I like being up in the early morning, before everyone starts, and while the world has that particular dawn calm.

Of course the very moment I wrote those last words a stellers jay erupts in raucous squawking. I turn to see it attacking and chasing a poor hapless squirrel around a cedar tree. I assume the squirrel to be hapless, though I suspect jays are not apt to squirrel hunt without reason, and I know squirrels to be particularly over curious on occasion.

With all the noise and violence I wander over to the fray, to see if I can referee their squabble or at least protect the squirrel from a sharp beak by encouraging each to their separate corners.

They do it themselves. The squirrel takes to an old craggy oak. The jay returns to his fir, where I suspect a nest can be found. Each continues to add a few choice words to each other, words I am likely glad are not translated.

“No one swears like a jay,” Mark Twain once wrote. He’s right. Jays have a choice vocabulary when they feel up to it. Squirrels, however, have their own way with language. He must not have heard our grey squirrels if he thought jays are unmatched in cursing.

The world has again that particular calm. A finch sings happily in the upper boughs of a cedar, joining in the chorus of other species. They all sing with great abandon. Sing for what?

Because it is morning.

A chipmunk sits on a nearby stump swishing its tail for much the same reason as it looks down the hill.

I like being up in the early morning but I didn’t say I like getting up in the early morning.

From the rest and comfort of my sleep I ponder immediately the mysteries of my life.

I think of my plans and my goals for the day.

I think of my frustrations, such as my truck which has been in the shop for the last week. From here I ponder my other needs, and wants, and desires. Still in bed I begin to worry, even fret.

I get restless as my mind wanders into all the crevices of my life. I try to pray but am distracted, distracted by my own self.

I get up, get to writing, for that is the salve of my soul. It works. A little bit. There is renewal but not deep lasting resurrection.

So I wander outside where the chickadees and the finches, and the robins sing.

After the momentary fracas my calm returns. The cool morning breeze massages the forest trees.

A raven calls for its mate in the distance.

The sparrows sing.

God watches over the ravens and knows when a sparrow falls. That’s what Scriptures say.

The birds sing when it is morning. They sing because it is morning.

This is a song I need to learn and sing its peace through the whole day.

That, I think, is sure faith.

I don’t feel that. I don’t always even know how to find it. But oh how I want it.

The peace of this early morning soothes my soul and eases my mind. May I sing, not for all the answers which may or may not come, but because it is morning. It is God’s morning.

I think I need to keep listening to the birds. They know secrets I would be wise to discover.

I think the chipmunk does as well, though I might be reading too much into the chipmunk.

The sun now crests the hills to the east. I feel my prayers returning and rising faith.

The peace has entered my soul once more.

Thanks be to God, and his birds.

From June 12, 2006.

A few years ago, Barclay Press invited me to do a two week daily journal for their website. They’ve since changed their online presence so those writings are gone. I was sorting out different files on my computer this evening and happened to run across them. So, I thought, I might as well repost them here. Both to have a record of them, and maybe more so, because these were written in 2006 and 2007. A fair bit of changes have happened in my life since then, so these are records of a time in my life when all I had was faith. I was writing a lot during these journaling times, and it’s curious what came out when I sat down to write. So, mostly for me, but also for anyone whose interested, I’m going to post one of these a day for the next 20 days or so.

My time at Wheaton was what really propelled me as an outsider into being an insider, even as I’ve really stayed an outsider.

Confused? Well, now you know how I have felt the last ten years or so.

When I say I’m an outsider, that’s to say I have little or no part in the standard paths of emerging church participation. I’ve really no connection with any of the big names or leaders. I’ve not been a big name or a big leader, or even a small name and a small leader. I’ve written a book that has a connection to the emerging church, that was heartily endorsed by some pretty important folks in the movement and in other realms. But, the book has received very little attention or sales. I’m not solicited for my opinion on things emerging, nor can I even now admit to attending an emerging/missional church. That puts me on the outside.

So, how do I speak about these things, even saying that I have a bit of an inside status.

Because my alignment with the emerging church has little to do with structural loyalty or functional training or trendy participation. Rather, my alignment has to do with the fact I am instinctively emerging by my nature, my emphases, my questions, my complaints, my solutions, and a lot of my experiences. I resonated with emerging before there was an emerging conversation, because my path was leading that direction already, albeit outside the usual channels of blogs or conferences.

Really, my path was very isolated for the most part. Cementing a strong outsider feeling me.

This path led to a lot of the same emphases, but because of my approach to it–from the outside–I have different perspectives on the same interests, traits, and goals.

I think my time at Wheaton pretty much thrust me on this transformative reality even as, at the time, I was not in any way doing anything that resembled emerging stuff. The experiences happened when I came home in the summer, when I would participate again with a NewSong small group and other ministries. Wheaton, however, was shaping for my mind and heart and spirit. Not in happy ways, for the most part, in excruciating tearing and challenging and breaking ways. Almost all of it internal.

