Emergent... a year later

A year ago I left for a 3 month sabbatical to explore "the Emergent Church." I read a pile of books and articles, participated in several seminars, and conversed with dozens of people. All of this was great fun. Even more fun was the opportunity to travel around the country to visit self-described emergent congregations, participate in worship with them, and interview other participants (click here. Apart from indulging my addiction to learning new things, all of this was very stimulating, inspiring, and encouraging. I am very grateful to the congregation I serve, St Marks, for giving me this time for exploration.

Now that this has settled and steeped, one year later, what's the main thing I've learned? I wrote the following during my study time, and a year later, I think it may be the more important conclusion:

I think the question at hand is not about "postmodern Christianity." Christianity should not be considered ancient, medieval, modern, or postmodern. God became human and spoke with a Galilean accent, ate Galilean cooking, sang Galilean songs, danced Galilean dances, and laughed at Galilean jokes.

The incarnation was within a particular historical and cultural context. But never have I thought that to "become like Christ" was to become Galilean. So I think it is with the Church and culture. The medieval Church would live and serve within a medieval world, clothed in medieval clothing and speaking with a medieval accent. Particularization requires contextualization. But to lose its medievalness when it modernized was not intrinsically a loss of anything eternal or essential.

Always we wrestle with what is essential and what is coincidental. Always we will live and move within a culture, but it is in God that we live and move and have our being. It is not readily apparent which is which. So the question is not about how Christianity will become postmodern or resist postmodernism, but rather about how Christianity will best flourish and minister within the postmodern world.

The Lord be with you,