Mesa: A Global Conversation Among Emerging Christian Leaders

Last month, I was part of a group that met with Phyllis Tickle and other emerging church leaders prior to the Emergence Christianity event. At that meeting, Brian McLaren hinted at a new movement that was going to be announced soon, but he wasn’t able to give us much information. He did share a bit from a document that was going to be released about the movement, and it piqued my interest. So often one of the critiques that we hear about Emergent is that it is too white. We’ve been hearing that from day one, and we continue to hear it at every Emergent event that I’ve ever attended.

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Enter Mesa.

Mesa is a “global conversation among emerging Christian leaders.” And guess what? They’re not all white guys.

I’ve just spent a bit of time browsing their website, and this is some information from the site:

Several parallel conversations, networks, and movements have been emerging among committed Christians over the last century – in Africa and Latin America, in Asia and Europe, in the Pacific Islands and the Americas. These movements were characterized by a commitment to “integral mission” – integrating personal spirituality with social justice and compassion, based on a holistic understanding of Jesus’ core message. In recent years, these groups have begun connecting with one another more and more, and Mesa seeks to help their emerging ethos to deepen, spread, and move forward.

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A Typology of Emerging Churches

bE-CollageA photo from one of the .bE Alternative Worship Gatherings I used to host

Attending the Emergence Christianity conference last week put me back among a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in awhile.

It also put me in the middle of conversations surrounding language, specifically the question of what exactly to call this new movement. Is it the emergent church? Emerging church? Emergence Christianity? What exactly is it?

For many, they want a single label/term they can use to describe these types of churches. For some, the downside to not having a term that is easily definable, is that you have such a wife array of churches and groups who then claim the term, and they might not be anything like each other at all.

So, Solomon’s Porch, the community that Doug Pagitt helped to found, could be described as an emerging church. But you could also attend a small, conservative Baptist church that also describes itself as an emerging church.

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Or you could see a car in Memphis with a personalized license plate and decals that claim to be an “emerging church…” But do these terms have any value, then, if anyone can use them?

I’d like to offer a typology that one could use to describe emerging churches, that I’ve found to be a little bit helpful over the years. Or it may not be helpful to you, in which case you can just forget I mentioned it.

Aesthetically Emerging Churches: I don’t know about you, but I’ve walked into this kind of a church before. It looks cool. It’s hip. It might even have some mochas and cappuccinos in the back of the room if you’re lucky, and certainly a few candles…but something doesn’t feel quite right about it. Something feels eerily similar to other conservative evangelical churches you’ve been in…clearly, they’ve heard that churches are trying new things, and they want to be “relevant” and hip and reach the younger, edgier generation. But, underneath the surface changes, it’s the same old church. You’re going to get a pretty hip worship band, but then you’ll probably be stuck to your seat while your hip pastor preaches for 45 minutes about the need to return to orthodox Christianity and remain true to “biblical” faith. You might see some young people being drawn to churches who will advertise these as “postmodern” services or “alternative” services…but they will not stay long when they realize that these churches are failing to connect with any part of them other than just their coffee-cravings.

Methodologically Emerging Churches: These churches might look like the aesthetically emerging churches, because they too have realized that some things need to change. But they’re also going to mix up the worship and delivery of the message for the day. So you might have churches that are engaging in more experiential/participatory worship, or they might be toying with different models for preaching. Maybe it’s not even a typical sermon, but more of a discussion format. The methodologically emerging churches have sensed the need for something “different” for awhile, and they’re willing to make the aesthetic changes, as well as changes to the methods they’ve used in ministry in the past. However, once you peel back both of those layers, you will still see churches with fairly traditional mindsets when it comes to the theology and beliefs.

Theologically Emerging Churches: I think this is the direction in which many of us desire to see more and more churches head. These are churches that might be making aesthetic and methodological changes, for sure. They realize that those things are important to a generation of people losing interest in the church. For example, for many people, sitting on couches in the round is more conducive to building community and fostering conversation than sitting in incredibly uncomfortable wooden pews in straight lines. They realize that we need to rethink the ways we’ve approached leadership in the church, our worship, our theologies of mission and evangelism…the world is changing, and we need to be interacting with that. I remember the early days of the Emergent Conventions, when Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones led a seminar called A New Theology for a New World. Obviously, the world is not the same today as it was 50 years ago. And I think that’s what we’re called to do. As our world changes, we need to be interacting with scripture and our theology, and being open to the Spirit moving us in new and different directions.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this typology. Is it helpful? Does it connect with any experiences you’ve had? What needs to change about it to make it more useful?

Emergence Christianity: Time To Look Forward

Looking-Forward-Emergence

This will be my last reflection on the Emergence Christianity event that I attended two weekends ago. The event was put together to celebrate Phyllis Tickle‘s newest book, Emergence Christianity. We met to hear Phyllis give some keynote talks, had a couple panels of some of Phyllis’s friends, and then had some opportunities for PechaKucha presentations by other speakers.

For Phyllis’s talks at Emergence Christianity, she did kind of an overview of Christian history, showing all of the threads of emergence Christianity that have been leading to the place that we find ourselves in the church now.

But if I’m honest, I have to say that I never really liked history. Maybe it’s some bitterness that I’m holding on to because I only got a 2 on the AP US History Exam that I took my junior year of high school, I don’t know. But history classes were always my least favorite in college and in seminary. History just bores me.

Now, please don’t give me any of that chronological snobbery stuff…or lecture me on the merits of knowing our history so that we don’t repeat it. I get that. I intellectually understand the importance of knowing history, it just bores me. So, unfortunately, while Phyllis is brilliant, engaging, funny and is able to lecture for hours without any type of notes or prompts (which I find amazing)…I wasn’t really very engaged for her presentations.

I loved the PechaKucha presentations, which is where I think we finally got to see some glimpses of emergence Christanity. And I think the panel got into some more interesting conversations as well. But I did hear others, as well, share about how they’re done talking about the past, the history and spending so much time discussing “how” we got where we are. People are ready to look toward the horizon and talk about what we’re going to do now that we’re here.

This is something that sounds exciting to me, and part of why I did my PechaKucha presentation on Theology Pub. I had a lot of people coming up to me, very excited about that type of ministry, and I think that people are hungry for those types of practical examples of what might be emerging.

So I’m guessing that in future events (especially ones organized by my friends Tony & Doug of The JoPa Group), that we’re going to see a shift in content from talking about history to talking about the present and the future. From describing what the past church looked like to thinking creatively about what this new emergence Christianity actually looks like today, and for future generations. And that’s what excites me about the future of this conversation, no matter what you call it: emergent, emerging, emergence…something is changing, and hopefully we can be a part of those who are helping to usher that change in.