It's interesting that Phyllis sees the Emergent Church as 'organizing' and 'institutionalizing'. Every emergent I've read claims just the opposite and that the church as an institution is the whole problem with it today.

Her other interesting observation is that emergent is about building a new 'model' for church for the next five hundred years but she never mentions a move back to Biblibal truth which is where all former "schisms" have come from.

Do you really believe that neither charismatics/pentecostals or liturgically oriented Christians are evangelical?

so......here we are in the midst of an "emergence" of a "new church". Some may see it and claim it as an emergency while others are like "finally, somethings happening". All the while some are claiming their way is better than others while some are muddling around picking up the crumbs and trying to fit in.

My, how would our Lord deal with this? What would He say to the emerging church?
"If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, whom you say is your God."

change is good, ego is not, the simplicty of our saviour cannot be lost in the emergence indeed it should be part of it. The risk I see as a servant in His Kingdom is the emerging church can be self serving and egotistical if apostolic oversight is ignored over the appearance of individual accomplishment.
I am all for believers opening their homes for worship,teaching and fellowship as the church did 2000 years ago, we can not ignore the gathering of the saints and receiving the instructions of the leaders God has given to lead...just like 2000 years ago. Traditional church from Constantine to today has emerged with little impact and lots of religion. Lets all pray the Father and be laborers in the fields. By example, by praise, by diligent practice of our faith in the world. Let He who is in us emerge as the light for the lost and the hungry....†

excellent and insightful article. thanks! i certainly agree that emerging church is bringing many of these streams together.

The so-called "500 year cycle" seems like a fabrication to me. It is wishful thinking bred out of a hope for change. It is also profoundly Western and Protestant in its orientation. Charismatics/Pentecostals have their own unique way of seeing history (around Pentecost-like movements, as do Anabaptists (that center around the way the Church relates to the State)--all of these are only so helpful.

I think Ms. Tickle underestimates the way in which localized embodiment of the Gospel is making an impact (conversely, she over-emphasizes the importance of organization and institutionalization). The emerging church is a hyper-contextual movement--it sees the local church as the place in which theology is done. Centralizing can easily destroy this impulse. The power of the emerging church is in its resistance to institutionalism and its desire to stay rooted in local theological contexts. If it challenges Protestant hegemony (and also seeks to reintegrate the different streams of the Great Tradition) it must do so at the local level, without centralizing.

I think Phyllis Tickle is right about the requirement for organization beyond the local groups or cohorts.

As I look at the way organization happened in earlier upheaval zones, I’d identify the following organizational means:

a) Protestant Reformation-- local/regional political rulers and later, denominations, with well-defined doctrine, spread through the printing press and denominational structures. Basic unit: the nation-state or denomination.

b) East/West Schism (West)-- stronger ties to the bishop of Rome, combined with a Holy Roman Empire that provided political enforcement of religious teaching. Basic unit: the episcopal see.

c) Post-Empire (West): Monastic communities spread and settled all over Europe, becoming centers of learning, sanctuary, ministry and economic development for local communities. Basic unit: the monastery or cathedral church (often run by monks).

d) Pre-Constantine (East/West): massive correspondence and occasional face to face "follow up" meetings to "check in" on what the churches, set up differently in different places, were doing. The church is a personal institution, built locally in small cadres of intense face to face relationships of disciples of Jesus, rather than either public (it wasn't "y'all come") or private. Basic unit: the congregation connected via lots of correspondence.

As I look at organization within the emerging movement at this point, what I'm seeing described as most promising are efforts that seem to combine the early church (massive correspondence-- today it’s networking via the Internet) and Post-Constantine period (sending cells to live in and among the people and become community centers-- neomonasticism).

Peace in Christ,

Very astute observations. The way I see it, however, is that emergent is not a movement, but a paradigm shift in the church as a whole. I think we will be making a huge mistake if we try to institutionalize it because the church is already bogged down with too much organization as it is. That's the crux of the problem. We need to see emergent as something all of us, as the Body of Christ, are becoming a part of, and not as another division.

What I believe is really happening is that God is restoring the missional vision to the Church. The growing needs in the world are so overwhelming that unless God's people become more outwardly focused on being the hands and feet of Jesus to the desperate and hopeless, mankind might very well be facing an insurmountable humanitarian crisis. No other body of people have the kind of compassion, nor the divine mandate to take on such a challenge.

