what makes you think faith communities aren’t sociologically influenced?  what makes you think theology and sociology aren’t joined at the hip in faith communities?

scott

Thanks for clarifying and expanding your question. I think I see what you are getting at and I suspect I’m opening up a huge can of worms by going there. Partly because it’s theology that I’m still working out in my own head and partly because I think it is at risk of dropping over the edge a bit.

For example, you asked which mission resonates more with me? Definitely the ‘going out’, but with some challenging nuances to that. Should the purpose of ‘going out’ be to make new converts? Or should it simply be a way of bringing about ‘the Kingdom’? If it’s not about making converts, then what does that say about my soteriology? Bordering on universalism perhaps?

As for ‘joining’ an intentional community, I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment. Seems more in the line of sociology than theology. That said, I can see how it’s important, and again comes back to my comment about needing to be open and up front. If you attempt to sneak God in by the back door, there is a risk that people will feel duped and betrayed.

Anyway, I’ll attempt to post something as soon as I can. It is, in fact, beginning to encroach on your original request to enunciate more of my theology.

Thanks for commenting. I must be a bit brain-dead though as I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking or implying. Would appreciate some clarification.

As for your observation on ‘intentional communities’; that’s pretty much the point for emerging church. You can’t expect those ‘outside’ [traditional church] to want to come ‘inside’. Therefore, the response must be to go out to meet them. Traditional ‘mission’ though has always had its focus as ‘bringing them back to the fold’. EC is about establishing a new ‘expression’ of church (in whatever way, shape or form works best) within that community. But, of course, there will be a natural suspicion of anything which appears ‘imposed’ from outside which is why, I think, it’s important to be transparent from the beginning. It’s no good starting off with, say, a youth project that keeps kids off the streets and then, over time, introduces the ‘God stuff’. It has to be there from the start, although that’s not to say it won’t develop and change over time. But there’s also got to be stuff round about it – and it’s got to be ‘meaningful’, not just a way of attracting people to get them to listen to the gospel. The surrounding work needs to be contextually meaningful and genuinely missional.

Not sure it that goes anyway to addressing the question, but you can clarify if necessary.

any parish or church group, or for that matter a public library, or school board, is an intentional community.  they gather with a mission statement, or a creed, or a collection of beliefs, and function together as a community in some fashion.

what are some of the guidelines you use for yourself in choosing to join, or participate in, an intentional community?  especially a christian-oriented one.

scott

Parish groupings may well be a good vehicle for such work. One thing that occurred to me was the issue of oversight (a problem also raised at the conference). The church, currently, has no effective mechanism for dealing with oversight of emerging church projects. It can’t really leave them to run themselves, but, by their very nature, it’s not necessarily the minister or an elder in charge. It may not even be a presbytery worker. Even if it was they still have no seat on presbytery. Presbytery does have the discretion to appoint additional elders though and I wondered if it would be possible to have such a project overseen by, say, a group of elders drawn from the participating churches and then have one of them allocated a presbytery seat. A parish grouping could operate in a similar way and I think it would even be beneficial to have the project directly represented at presbytery level.

You’re correct though that it does require a lot of cooperation and that has to start with everyone having the same vision – an outward looking one rather than a ‘protectionist’ one.

I think that that is why I would agree with one speaker who made the point that such projects need to be handled at presbytery level. But it also means that for some it needs a move away from the ‘precious’ mindset that asks the question of how many extra people (translate that as more income) will there be in ‘my church’? I sensed a little bit of that at the conference (and through what others were saying about their experience) and I think it is indicative of a ‘maintenance’ mindset rather than a missional one. We look at the CofS, see it declining in places, want to ‘manage’ that decline and the first stop is to ‘preserve’ our own territory. It’s a very natural reaction of course.

But the whole point about emerging church is that it isn’t territorially-based; it’s contextually-based. That means that if someone is running, say, a youth project, then it will, in all likelyhood, attract from a cross-boundary area. And that’s often seen as ‘poaching’. But the point is that this is a gorup who wouldn’t be coming to any church in the first place. Their ‘church’ (if it truly an emerging church) is wherever and whenever they meet as a community. The spin-off, if there is one, for more ‘traditional’ church models (i.e. Sunday morning in the big stone building) comes much later down the line when that generation grows up and is looking for an entirely different context in which to worship. In a sense the ‘grow into’ traditional church, but it must be emphasised that that does not mean that their emerging church is lesser or ‘less mature’ in any sense. The relationships have to be ‘adult-to-adult’ (another point made at the conference). That’s why I say that the apparent present understanding of what ‘church’ is (and let’s be honest, for all the talk of a church is ‘the people’, we still have a huge attachment to the building) really needs to challenged and broadened. Church needs to be understood in its broadest context of ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic’. An independent group that meets on a Wednesday night, prays together, studies the Bible together and, ideally shares communion together, is no less a ‘church’. How it fits with a reformed presbyterian system is not an issue of theology as much as it is about bureaucracy.

As for the parody – let’s just say that I didn’t have to stretch what was being said too far.