Thursday, November 13, 2008

Emergent? Missional? What next?

Because I subscribe to various church related magazines and read books recommended by my associates, I often read about new trends in the church world.
  • I hear about the "emergent" church and wonder if they will know when the time comes that they have finally emerged fully, and then what will they have become as an "emerged" church. I admit that some days I feel more "regressant" than "emergent."
  • I hear about "missional" churches and I'm foolish enough to have assumed that we were all "missional" churches. I thought the great commission passed the task of mission on to all of us. So what do truly "missional" churches do or have that others do not, and at what point can a church truly see itself as having crossed from non-missional to missonal?
  • There's the "seeker sensitive" churches who seem to be more interested, as I see it, in the preferences of outsiders to their flock than in the desires of those within the flock. These days, I think I would be content with being "seeker aware" as opposed to being seeker insensitive or seeker oblivious.
  • Since we are living in a post-modern society these days, we are supposed to be able to understand the post-modern mind and learn how to appeal to those who aren't interested in a meta-narrative. I'm still trying to identify what a meta-narrative might look like if I were to see one up close.

Oh, how complicated it has all become. It makes me tired just thinking about it all. I have an idea. We recently read a book called "Simple Church" by Thom Rainer which made a lot of sense to me. I like to keep things simple. But why not take a good idea up a notch. What if we were to become the "simpleton church". Our motto could be "Taking simple to the max!" No worrying about meta-whatsits or post-missional-seeker-emergent-sensitive-thingamajigs. I think I could wrap my mind around something like that. Oh, by the way, today is my day off so I have given myself permission to be as simpleton as I want. Long live us simpletons! Just a thought- and a simple one at that. Ed S.

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