Emergent isn't about yet another theological schism, it's about God putting the fires of compassion back into His people regardless of denominational beliefs.

I agree with Phylis that there is a merging of the political, religious, social and liturgical elements of the Church. But what I see happening is that we are being unified by our need for each of these element, whereas, there was a time when we divided over each element's importance. They are all important, but none can stand alone. This merging excites me greatly.

But, I think we need to stop trying to figure the emergent thing out, stop resisting it, and just get to work loving and caring for our fellow man the way Jesus did. If we can agree on that, Christianity will become more culturally relevant than anything out there. If we remain inwardly focused, we will implode and self-destruct.

I think the idea that ecclesial/theological change happens every 500 years is a little naive, a little too-westernized, and a little too convenient. Look for a trend and you'll probably find evidence of it. This doesn't mean it’s objectively "true" however.

Besides, considering change happens so quickly in this technologically driven age, I highly doubt historical trends will play out along the same timelines as they have previously.

Secondly, the idea that the Emerging Church needs to, and is, organizing and institutionalizing, seems a little misguided. Emergents are leery of institutionalization - so much so that I think we will never see a denominational form of the movement.

Rather, I think that Emerging perspectives will eventually "merge" with contemporary, pre-existing paradigms/denominations/movements.

"And where the quadrants meet in the center there’s a vortex like a whirlpool and they are blending."

Though I am not a declared emergent, I like Tickle's statement - it describes where I am drifting towards.

I always enjoy Ms. Tickle's insights--this reading is no exception. However, I must take issue with her dismissing emerging communities’ lack of organization and her prognosis that we will "mature" by institutionalizing; I feel this view is fertilized, in part, by her high-church pedigree—a tradition that can have a very positive contribution in itself, but potentially limiting in its perspective of where we “decentralizers” are coming from.

From a sociological stance, it seems that bureaucracies are dying. While some megachurches are still co-opting leadership models from big business, business-savvy prophets themselves are heralding “the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations.” [See http://www.amazon.com/Starfish-Spider-Unstoppable-Leaderless-Organizations/dp/1591841437 and http://lifestream.org/blog/?p=414 ] From a technological standpoint, the internet is enabling the "Wikipedization" of society, an open-source way of looking at life where everyone can contribute (and be critiqued).

[To be Continued…]

It seems to me that there is an exaggerated faith in organization in the US. I am baffeled by the authors judgement that the emergents aren't influensing because they are focused on incarnational living. The authors solution seems to be to get organized, wielding the sword of power, getting media time, arranging big conferences etc. I believe emergents are pretty allergic to all that. Of course some will try to turn it into a monument over themselves, of course some will try to "ride the wave" by publishing books, arranging conferences and so on. The problem is that you can't both be on the circuit and live incarnationally.

In a time when less and less are converted and churches die, I bellieve those who dont like it in the religious ghetto, those who break out to do the real thing, not just talk about, are far more influential in the long run, than those who rather talk.

James says true religion is to serve the needs of the orphans and widows. Christ came to tear down the bricks and mortar.

The establishing of the church as we know it is the embodiment of the "new pharistical insitutions".

We did in 2000 years much of what Christ came to dissemble.

The home church, servicing our communities and a true call to ministry is what will help build the True Church. If each of us listened to the call on our hearts, used our God given talents and gifts we could imporve the Kingdom of God on earth.

I beleive the problem with us church people is that we have organized so much that we have organized ourselves a ways away from Jesus and what He meant church to look like. I am happy for what the Spirit is doing thru the 'emerging church' I beleive its a move of the Spirit to get us back in allignment with Jesus, the head of the church.
Why can't we allow the Spirit to work? Why has everything got to be so structured and organized? I beleive we need to get our egos out of the way.

Noted Russian Historian Pitirim Sorokin did a survey of Western civilization and he noted that it seems to follow a 500 year trend modulating from a sensate to ideational set of values. I do believe we are in a similar swing. I think that Emergent is getting publicity because it is being carried by publishers who are pushing it. My own communion, the CEC, is an expression of post-protestant, post-denominational, catholicism and was talking about these issues in the early nineties. Recently we have suffered a lot of upheavil because we are living in this clash of worlds to a greater degree than a lot of Emergents IMHO. But there are many other expressions of this similar trend. Noteably the many people going to the Eastern Orthodox and roman churches as well as those rediscovering the daily office (and I am sorry but I think a lot of people had rediscovered it before Phyllis published her book)

Melody--

Don't you think that when Ms. Tickle says that belief needs to be incarnated, that IS a move towards biblical truth?

