I’ve just had the pleasure of hosting Tony Jones on his short visit to Queensland. Tony’s the national director of Emergent Village, a collective of theologians, artists, poets, philosophers based on friendship and honest engagement with emerging understandings of being church in the USA. He’s in Australia at the moment primarily to speak at Black Stump festival near Sydney.
I picked Tony up from the Brisbane airport on Wednesday morning and dropped him back there on Friday afternoon. We turned up together to a gathering of Baptist church planters, a couple of ecumenical gatherings in Brisbane, and a Uniting Church conversation on the Gold Coast. I got to hear four versions of the Emergent Village schtick, which Tony kindly varied each time for the sake of keeping my interest up.
Here’s a few of my impressions on the Emerging Church, which I wrote for Ashmore Uniting Church newsletter this weekend…
Freedom to Explore Questions
One of the most common questions I’ve heard people ask Tony is, “How would you know if you’ve become unorthodox?” That’s because a number of authors from the Emerging Church movement have challenged readers to reconsider what we mean by the Christian gospel? Is it all about God dealing with our sin? Or are there other ways to describe the good news of the kingdom of God? And what are our blind spots when it comes to the way we run our church?
Wells rather than Fences
One of the hallmarks of the emerging church movement is a tendency to be relaxed about who’s in and who’s out of activities run on behalf of the church. People are invited to connect with Christian community who may not consider themselves as followers of Christ. People are accepted as friends of Jesus rather than assessed on correct doctrine or behaviour. It’s a bit like the difference between keeping animals behind fences and attracting them to watering spots. Of course, as one of the Baptists pointed out, that concept has been around for a while and is not monopolized by the Emergent movement.
Relationships Count
Tony talked about the role we have as ambassadors of the good news of reconciliation. As Christians we tend to associate with people who agree with us. The easiest way to keep the peace is to choose a pre-determined set of beliefs and try and stick to those. When we start to get to know each other more we find that there’s a lot more variety in the way people think and act. And as a result we have a lot to learn about being honest and respectful with one another. I liked Tony’s response to a question about “testing the spirits”, in which he talked about assuming the best about God’s action in other people, as a way to avoid blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Generations in Conversation
While there’s a higher number of Gen X leaders involved in the ‘emerging church’ movement, it’s become clear that people of any age are interested in exploring different ways of being church. The Emergent Village connection grew out of the Gen X leaders called together by the Leadership Network in the USA. The initial hope was that these young emerging leaders would show us how to attract the next generation. Conversations made it clear however that generational distinctives are dwarfed by the more significant changes that come under the “Postmodern Turn”. So while it’s a group of Gen Xers who bring the generational values of cynicism about authority and a search for authenticity over excellence to their conversation, there are many older and younger people who share their journey.
Solomon’s Porch
A number of people found it helpful to explore what ‘emerging church’ might look like in reality in one of the communities associated with the Emergent movement. We looked at Solomon’s Porch, exploring the connection between relational theology, liturgy and couches. I suspect some were quite pleased to find the occasional flaw in the methodology. These “Emergents” are human after all.
Personal Reflection
Tony and I quickly became fellow travelers, sharing the challenges of transition. We spent time chasing a missing suitcase (see photo above), left by the flight attendant on the tarmac in Sydney. We went to the gym together, spent time walking the beach, and shared a few meals. In that time, I observed humility and honesty along with a passion for exploring truth. I picked up a few new phrases and words, like “ontological superiority” (our obsession with clergy), and discursive (Tony’s tendency to keep talking when asked questions). Tony’s a provocateur (look that one up) who gets people thinking. Good on ya mate!
See Tony’s blog at tonyj.net for his reflections on his tour of Australia, and check out his latest book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier.
Tony Jones, the national coordinator of Emergent Village in the USA, is visiting Queensland in October in conjunction with his sessions at Black Stump in NSW.
Tony has a background in youth ministry, Christian spirituality, postmodernism and the emerging church and will be picking up some of these themes. Tony’s approach will be focused on conversation rather than lecturing. See more on his blog, tonyj.net.
