dougs digs

Relevant churches are rarely even closely relevant. Most Christians don't even like them. They might be better than Mom and Dad's morning service, but they usually are quite irrelevant to the outsider. The church person cannot 'guess' what the seeker wants, undoubtedly getting it wrong. What Christians need to do is create meaningful worship through bringing their very own lives to God. Worship must reflect the culture of the community that is currently part of the church, not replicate current worship CDs, nor 1980s soft rock, nor 18th century hymns. Instead of mimicking other church cultures, the community collectively brings their own idiosyncratic ways of life to God, whatever they may be. Indeed, the church may have the stray outsider finding themselves in the worship service and joining the community. But if the focus is on them, simply to be relevant, their worship will satisfy neither the church members nor the outsider.

A missional engagement requires immersion in culture, to listen and ask questions. A missionary then proposes responses from the gospel, rather than attempting to impose a message. Postmoderns, who are anti-absolutist, suspicious of truth claims, and wide open to relativism, will pose new and discomforting questions. Emerging leaders are immersed in these oceans, rather than occasionally visiting or examining them in the laboratories of evangelical academia.

However, in terms of the missional strategy of emerging churches, Carson is uneasy with their handling of the tension between "becoming" and "belonging." Many emergent practitioners don't draw lines between believers and unbelievers, or church members and nonmembers, arguing the lines are arbitrary and that we are all on a journey. But Carson notes that the New Testament does speak of insiders and outsiders; the Christian church represents a new and distinctive community. Furthermore, there is a legitimate distinction between those who seek to understand and obey the Scriptures and those who do not.

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