpful Reverse Apologetic into a key objection of Modernity holdovers: that Emergent/Postmodern thought and Christ-following may be a distortion of our core beliefs (i.e. “Orthodoxy.”) It IS even more than a distortion of the core beliefs of Modernity—it is a rejection of them (re-read that if you missed the distinction). But it IS NOT a distortion of the core beliefs of Christian Orthodoxy—but rather an attempt to more fully believe and live them out.