Tony Jones, national director of Emergent in the USA, has started up a video series on YouTube, featuring some of the people and thinking found in his book, “The New Christians”. The first features Trucker Frank, a guy who tells it like it is. Frank discovered that Jesus focused on what we do now rather than life after death. Frank got kicked out of the church he was pastoring for talking to the people who had left. The act that tipped the scales was throwing down a fake plant, in its pot, and telling the remnant that they were as fake as that plant…
Being a prophet is an exciting calling but it’s hard to find people who will pay you to live it out.
Tony will be in Australia in October, for Black Stump Festival in Sydney. We’re in conversation about the possibility of a visit to Queensland.
Tony Jones has published “The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier”, an insider set of observations on the Emergent movement in the USA. (Jossey Bass)
Tony is the national coordinator of Emergent Village and is working on a doctorate in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He’s known for his earlier books, Postmodern Youth Ministry and The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life.
Leaving the Old Country
I found the first chapter a bit hard going, to tell the truth. Tony sets out to explain why there’s a need for an alternative to the mainline denominations (Episcopalian, United Methodist, United Church of Christ and Presbyterian), and Evangelical protestantism (the loosely aligned born again Christians who tend towards literal interpretation of the Bible, emphasise personal conversion to Christ). No mention of Catholics here. Maybe the USA is more polarised than here downunder but my experience of the Uniting Church in Australia and Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand is that the tension between left and right is found within those denominations. In smaller countries there’s more likelihood that people will have attended conferences together, perhaps trained together at Bible College, or served together in an interdenominational organisation such as Scripture Union.
I appreciate Tony’s first two ‘dispatches’ from the Emergent Frontier:
Dispatch 1: Emergents find little importance in the discrete differences between the various flavors of Christianity. Instead, they practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements.
Dispatch 2: Emergents reject the politics and theologies of left versus right. Seeing both sides as a remnant of modernity, they look forward to a more complex reality.
I’m reminded of the behaviour of my third child as a toddler. The older two had the seating arranged for television. Kristen found that she had to push them to the left and to the right to get a seat in the middle.
The reality is that our formative heritage biases us, despite our discomfort with blanket generalisation. And so the “liberals” throughout the book are described by Tony (who comes from a Congregational background) as people who are all required to conform to a politically correct orthodoxy combined with conservative traditional liturgical worship. Although I’m living a long way away, I don’t believe that the mainline churches can be summarised through the writings of authors such as Marcus Borg or Stanley Hauerwas.
I did enjoy the inclusion of the Jon Stewart episode on CNN’s Crossfire show - which I’ve written up on my Propaganda blog.
After Objectivity: Beautiful Truth
One of the common critiques of the Emerging Church movement is the perception that these postmodernists have rejected the concept of truth. Tony responds by saying that Emergents embrace the whole Bible, the glory and the pathos. Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings. Emergents embrace paradox, especially those that are core components of the Christian story.
I enjoyed Tony’s personal reflections on the art of umpiring baseball and the difficulty of ‘calling’ and ‘naming’ what is true. I appreciated his consideration of the story of Jepthah’s sacrifice of his daughter. It’s a messy situation that calls us to consider our responsibility for our actions and God’s presence in great suffering. I like what Tony has to say about the way in which Christians qualify the word ‘truth’ with ‘absolute’ and other such adjectives. What Tony’s saying here resounds with my experience of attending a range of congregations in which the
Inside the Emergent Church
There are some great stories told here, with honesty. We’re taken behind the scenes at Jacob’s Well in Kansas City, Missouri, Journey in Dallas, Texas, Church of the Apostles in Seattle, Washington, and Solomon’s Porch in South Minneapolis.
Tony introduces us to the diversity found in these groups, the openness to newcomers, the commitment to dialogue, experimentation, and also the vulnerability found in small start up groups. Will they last? Does it matter? Will these groups get past the tentative dialogue stages and harden into something more definable such as Mars Hill Church (with Mark Driscoll) in Seattle?
Wikichurch
This is a brilliant analogy for the way any movement forms. Tony talks about the Emergent belief that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a heirarchy or bureacracy. He writes about attempts to move out of the clergy-dominated meeting structures found in most churches and develop an ‘Open Access’ approach to dialogue.
