faithasawayoflife: seven levels for a mainline emergent conversation?

we're co-hosting the emergent theological conversation this coming february with miroslav volf. he's episcopalian and i'm lutheran. that matters in a minute, but i'm not quite there so bear with me.

i was preparing to preach this past sunday as a 'fill-in pastor' at trinity lutheran, milford and the text was Matt. 25 about the separation of the sheep and goats, and that on Christ the King sunday, the last day of the liturgical year. sort of independently of this, i came across a report on the *leadership* blog about brian mclaren laying out the seven levels of the emergent conversation. i really liked them, and you can read them here. but it became more clear to me than ever how the emergent conversation, at least as brian articulates it, comes out of the evangelical tradition and its assumptions don't exactly fit the circumstances of the old mainline churches like lutherans and episcopalians (here's where it matters about miroslav and i).

so i took what brian wrote and did a freeform revision that seemed to connect to the circumstance of this little lutheran parish that is in between pastors and doing some soul searching. rethinking the seven levels needs lots more work and conversation to find a way to speak about the transitions that need to happen in the old mainline, but it is clear that some of us in the conversation need to (and likely are--see karen ward for one example).

1. Let me try out seven places churches are today, and let you interact with this, to see where you think you are.

a. First: Style—Community Lutheran Church realizes they are out of touch with younger people and wants to be more relevant. They send a couple leaders to a seminar and they return sure that dimming the lights and adding more candles will suffice.

b. Second: Evangelism—Older members fear the church will burn down and can’t see their bulletin besides so CLC starts a young adult service where they sing upbeat songs in candlelight. The service succeeds by drawing a large group of worshipers. But they are not all young! It turns out some of the older members actually liked the candles and upbeat songs.

c. Third: Culture—Leaders realized that it is not simply that the younger generation wants something else, but that the culture has shifted away from the old model of church membership—people want more authentic community and deepened connection to God that matters in their lives

d. Fourth: Mission—CLC rethinks its model of church focused on Sunday morning worship and Sunday school. They begin to ask what life would be like if they focused on living a journey of faith together rather than keeping a church running.

e. Fifth: Church—Some people realize that in order to live a journey of faith together, they need to know one another and so they begin starting small groups—one that meets at a bar Friday night, one that meets at a diner on Monday morning, one that serves a meal together at a local homeless shelter, one that meets around discussion of raising kids in today’s world.

f. Sixth: Gospel—In the midst of this rethinking, the Pastor stuns the congregation by saying, “I don’t think I fully understood the Gospel.” Jesus, it turns out, never said to his disciples, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." God never said the most important goal is to gain new members for the church.” That same pastor says he’s recently been struck by how much the bible talks about the poor, and how much time Jesus spent out in the streets, in homes, in the countryside, talking to (usually disreputable or hurting) people. Jesus said, “those who lose their lives for my sake will find it.” And “just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.”

g. Seventh: World—CLC realizes that the mission of the church is not the church, but the world. They hear as if for the first time Jesus’ calling to ‘go out into all the world’ and their use of the word church begins to shift from a noun (I belong to Community Lutheran Church) to a verb (it was so powerful to be church together last week when we: feed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, showed hospitality to the stranger, clothed the naked, visited those in prison).