Jamie, Ms. Tickle says, "The response for the emergents has been to incarnate their beliefs right in their own neighborhoods". There's noting wrong with that. It's just that she never says exactly what those beliefs are. She's not saying they aren't moving toward Biblical truth, but there is no implication that they are. The word 'incarnate' means 'embodied in human form'. Nothing more and nothing less.

Phyllis always keeps posing good questions and observations about the church in contemporary society. Whether you agree with her 500 year cycle theory, it certainly makes sense of major phases of Christianity's development. You could use her categories and her observation about those streams coming together in a contemporary spiritual "vortex" and build some good working wisdom from that. Richard Foster's Renovare approach to "streams of tradition" is similar and helpful also. My take is that our society itself is very "post" everything, and suspicious of "institutional" authority and control of knowledge and spirituality... and that is what energizes the modern spiritualities (including emergent stuff). The internet, the "way of the web" is open sourcing and peer to peer, and that is the way of emergent strategies, and contemporary spiritualities... and certainly not the way of classic protestantism and their competing "brands..."

Perhaps the trend is actually that we are beginning to understand the difference between the Kingdom of God and the Church. The Church was formed to be the instrument God uses to establish His Kingdom here on earth. His Kingdom is where His will is done. Can we really say that all of our churches are taking territory for the Kingdom? Is His Kingdom really established in our Chruches? Are we truly exhibiting the signs that follow them that believe?

Does the church need organization? Yes, just like any army does. But there are many divisions of an army with special giftings and focus. If we are trying to all be the same division, we will not effectively bring God's Kingdom into every area of life like we are called to do.

Let's spend less time trying to organize and catalogue, and more time demonstrating the Kingdom. AFter following the first and chief of Christ's commands, then we can ask Him how best to organize His army...

Paula--
Allowing the Spirit to work and being structured and organized are not polar opposites. Cannot the Holy Spirit work through organization as well as through chaos? After all, it was the Spirit of God moving over the surface of the waters that transformed this world that was "without form and void" into the highly complex and ORGANIZED world that it is now. I agree with Emergents that complicated organizations have a tendency to become self-centered. But I think it is unfair automatically to condemn the idea of organization as ungodly or against the work of the Spirit.
I think there are several people who have posted that have read into Tickle's comments on organization the negative connotations that they associate with that term. I don't think that's fair to her. Her post did not mention nor imply anything close to "wielding the sword of power, getting media time, arranging big conferences etc." (as quoted by Pastor Astor). The NT church did none of those things, and yet it had a very simple organization based on a leadership team of elders and deacons. Not very complicated, but through the Spirit it was adequate enough to turn the Roman Empire upside down. Could it be that in resisting organization because of its dangers, we could also be resisting part of what the Holy Spirit is wanting to do?

Pastor Astor wrote: "The problem is that you can't both be on the circuit and live incarnationally."

Why? The two don't appear mutually exclusive.

Let me state what seems to me to be obvious. Maybe we are looking at something new. Is it possible for a movement to organize, to institutionalize, and yet to remain decentralized, localized? It sounds like a oxymoron. But, at one time Catholic Europe could not conceive of a world that was not Rome-centric. Another epoch change would yield similarly radical shifts in thought and structure.

If I may interject here with something, there is something I am noticing more and more here and Fernando picked up on this as well. THere is a growing misunderstanding of organization vs. incarnationalism. Fernando pointed out that organization is not un-Godly and that in fact the Spirit may use it to bring forth the gospel.

One of the best examples of organizing to bring forth incarnational living are Evangelical mission boards, many of whom have been around for over 100 years. These boards are highly complex organizations but it is through them that thousands of people have been able to live incarnational lives through out the world.