Tony points to the way Wikipedia trusts the collective editorial community to weed out abberations or rogue entries. In the same way he beloieves that the collected people of God, in community with the Spirit, will stay on track and engage with God’s work in the world. Two painful test cases are the issues of homosexuality and women in ministry. Already Mark Driscoll has parted ways with the Emergent crowd, now that it is clear that the Emergent crowd disagree with his hardline approaches.
Tony writes about the need for sustainability in response to criticism that the Emergent churches are not growing fast enough or making enough disciples. He suggests that the messiness of new startup groups can be a good alternative to highly ‘efficient’ congregations in which people burn out or are dominated by egomaniac pastors. Fear of failure is what stops movements like this starting or progressing.
Tony’s epilogue suggests that Emergent Christians are a bit like the feral camels in Australia, once domesticated, but now out in the wilderness pushing over fences, occasionally returning to bother the establishment.
Thumbs up Tony!
If you’d like to discuss the book further join the Facebook Group, administered by Sue McMahon-Jones and Doug Pagitt.
Phil used to blog at Pyromaniac but found the pressure to produce so great that he closed the site in January 2006 and started a team blog, Pyromaniacs.
Just this last week Neal Locke has written up his reflections on Postmodernism and Perl computer language, engaging with a talk by of Larry Wall, the author of Perl. The transcript of the talk (1999) is online at www.perl.com. Neal has abridged the talk at his Wiki site and made connections with the emerging church scene.
It’s encouraging to see a group of mainline emergent bloggers keeping the conversation going, not only online, but also live in what they’re calling Presbymergent Parties. The same group’s hosting a Presbymergent Facebook Group as well.
Today’s Emergent/C newsletter gives a link to Tony Jones’ post at the Christianity Today Blog on May 23, exploring the suggestion/accusation that the Emergent Conversation (based in the USA) is the New Christian Left, aligned with Jim Wallis and Sojourners. Mark Driscoll has recently drawn a line in the sand between ‘emerging evangelicals’ and ‘emergent liberals’. Ed Stetzer has divided the emerging church into relevants, reconstructionists and revisionists.
Tony points out that there is a wide variety of theological and political viewpoints in the Emergent movement. That, it appears, is the problem. The people most likely to stick around in such a conversation are people who enjoy diversity and thrive when they sit alongside people who see thing differently. The Emergent movement, by its commitment to exploring a range of contextual interpretations of Christian faith, becomes unattractive and repulsive to those who have narrow definitions of what following Christ is all about. It’s this pattern that leads to labels such as ‘ecumenical’ being used in the derogatory sense.
In reading through Ephesians I’m finding a strong emphasis on unity in Christ. It appears as though the early Church had similar problems about lines in the sand between differing interpretations of faith. Paul says to do what we can to maintain the unity that has been established by Christ. That’s partly why I’ve made a commitment to turning up for conversations with people whose opinions I genuinely find puzzling or disturbing.
OK. I’ve managed to track down some details on Brian McLaren’s visit to Sydney and Melbourne, courtesy of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. You can now download the brochure from the Mission Consultants site at UCA Queensland Synod. Or click on the brochure picture below to download the pdf file.
Friday 17 February
6:30 - 10:30pm: Exploring A Generous Orthodoxy
Dinner and conversation. (Numbers limited) Cost: $60
Saturday 18 February
9:00 am � 5.30pm: Exploring A New Kind of Christian(ity)
Cost: $100 (includes all meals)
Special rate for both events $150
(students and concession card holders $125)
VENUE: Ryde-Eastwood Rugby Club, 117 Ryedale Rd, West Ryde.
Please note: Standard club dress standards will apply.
MELBOURNE The Melbourne Events are being presented by Urban Seed Church.
Tuesday 21 February
2.30-4pm: Tabor College Seminar 1.
To Register phone Tabor College, 03 9844 8800. $10
Wednesday 22 February
9.30am -1pm: Rev Up: Whitley Baptist College.
To Register contact Simone Rickerby at Whitley College, 03 9340 8100
Cost $25
Thursday 23 February
10.30am-12pm: Tabor College Seminar 2.
