Why Emergent?

I wrote the following for an online Episcopal Magazine.  Enjoy.

Reflections on the journey: From a Post-Evangelical, Emergent, Episcopalian

The conversation usually goes something like this:

Inquisitive Person: “So, what is the emergent church?”

Me: “Well, technically there is no emergent church.”

Inquisitive Person: (Blank stare)

Me: “It’s more of a conversation than a church.”

Inquisitive Person: (Continued blank stare)

The conversation started for me during college while I was on a mission trip in East Africa.  I was on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania living with a Christian pastor, preaching in the local church, and participating in door-to-door evangelism throughout the island.  More than a million people populate Zanzibar and at least ninety nine percent of the population is Muslim. It seems an obvious statement when looking at the situation from a certain perspective to say that Zanzibar had not yet been reached by the gospel.  This opportunity was rather significant for me.  I had grown up in the Christian & Missionary Alliance, an evangelical church, where my Christian formation involved sharing the gospel with all people.  I remember a youth rally I attended where a guest speaker told us that 166,000 people die everyday without knowing who Jesus is, and that it was up to us to go into the entire world in order to share the good news of Jesus.  I took that challenge to heart and I committed my life to sharing the gospel with the world.  Three years later there I was doing just that: sharing the gospel with people who had never heard it before. The mission was not going very well.  People were not receptive to our message and as far as I could tell, I could not foresee their minds changing anytime soon.

The Church in Post-Christian America

Much has been said about the recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, The Coming Evangelical Collapse.  Now, it isn’t just evangelicals who are in trouble, but Mainline Protestant denominations find themselves in similar circumstances. In coming years, many churches will be forced to close shop because of dwindling attendance . These churches will be forced to close because they will no longer be able to afford the cost of their buildings or their staff. One solution to this new scenario is something that Church of the Apostles, the church I’m currently working at, is doing quite well: Open the building to the community.

COTA meets at the Fremont Abbey, a building that we are currently in the process of buying from the Lutheran Church.  The building for most of its life was St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.  After St. Paul’s closed down, the building was used as a homeless shelter for a few years, and then 3 years ago, COTA moved in.  Instead of slapping our name up on the building, and making the building a “church”, the COTA community decided that this building was going to be for all of the Fremont Community.  And they thought the best way to serve the Fremont Community was to make the building a place for the arts.  Because of this the Fremont Abbey is home to two separate non-profits: Church of the Apostles and the Fremont Abbey Arts Center. Because of the Arts Center, the Fremont Abbey is occupied 7 days a week with a music school, dance lessons, a jazz band, concerts, mediation weekends, kids art classes, etc, etc…  And because our building is occupied 7 days a week, supporting (and paying for) the building does not fall entirely upon the church congregation.

I need to make something very clear, the Art Center does not exist as a bait and switch (i.e. “Let’s get people in the building so we can convert them”).  The Art Center is its own non-profit that lives in the Fremont Abbey.  And secondly, the Arts Center does not exist to support the mission of the church.  The Arts Center exists because the community of Fremont values the arts, and because so many people in the community volunteer their time, expertise and money to support the arts in Fremont and in the Fremont Abbey.

Now what is taking place in the Fremont Abbey is a mutually beneficial relationship between a church and a community arts center.  Neither of the missions are more important than the other, and we try and treat each other that way.  And because of this relationship we can both continue to exist, own property, and pay a staff in a very expensive urban area.

If the church wants to continue to have buildings and paid staff, but can’t attract large enough numbers to pay for these things it will have to figure out ways to open up their buildings to their neighbors.  And it will need to do this in a mutually beneficial way, avoiding a patronizing, bait and switch relationship.

Wandering

For Lent at COTA this year a man in our parish is teaching a class on prayer entitled Great Arguments with God.  Last night we examined Jacob’s all night wrestling match with God.  To aid us in this exploratation we read from Frederick Beuchner’s The Son of Laughter.  In it Beuchner retells Jacob’s encounter with God in dramatic fashion.  What Beuchner reveals in his retelling is how Jacob really didn’t know who he was wrestling with or even why he was wrestling until the night was over.  Jacob’s confusion struck a cord with me, especially as we reflected upon prayer and fighting with God. 

It is easy to be energized by an argument or fight if one knows what it is they are fighting for.  We see this in other scriptural accounts where people argued with God because God was clearly in the wrong, or it was quite obvious that God needed to do something (i.e. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?). But what about when you are striving with God or life, or whatever, but you really don’t know why.  

I find this scenario more common for my own spiritual journey.  Wrestling in the dark with the unknown, wandering through the desert with no destination.  I’m told there is a promise, or blessing out there somewhere, but the fact that it is out there, fails to make the present any clearer.