Here is a little something that many emergent types forget and need to be reminded of. Many want to reject the 'modern' (which isn't really modern when you understand that word properly) church and say that their ways were old-fashioned and of no worth. If the modern church, and mission boards, had not sent out missionaries throughout the world over the last 100+ years there would not be an emergent church or hardly any churches in much of the world. These organized hegemons that many like to beat on took the Gospel to places like India, New Guinea, China, deep in the Jungles of the Amazon, former Communist Russia, war torn Africa, etc., and many did it in incarnational living through an organized system of churches, mission boards, and conventions. If they had not gone and we did not have those organizations I highly doubt that there would be great movements of God, like we are seeing today, happening all over the world. These over-organized 'modernists' planted the seeds through hardship, pain, and even death so that the current movements could take place.

Let's remember that it was through highly organized groups that took the Gospel all over the world and the Holy Spirit gave it the wind to do so!

Blessings,

Are all your commentators from the USA? How about looking at the UK situation as seen in ? At the Incarnate conference/houseparty last September one of the main points of the discussion was how the denominations can empower those involved in emerging church and how the practitioners can be accountable whilst remaining free to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Also evident was how the many different expressions of church on offer today can help one another in their bid to serve the Kingdom of God.
It is also worth noting that every new movement needs both a theology of commencement and a theology of continuation. "Without a concept of this kind it can easily lose itself in particularist actions and fall a victim to either sectarian or political movements" (Moltmann, 1977, 'The Church in the Power of the Spirit'. SCM Press p.330. Another possibility is that the significance of such movements will be missed by the rest of the church and consequently by the world. See Lesslie Newbigin, 1998, 'Household of God'. Paternoster p.91.

120 people in an upper room emerged to turn thier world upside down.

And then men organized it.

Look at what we have today.

I know when I look at it the thought occurs to me..."I think I'm going to hurl..."

All movements, no matter how large or small their objectives, no matter two or a thousand involved, will self-organize regardless of their attempts to not organize.
Chaos theory, ladies and gentlemen, is the principle that all forms, regardless of their current state, exhibit an organized trend in it, whether it's intended or not. It cannot be prevented, it can only be helped.
The "emergent" church is already self-organized whether they realize it or not, and in my opinion, based on historical precedent, the only thing left for them to do is to actually codify their organization. Which...I give about...oh, say...ten years.

[Continued from above]

From a theological perspective, many of us are seeing God’s new covenant inaugurated in Christ as one giving followers of Jesus greater (to paraphrase Peter Parker’s uncle Ben) power and responsibility, genuine response-ability of everyday Joes to God’s moving and guidance. Those of us in so-called “house church” expressions [as in http://www.zoecarnate.com/#relational ] see this as the Holy Spirit taking genuine leadership among us, bringing us into the mind of Christ together. Decisions are made by consensus and the Church Gathered is open and participatory, with every member taking responsibility for the direction of the church. Of course there are still gifts and callings, but they are fluid and growing, changing. We don’t major on them, and they’re verbs rather than nouns. We’re biblically-rooted, historically-aware, and neighborhood/culturally sensitive. We observe, fascinated, this paradoxical dance between Zeitgeist and Paraclete and remain open for what is next.

It seems that the clarity to see the axial spiritual/religious shift taking place on this 500-year cusp should be paired with the prescience to recognize that emerging communities will not be returning to organization-as-usual if we’re actually emerging. I mention this with all due respect for Phyllis Tickle. She is way smarter and wiser than I.

Personally I find the Reformation analogy unnecessarily provocative and way too Western-centric.

Why not think of cross-cultural mission in the West as simply the next chapter in world mission? What we are seeing emerging in the West is nothing more or less than the same sort of contextualization processes that been going on in Africa, Asia and South America for many decades.

And speeking of those nations, how can we ignore them when we talk about the future of Christianity. Hell, they are were all the action is. We are suffering from a severe case of myopia and narcissism here. And I say this as an emerging church blogger.

Everyone go back and read Sheerakhan's comment again. Excellent.

There is a whole lot of "After picking out the data I like and imposing my preconceptions, this is how it looks to me" in the thinking here. That 500-year cycle thing is an imposed narrative. I could look over history and construct a 300 year or 700 year cycle as well.

There is not much that is new in the EC, and that's not a bad thing. But never get caught up in the idea that you are living on some cusp of history. Either everything is a cusp, or nothing is. There is always more than just one - more than a million great inflection points - at any moment.

