Missional and Emergent, Part 3

The missional and emerging church movements represent two different ways of doing theology. This is due in part to the location of the leading voices in the movement. The missional church guys are mostly seminary profs, and particularly well represented are missiologists (Guder, Hunsberger, Van Gelder).

Following the work of Lesslie Newbigin in Great Britain, these leaders seated their analysis in theological critique. They were doing ecclesiology and missiology, and these emphases have led also to careful reflection from Trinitarian and eschatological perspectives. They did not begin their reflection primarily as problem solvers within local congregations. They have moved from theological topics to application and are only now beginning to address some of the close issues of congregational life.

The emerging church leaders in the early days were mainly pastors reacting to the close problems of congregational life. They begin their theological reflection with the immediacies presented by a context they define as postmodern. They have moved from situation to more deliberate reflection on theological topics over time.

It is interesting that the herd is already thinning among the emergents as the theology becomes more fully articulated. The missional church leaders have arisen primarily from the mainline ranks, while the emerging church leaders tend to come more from the evangelical side of things. I point this out because many of the emerging church leaders are casting outside the normal waters of traditional evangelical thought, especially when it comes to issues like truth, Scripture, politics, and salvation. Early and prominent leaders have disavowed their association with all things emerging, notably Mars Hill Church (Seattle) pastor Mark Driscol. I made a presentation on missional church recently to a group of pastors that included evangelicals. I made one comment, fairly favorable, about the emerging church movement, and was roundly attacked by a few young evangelical pastors.

Still, having said that, a book like Emerging Manifesto of Hope (I should have included the words "of Hope" when I reported the title in my earlier post, my apologies) is all over the place on some fairly important theological concepts--God, world, church, culture, salvation. And the book is still fairly silent on some big theological themes, e.g. Trinity. A reader still gets the sense that what binds the material together is a commitment to the issues related to postmodernity rather than a set of defining theological commitments.

(I like Doug Pagitt's observation that emergents approach postmodernity in different ways. Some minister to postmoderns. Others with postmoderns. Still others as postmoderns. All of them, though are about whatever is postmodern. And I think the latter two groups are wresting the brand away from the first).

This last observation is not a criticism. I think this is something that the emergent types might even herald as a mark of their movement. And this is a legitimate way to do theology. In fact, one could argue that this is the way most theology has developed historically. The irony might very well be that the emergents are making the case for missional in a more compelling way than their more academically attuned counterparts (and to self-identify, I'm one of those more academically attuned dudes. Although, I'm pretty sure Hunsberger, Guder, et al are not so much dudes. Don't get me wrong, they are dudes as opposed to the other gender. Though Lois Barrett and Inagrace Ditterich are not dudes. Sorry, not the point I was trying to make).

What I mean by this is that the missional church folks are big on emphasizing that mission is the occasion and source for theology. One implication of this claim is that context drives much of the theological agenda. We are always doing theology in light of the need to make sense of the faith in new circumstances. The emergents are hip deep in the new circumstances. They reek of it. (And I mean this in the best possible sense of the word reek).

Having affirmed this approach to doing theology, however, I do think that the sustainability of the emerging church movement will require more deliberate articulation about what they are learning about God's mission in a new context. Otherwise, this will be little more than a thousand dissipated experiments. And this type of articulation will push the need for clarity.

This is already happening from my perspective. A recent essay by Eddie Gibbs (one emergent leader who teaches in a seminary, namely Fuller) begins with the sweet theological strains of Lesslie Newbigin. Brian McLaren's essay in Emerging Manifesto of Hope moves deliberately away from postmodernism as a frame for his critique, and toward what he terms post-colonialism. This produces, in turn, a different set of theological considerations. He is closer here to a missional line of critique.

It is not surprising that these two groups are forming somewhat of a middle ground. The missional leaders value the experience within congregations of the emergents, while the emergents are finding very helpful cover for their experiments within the tracks of the more formally articulated missional theology.