Grace Happens

Ecclesiastical breadcrumbs

I've been away for some time, off on a detective hunt of sorts. It all started with a weird feeling that came over me at church when something was mentioned about the reunification of all denominations and borrowing worship elements from these other churches. It was followed a few weeks later by some even stranger talk about "postmodernism," "postcolonialism," "interactive experience," and a book called The Church on the Other Side by Brian McLaren. Determined to find out where all this was coming from, I immediately went home and looked up the book on Amazon.com.

This is when I started to follow the breadcrumbs in earnest. According to Amazon, customers who purchased The Church on the Other Side, also bought these books:

- The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball
- A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey by Brian D. McLaren
- A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN by Brian D. McLaren

The phrase "emerging" or "emergent" appeared a couple of times on the page. I then searched for "emergent church" on Metacrawler. This led to a wealth of web pages on the subject, not the least of which are Emergent Village and EmergingChurch.org. Apparently, there are a whole slew of churches out there getting in on this postmodern, tradition borrowing "conversation" (as they call themselves.)

The "conversation" is not without its critics, notable among them is Chuck Colson founder of Prison Fellowship. It appears it started with this article in Christianity Today in which Colson speculates whether postmodernism is "on life support." The apparently rubbed Brian McLaren the wrong way, so he wrote a response on his website A New Kind of Christian.com. Colson obligingly replied.

Ironically, my church is now recommending a book for all to read entitled The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church by Reggie McNeal which begins with "The current church culture in North America is on life support."

I'm still investigating (The Church in the Other Side sits next to me half read) but mostly I wonder why everyone is so concerned about the death of these passing movements rather that the Death that really matters.