We are in a long trend of decentalization in our institutions, where networks will come to be the dominant structure rather than hierarchies. But networks have been part of the Church since its beginning as well, and the EC is not moving into uncharted waters any more than anyone else is.

I like a lot of the EC, and I think responsiveness to local conditions and willingness to reconfigure elements of church have great strength in Anglospheric cultures. what use it will have in the churches in the rest of the world remains to be seen.

Wow. Talk about making huge modernist generalizations, check this action out!

Mrs. Tickle reduces all theological History to a series of predictable patterns, each with outcomes that can be plotted and forecasted. This is a major, major mistake. The players in History are not automatons or mathematical formulas, they are human beings with passions and wills.

Furthermore, she doesn't seem to have a problem easily categorizing American religious expression into four 'quadrants.' I don't know if we are experiencing the next Reformation or not, but I can tell you one thing: these modernist assumptions about history are typically the type of thinking that many emergents are resisting.

Ideally, I'd like to see consideration/deliberation on both the local church and parachurch organizations, like denominations. IMHO, it would be ideal if local churches were like house churches and parachurch organizations were voluntary associations in the images of the house churches(30 or less people, representing 30 or less house churches, or associations of house churches.).

I think such sorts of associations could enable seminaries, youth camps, biblical research, and other stuff that we currently benefit from. But that's just my ideal and I'm committed to working peacefully with the status quo parachurch organizations with the intent of fostering more decentralization and change.

dlw

So if this is the future of the church, why is it all white?

As I see it, evangelicalism has become ery fragmented, and a lot of is certainly not counter cultuural in the way that the Church must be. It has, in the case of a great deal of it, become just as "Me-oriented" as the surrounding culture, albeit with a biblical veneer. Renewal is nevertheless underway. There are sign of this renewal in SOME emerging churches, but not in the emerging church as a paradigm, in some liturgical churches, both Catholic and Protestant, in some traditional evangelical churches, in some charismatic churches and possibly in some "Christian left" communties. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the emerging church, or any other movement, is anointed by God to catalize renewal. Renewal occurs to the extent to which we get off our pedestals, let God b God, confront and confess our sin and our compromise with the surrounding culture. There is a terrible danger of evangelialism s whole just caving in. The irony is that i it does it will be with the coniction that God is actually blessiing us and is pleased with us: "Just watchhow are churches are growing". The question that we must sk is "What are the seekers who come ino our churches actually finding?"

Melody,
This is a quote from your last comment, "It's just that she never says exactly what those beliefs are. She's not saying they aren't moving toward Biblical truth, but there is no implication that they are. The word 'incarnate' means 'embodied in human form'. Nothing more and nothing less. ".

Are you suggesting that the idea of incarnation isn't biblical? To embody fully with mind, spirit, and body the grace, love, and truth that Jesus shared with us? In 1 John, we're told to love as Jesus and God is love, this sounds like a biblical truth to me.
Maybe I have read it wrong, but it sounds like what you are referring to are theological points pulled from Bible texts. In other words, dogma/beliefs that agrees with one's allready head theology (preconceived belief structure). If so, then I don't think you'll ever find what you are looking for. Not because believing with head is wrong, but leading with the head can be misguided. I am Wesleyan in Theology, but I work closely with people from the Calvinistic views. I might not agree with their theology, yet we all share the same missional beliefs about evangelism and social issues with our head, hearts and body.

Basically 1 John tells us that we will know who does and does not follow Christ by their motivations and actions, not belief structures. By our incarnational living of Jesus' love will we be living biblically. If this is not a biblical truth, then what is?

"The problem is that the emerging church does not have enough organization within itself to get beyond the sound of its own voice."

Perhaps the lack of organization is intentional. I wonder what the real size of this movement is.

My favorite quote I have heard on this was from Rob Bell, who casually said, "If you use the word post-modern you aren't." I think the same can be said of this EC flow. The folks who are really interested in studying/analyzing/dissecting it are from a modernist mindset, one that believes that all things can be examined, grouped, categorized, labeled, and understood. Yet these movements seek to live realities that have no interest in such pursuits.

It reminds me of a story about a deer a friend encountered in the woods. He observed it, killed it, dissected it, and thought through his exercise he had learned everything there was to know about what it was and how it worked. Yet ultimately, he had missed the Truth which the deer held: its beauty while alive.