Engaging the World
For those who lead in mission, service and peace ministries.
Emerging worship
By Curt Weaver
Twenty minutes ago someone called SEZ posted a theological question on a blog Web site. SEZ lives in California. By this evening hundreds of people will have read SEZ’s question, and a few of them will have responded to her. In the coming days they will engage SEZ in a conversation concerning faith and culture.
Also in the coming days Christians all over the world from New Zealand to the United Kingdom who read SEZ’s question will attend informal worship services where they will sit, drink coffee and discuss SEZ’s question over soft background music with the flicker of ambient video images in the background.
Their discussion will occur not during the coffee hour after Sunday worship but rather during the worship service. The question SEZ asked twenty minutes ago will travel like a virus across many networks, aided by cohorts, chat rooms, the blogosphere, and friendships, entering the consciousness of hundreds of people.
Essentially, SEZ’s simple act of starting a conversation about faith is the emerging church movement. In theory, something new will have emerged ever so slightly in the ongoing story of God because this conversation was able to happen. In one sense this is as old as the exchange of ideas between Christian apologists from antiquity, yet in another sense, it is truly something unique to our age.
Talking about emerging worship as a style is difficult to do. The emerging church movement, which began in the United Kingdom in the 1980s, is rather young in North America and is almost by design in a state of constant internal redefinition.
What further frustrates attempts to find common practices or principles within the movement is the fact that much of what is being called emerging these days is more or less a continuation of mainline Christian doctrine in the process of reshaping itself to be culturally relevant. While most of these emerging churches see themselves as ministering to postmodern people and some even go as far as ministering with postmodern people, there remains another approach, and that is ministering as postmodern people. It is regarding this latter group, often called the Emergent Church, that I will make some general observations about worship.
Beginning in 2000, Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, authors of Emerging Churches, interviewed pastors and visited hundreds of churches across the United States and England, researching what they called at the time “innovative” churches. They concluded that three core principles combine to make up what they have determined is an authentic expression of the emerging church:
1. identifying with the life of Jesus,
2. transforming secular space, and
3. living as community.
Perhaps one of the reasons Anabaptism has been discovered and valued by many in the emergent movement is that they sense an affinity with our Christology and our sense of community. But what can we learn about worship from the emerging church?
The second principle that Gibbs and Bolger identify, transforming secular place, is at the heart of why emerging worship looks the way it does. Postmodernism has once again collapsed the modern separation of the sacred and the secular, and it is in this new cultural space where emerging churches aim to live and worship together. This is the place they call home.
Worship shaped by this cultural reality does tend to have some common elements.
Rather than sermons, one is likely to encounter discussions that represent the people taking part in them. Rather than central leadership, many pieces of the worship gathering are brought by small groups of worshippers so leadership is broadly shared and participation by all is highly valued.
Rather than a service where worshippers sit in one place, the gathering is designed for interaction and a variety of experiences happening simultaneously. The arts are highly valued as an expression of spiritual insight and all are encouraged to engage in tapping into their God-given creativity. Classical music, liturgy, ancient forms of praying, and iconic images are often used to connect to the Christian tradition. This list could continue. For those interested in the forms of emerging worship the Web site www.alternativeworship.org is a valuable resource to learn more.
But what is underneath these forms? The story of God we tell ourselves in worship should realign us with God’s intentions for the reconciliation of God’s creation and send us back into the world to participate in what God is doing. This foundational understanding shows up strongly in some emergent churches and perhaps less so in others. Could we not say the same about our own worship practices?
It is my hope that as Anabaptists we continue to engage the emergent church in conversation. We have much in common and we can learn much from each other. In the end, what form our worship takes may not be important, but having a worshipping community that discerns God’s will and walks with us on our journey sure is. Just ask SEZ.
Curt Weaver is a recent graduate of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. He is fascinated by his own Christian formation as well as the formation of others. He is involved in both the !Explore program at AMBS and the RAD program, which is affiliated with the Mennonite Mission Network. Curt is married with two young children and lives in Goshen, Ind.