May 2006

(One of my churches!)

My wife recently read an article about emerging church which asked “Will it retain a prophetic voice?” This is a really good question. Michael Moynagh writes,

“Emerging church with a mission heart is different. It does not start with a pre-determined mould and expect non-churchgoers to compress in. It begins with the people church is seeking to reach, and asks “What might be an appropriate expression of church for them?” (Emerging Church.intro, Monarch Books 2004).

This is true, surely, but it leaves emerging church right in the firing line for cultural identification to the point of being indestinguishable from the culture it is emerging in. The ‘prophetic’ must always retain an edge of holy difference.

How do we retain that prophetic edge as we explore new forms of church? I think if we want integrity as emerging churches the hard task for us is to sift the wheat from the chaff in the people’s cultures in which we find ourselves. This is only a possibility if we can identify what is gospel from what isn’t as we take it across into different cultures. But this missionary crossing activity is important because the movement/dialogue helps highlight continuity as well as necessary change in form (not substance) of the message.

I currently look after two ageing congregations, and by that I mean most aged over 65, and many over 80. As someone not yet 40 I find this tricky. I suppose it is cross-cultural for me and whilst a lot of emerging church is identified with a younger age range, I wonder what it would look like if an authentic ‘fresh expression’ were to emerge amongst these people. I know broadly where I am at in my own walk with Jesus, I’m not always clear I know where these people are.

If I were leading a group of bikers I could become a biker to reach them echoing St Paul, (as John Smith, aussie biker has done), but it may be just as hard to authentically enter the mindset of someone who grew up 30 years before I did. Yet I have to try because these congregated silver hairs make up most of my local community, as well as most of my local church. The dual fear/concern I have, I think, is i) that if I become too much like them I will be like one of the folks I went through theological college with who was 32 but dressed and thought and acted as if he was 52, trouser braces and all, and ii) that if I become so identified with them I would see my youthful, challenging and hopefully in Christ prophetic edge begin to seep away. If I was called to go out an lead a youth congregation, I would, but at this time God has lead me here to do this work.

I don’t yet have an answer to this issue, other than to do what my Dad used to quote Oliver Cromwell saying to his troops: “Trust in God and keep your powder dry”. In other words, have the faith to step out but keep your eyes open as you do.
Any thoughts?

Moby:

• from Everything is Wrong eg God hovers over the face of the Waters, used for a creation/trinity dance in a service on the Holy Spirit

• from Hotel - (Ambient) various tracks for backgrounds to meditations

• from Ambient (an earlier release) various

Massive Attack:

• from 100th Window - A Prayer for England,  Antistar (edited!)

The Power Babies:

• Georgia (unreleased)

Alternative medicine, alternative comedy, alternative worship! I once heard alternative medicine described by a doctor as being ‘alternative’ in the sense that it didn’t work. This week various eminent doctors and Prince Charles have been locking horns over that one, and I don’t want to get into it. But the question of what is ‘alternative’ is a very important one. In the 1970s and 80s we in the UK saw the rise of ‘alternative comedy’, a term coined by a pub owner who put on shows of then cutting-edge (supposedly) comedy which was ‘alternative’ to the more mainstream comedy being put on by the local yacht club. Perhaps the yacht club liked Benny Hill, I don’t know. But by the 1990s such once way out radical stuff had become mainstream.

When we get to ‘alternative worship’ (a term never liked but not improved on since its own coining some time in the mid-late 1980s) we again ask what is alternative. According to Wikipedia, “It is called Alternative as a parallel to the use of the word with non-mainstream music and culture.� However, as we have all seen with alternative comedy and alternative music, last years alternative often becomes this year’s mainstream. Here and there many elements brought to the fore by the alternative worship movement have become mainstream.

As someone who was in ‘on the ground floor’ with alternative worship, my biggest concern is not one of form (although give me ‘Bristol sound’, projections and ambient light over MOR any day!) but one of misappropriation. When I first experimented seriously with worship it was in an attempt to regain or at least increase the authenticity of experience and expression of worship. I wanted it to fit us, to be our worship, ie worship that we ‘owned’ even as we directed it Godwards. I felt quite possessive about it. I’ve never been apologetic about that though. I agree with Steve Collins when he writes that alt.worship is “what happens when people create worship for themselves.”

I don’t really mind if someone worships with a tambourine or wailing guitars, sings in Latin or hums. It doesn’t bother me if we use words from the 4^th century or words from the edge of the 21^st century. But what does bother me is if forms are adopted not because they suit those leading worship and involved in the worship, but with the hope of creating an effect, ‘to bring in the kids’ (sic) or even to appear cool. Alternative bands, for example, are cool not because they seek to be cool but because they already appear so at home in something different. Alternative worship may be cool (and sometimes it is far from that!), but it should similarly be cool because the worshippers are so at home in something different and not for its own sake. When someone is self-consciously struggling to be ‘cool’ doesn’t it strike you as sad?

Ooooh! I could spout on for ages on this, but at least I’ve started blogging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_worship

This is not a serious post, just something to shift writer’s block, or blogger’s block I suppose. Is time relative? Does lunchtime time move faster than worktime?

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