To Register PH: 03 9844 8800 Cost: $10
2.30pm-4pm: Tabor College Seminar 3.
To Register PH: 03 9844 8800 Cost: $10
7.30pm: Postcards From the Edge.
New Zealand
Brian will be in Auckland on February 24. Rich Johnson has his ear to the ground there. Steve Taylor, Emergent Kiwi, has posted a pdf file with details on Brian’s visit to Christchurch on March 4-5.
I note on Brian McLaren’s blog that he’s going to be in Australia and New Zealand between February 15 and March 6 next year.
February 15 - Sydney, Australia
February 20 - Melbourne, Australia
February 24 - Auckland, New Zealand
March 2 - Christchurch, New Zealand
March 6 - Sydney, Australia
It looks as though there’s a bit of movement…
Sydney
Brian will be speaking at an all day conference for the Converse Network, supported by the NSW Board of Mission, Uniting Church in Australia, on Saturday 18th Feb at Ryde Eastwood Leagues Club. In addition, he will speak at a dinner for denominational leaders on Friday 17th February.
Melbourne
Brian will also be visiting Melbourne and speaking at events on Tues 21st, Wed 22nd and Thurs 23rd February. Anyone know where?
Brian McLaren’s written the cover article for the latest edition of Sojourners, on building bridges between extremes of liberalism and conservatism. I like what he has to say. He starts by drawing our attention to the commitment Jesus made to entering the culture he lived in. Likewise he looks at Paul’s call to ‘be all things to all kinds of people’, despite our saying that ‘we can’t be all things to all people’.
McLaren’s hunch is that there are four bridges we have to deal with in our hyper-polarized world today:
1. Religious Right and Secular Left.
“On the one side we have people for whom the good news of Jesus and the policies of George W. Bush are bonded with super glue. On the other side we have people who believe that all religion is superstitious mush and wish we would just dispense with the whole business once and for all and trust science and government instead.”
2. Religious Right and Religious Left.
“More and more supposedly “secular Left” folk are coming out of the closet as people of faith. For them, being anti-war is more important than being anti-abortion for religious reasons, and for them, some form of recognition for homosexual couples is a moral issue based in faith. They want to argue these issues not only on the basis of politics and sociology, but also on the basis of the Bible and theology.”
3. Secular Right and Religious Left.
“I suspect that hiding behind some religious conservatives are some secular conservatives who are manipulating their religious colleagues for a secular, cynical, ideological conservatism. These are the people who have (in the worst sense of the word) a relativist-postmodern conservative ideology, best articulated in Ron Suskind’s article “Without a Doubt,” published in The New York Times Magazine last October. These conservative ideologues are happy for religious conservatives to win support for their policies, but in the end it’s ideology, not theology, that guides them. Ironically, they have less in common theologically with those they have the most in common with ideologically, and vice versa.”
4. Secular Right and Secular Left.
“In spite of the widespread assumption that religion is the new politics, there still are secular forces on both sides for whom a thoughtful Christian (or generically spiritual) voice is seen as stupid for actually believing in such unscientific and impractical things as God, hope, forgiveness, sacrifice, and prayer.”
McLaren says that there is a rising ‘purple peoplehood’ out there - people who don’t want to be defined as red or blue, but have elements of both, and for whom faith speaks to both abortion and war, both sexuality and ecology, both family values and fair, respectful treatment for gay people - then we will need to learn new ways of communication. He finishes with suggestions on how to engage in conversation that takes this complexity seriously.
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
I picked Tony up from the Brisbane airport on Wednesday morning and dropped him back there on Friday afternoon. We turned up together to a gathering of Baptist church planters, a couple of ecumenical gatherings in Brisbane, and a Uniting Church conversation on the Gold Coast. I got to hear four versions of the Emergent Village schtick, which Tony kindly varied each time for the sake of keeping my interest up. 
Tony Jones, the national coordinator of 
Tony is the national coordinator of 
Just this last week Neal Locke has written up his reflections on Postmodernism and Perl computer language, engaging with a talk by of Larry Wall, the author of Perl. The transcript of the talk (1999) is online at w
Friday 17 February
February 15 - Sydney, Australia
Brian McLaren’s written the cover article for the latest edition of 
