Grain of Wheat Church-Community

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs & Ryan K. Bolger:
Summary of first eight chapters

by Laura Funk

Chapter 1: A brief look at Culture

The first chapter dealt with two issues: Why the Western Church must study culture and cultural differences between the U.K. and the U.S.A.

The reasons to study culture vary from the Biblical example of Jesus to a need to be applicable to current, rapidly changing society. There are so many changes in society today that they seem to have almost completely left behind the church our parents and grandparents knew. We need to understand the culture if we are to serve it. Our current culture is dynamic – it is in the midst of a revolution. This revolution includes a major shift of Christianity from a position of privilege to the margins of society. There is a cultural shift from order, tradition and separation of spheres of reality, away from a Western focus towards globalization, from print based communication to electronic based. There are shifts occurring in the economy, in human biology, in the convergence of science and religion.

There is a rapid decline in church attendance since the needs of the people are not being met. GenXers are disillusioned with institutionalism and want mystery, visual, ritual, touch and beauty. They do not automatically inherit the religion of their parents, but seek to challenge current structures that seem dehumanizing and disempowering. Current church practices often accommodate a society that no longer exists. It has become an image-based era of communication where there is a convergence of sound, sight and touch through activities, ritual and stories.

With these global influences come more exposure to other religions and there is appeal there. People are interested in self-realization versus self-discipline, they are looking for immediate access to transcendental reality rather than finding the place of legitimate suffering. Religious beliefs are becoming rooted in personal experiences rather than community identity. There is an authority shift from external sources to internal, and there is no “carte blanc” for institutions, they must be seen to support the individual.

The authors go on to discuss the cultural differences between their own cultures of the U.K. and the USA, basically highlighting the club culture with a preference for DJs who mix recorded music in the U.K. and the American’s affinity for live guitar music. This leads me to ponder how Canadian culture might be different from both these others. I have worked in the music industry with a Christian artist and my experience was that people liked the live concerts and preferred the CD that sounded most like a live solo concert. I couldn’t really identify with club culture, but know that there is a popular trend for some in Winnipeg to hang out in bars.

Chapter 2: What is Emerging Church?

It seems to me, in reading this chapter that the emerging Church movement is still a fledgling one. Just as it is difficult to see a lot of an infant’s personality, it is difficult to define all aspects of this movement. It has different manifestations in different regions, yet there are core practices that seem to characterize the groups. These characteristics emerge out of an urgency to find new ways to make the way of Jesus relevant to current, postmodern culture. They identify with Jesus and seek ways to connect his life and teachings to every day life in the 21st century. They seek ways to transform secular spaces, erasing the neat categorizations of generations past, and there is a strong emphasis on living in community.

I find this last point interesting - that a movement of increased communal focus would evolve out of our highly individualized culture. We are talking about the continuum of individual sovereignty and community primacy in our members meetings this fall at my church, struggling with that very issue.

Chapter 3: Identifying with Jesus
This chapter speaks about the change in the focus on Paul and his epistles that many of the mainline churches seem to have, to a focus on the life and teachings of Jesus – from the Epistles to the Gospel. (pg. 47) They claim that non-churched people dislike the church “because they do not readily see the church as living out Christ’s teachings” (pg. 48). They seek to discern what to copy from Jesus’ life and teachings. They change their focus to God’s mission – not taking God to the world, but finding God already at work and “watering it” – helping people discover where God is already at work (pg. 52) thus changing their emphasis from attracting crowds to equipping Christ’s followers (pg. 51).

Page 55 speaks of a quest: “to form communities of people that produce apprentices of Jesus, who live in the gospel and communicate and draw others in a matter of course to the way they live.” I found this an intriguing way of looking at discipleship. The term “apprentices” has connections to our own culture which makes it more accessible than the term, “discipleship.”

I was also challenged by the Landing Place story on page 57 where they want to make it as difficult as possible to follow Jesus, resulting in a deep level of discipleship for a few. This is quite different from the mega-churches bragging about how big their membership is, yet may not have a clear idea of the intensity of commitment to actually integrating the teachings of Christ into their lives at any significant level.
The authors write that this movement is about social transformation (pg. 63). I find it challenging that these folks have put a priority on transforming culture rather than acculturating people into a sub-culture of Christendom.

Chapter 4: Transforming Secular space
At the heart of this chapter is the Emerging Churches’ desire to reclaim every aspect of life as a place to encounter God. They boldly declare that God can be found in every heart and every space on Earth. They question the legitimacy of the dualisms of faith versus reason, body versus mind and spirit, power versus love (pg. 67).

They seek to re-invigorate the reading of the Bible, moving away from a linear, literalistic approach to seeing it as a story unfolding and that unfolding extends to our own lives (pg. 70).
A significant portion of the chapter was dedicated to elucidating the example of the Nine O’clock Service (NOS). This was an intriguing illustration of how one emerging church operated for a period of time. The fact that they had a stylist in their church that would help non-clubbing new-comers assimilate into the club-culture brought up a number of issues for me. I wonder about the tension between being true to who you are versus becoming totally immersed in a certain sub-culture. I wonder how the clubbers saw this assimilation. Was it embraced and celebrated as a validation of who they are, or was it seen as a mock-imitation that was rather insulting?

Chapter 5: Living in Community

I was eagerly anticipating this chapter about community since it is a topic of hot debate in my own church-community. In this chapter the authors explore with Emerging Churches the question of “what kind of community life must exist so that the church has the ability to practice the way of Jesus in every sphere of society?” (pg. 89) There are creative responses. They discover that “the church is primarily a people, not simply a place to meet.” (pg. 90) They drop cherished church forms that hinder creating space for God (pg.91), they seek to end “all forms of nationalism and violence” (pg. 92) and challenge individual sovereignty (pg. 93). They seek to redefine the very meaning of “church,” seeing it much more in terms of familial relationships (pgs. 97, 98, 100, 102). They place a high value on accountability, discipleship and commitment (pg.105).

I appreciate that they acknowledge that “any attempt to join people in a community presents a challenge for individuals who have been nurtured in the culture of modernity, in which independence, individual rights, and privileges are the norm” and that “…people are largely unaware of the extent to which they have become individualized and privatized “(pg.92).

This chapter also dealt with the issue of size. The amount of intimacy this kind of communal accountability demands requires quite a small size of group. Intimacy becomes diluted rather quickly in larger numbers, so what happens when people are attracted to this kind of group and want to join? There are several different responses. One group builds it into their infrastructure to limit their numbers to 40 (pg. 110). Another group changed their format to serve their members rather than accommodate visitors (pg. 111). Yet another group started developing a network of smaller groups, house churches or mid-week home communities. Then the whole network would meet on Sundays in a large worship gathering (pg. 112).

Chapter 6: Welcoming the stranger
This chapter highlights another difference in moderns and post-moderns: “moderns felt the need to control every aspect of reality. In their relentless pursuit of order, Western cultures sought to assimilate people by making everyone the same.” (pg. 118) Post moderns “accept a time when plurality is accepted and order and control are relinquished” (pg. 119). When assimilation is abandoned, hospitality takes on vast possibilities. Welcome happens for the sake of welcome, without hidden agenda. People are freed to “discover who they are… in authentic relationships with other people.” (pg. 122)

This hospitality takes on many practical aspects. One group offers “lots of therapeutic counseling” and a sanctuary “where healing and reconnecting can take place.” (pg. 121) Another place actually trains its members in hospitality (pg. 120). There are “verbal acts of kindness and sacrificial service” (pg. 119).
Hospitality means including those who are different. This has a number of challenges. There is a tension between wanting to remain a small, intimate community and showing welcome hospitality to outsiders. Inevitably, when one is welcomed, one may want to join the welcoming group. Also, there is the possibility of the differences of the new-comers overpowering the core group and taking it in a new direction far different from the original vision. It is important to be clear on who you are before engaging the stranger.

Chapter 7: Serving with Generosity
“…the very essence of the kingdom is generosity.” (pg. 135) This philosophy characterizes the fifth attribute of the Emergent Church groups. By joining God in this work, “they confront the practices of consumer churches” (pg. 136) as well as the consumer culture. In this way they attract attention from people around them and arouse their curiosity. These interactions are not anonymous but invite others to become active participants (pg. 138). This enables collective ownership (pg. 139). We see the EC philosophy of coming alongside others and living parallel and intersecting lives of faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus, deeply imbedded in the culture that surrounds them.

These churches strive to be engaged in powerful social action. For some, that means highly organized outreach (pg. 141). For others it means they “should serve the world through their vocations rather than through church-administered programs.” (pg. 142) In any case, “they do not see their service as a means to a disguised end, but rather as an expression of the love of Christ” (pg.145), “by their very lives they embody the good news.” (pg. 153)

Chapter 8: Participating as Producers
This somewhat obscurely named chapter speaks by examples, more about actual Emerging church worship than any other chapter, so far. In it we get glimpses of what participatory worship might begin to look like, depending on the context and the people involved. This is worship planning by committee and impromptu worship services. It gets messy and uncontrolled, it gets mysterious and moving, in ways that can not happen in other forms offered by modern churches. They offer us a contrast to a mass audience watching principal performers that perhaps get in the way of the worshiper connecting with God with their example of an “entire congregation [that] is actively and creatively engaged in offering worship” (pg. 172). From this vantage point, they call us by example into the deep, muddy waters, acknowledging the risks of failure and death, being destroyed by “viruses” or being threatened by crazy people (pg. 168) yet confident that they can absorb these problems (pg. 169).

This chapter also briefly touches on the issue of size. This is the kind of model that works best in small numbers, so what happens when they attract new members? Axxess, a group from Texas, had a dialogical approach to corporate worship (pg. 167), yet as their numbers grew, “this became untenable.” So, they “adopted a more decentralized approach, creating smaller gatherings (house churches).” (pg. 168)
Grain of Wheat Church-Community faces a similar challenge in growth issues. A consensus model of decision making looks very different to a group of about eight households (the original founders) than it does to approximately 40 (our current membership). In the past, there have been two groups to split off and form new groups, but in both cases, it didn’t work out very well. Many new-comers to GoWC-C like the larger group for things it can do that a smaller one can not, but then membership expectations need to change. This is the challenge we face currently.

On the whole, I am impressed and intrigued by this movement. Though it seems somewhat fragmented by the vast difference in practice amongst the different groups, I see this movement as a challenge to the Church to the ways that we have become legalistic and exclusivist. Clearly, it is young and there are issues to be worked out, there are experiments that fail, as in the example of NOS in chapter four, but I believe they have much to teach the Church in similar ways that the reformers Menno Simons and Margaretha Sattler had good words to the Church of their day.