Paul writes in Romans 12: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

He doesn’t add how much this really can hurt.

That’s a big preface. These posts are as much, or more, for me than for any reader, so I’m processing without really a plan in mind. Meandering over my past, I suppose, and linking that with the scattered conclusions of my experiences. You want a more cogent discussion–try out It’s a Dance. Much more to the point and orderly on much the same conclusions. But the conclusions there aren’t always as illuminating as facing the reality of the non-fiction experiences.

So, I was at Wheaton. My freshman year was… pretty empty, truth be told. I was not a very good student. I was intelligent but a pretty big underachiever–a reality that can be explained by a lot of reasons, but none of which I’m going to get into right now. Needless to say that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was the fact I was at Wheaton, despite the fact there’s no way financially I should have been there. Looking back I see this year as the breaking. I was a good kid coming out of high school, but that wasn’t enough. It seemed like nothing I did that year worked out. Nothing felt free and easy or even fun. I felt extremely alone, even as I was just about continually surrounded by guys–guys who found, apparently, really good friendships. I just wasn’t like them–and it wasn’t because I think I was better or more insightful or more spiritual. More that the circumstances I had come out of into Wheaton thrust me into asking questions about God and life that a lot of people don’t ask for quite a while. I came to Wheaton because I was seeking God. That sounds grand and impressive. But I absolutely wasn’t. That was my yearning, however, and that combined with my experiences of poverty and dealing with major family traumas pushed me out of being at all content with the usual college scene–of which Wheaton had very little anyhow. Yet, to find friendship one must participate.

I realized now that this was really the beginning of the great tearing in my life. A tearing that seems to be a dynamic reality from then on, one in which my, apparently, natural bent towards Christian mysticism is not allowed to roam free but instead continually re-places me within a grounded world.

The freshman year was the year of spiritual reaching out, as I sought, in my isolation a community with God, that I didn’t feel in any part of my life. I felt great lack, so I prayed, and prayed, and prayed, and prayed. It didn’t get better. And I didn’t know what to do with that fact. I went home for the summer, had an amazing resurgence of proto-emerging community in the NewSong small groups. NewSong was now being led by the man who was, up to Dieter’s leaving, the pastor of small groups. He had done a tremendous job in that role, but the question remained whether it was his season to step up as the key leader for a very unique setting.

He wasn’t, it turns out. But, that’s again getting ahead of the story.

My summer was encouraging, and it was with a bit of sadness that I returned to Wheaton. But I did return, a minor miracle really.

My first quarter was a lot like my Freshman year. Same stuff, mostly same people all around. I got along a fair bit better with my roommate–not that my freshman roommate was a constant issue, we just were very different people. So, there was potential for a better year. And that hit the second semester. In just about every way, the second semester was good. Everything was clicking, it seemed, but the most lasting part of that, and the most relevant for this present history, is that I took early church history with Dr. J. Julius Scott.

Ever have a class, a professor, who not only taught you something new but indeed opened up a whole new world, a whole new vision, a whole new reality that in one short season devastates the old and ushers in the new? That was that class for me. For I had been introduced to the church fathers. And, curiously, the most influential of these writers was a man named Tertullian–the patron saint, I might say, of the emerging church.

Why do you put yourself in the emerging theology camp, Patrick?

That’s a great question, and I’m glad I asked.

The key for me is that looking back on my theological/ecclesial path the last 15 years or so, I have come to realize that it’s not because I went to all the right conferences or grew a goatee or got into Apple products or embraced postmodernistic relativism.

I mean I am postmodern, there’s no doubt about that, but postmodern as in–not modern–rather than some amalgamation of French continental popular philosophical non-values.

I wasn’t pressed or led or steered by some visionary leader. Rather, I simply went my own way, and it turns out this way is a way a lot of folks who identify as emerging/missional have gone. Some of them pooled together and became insiders. I’ve never done that, or been included in that, though there was a season I tried to.

This is jumping way ahead in the story.

Dieter left NewSong to go to Willowcreek. Now, let me start off by handing Willowcreek all kinds of compliments for the good they do and whatnot. I need to preface the following because I do not believe there’s an totally wrong or totally right aspect to church or theology. There’s a spectrum. I think Willowcreek has done a great deal of good for many thousands of people, and it sounds like they are trying to navigate the tides of present society in a Christian way.

In a way, I think it’s pretty accurate to say Willowcreek is sort of like the King David of churches.

Willowcreek thrived in part because of gifted initial leadership. However, once big, they tended to thrive by plucking out the best leaders from around the country and tempting them with gold, and power, and influence, and Christianity Today features. (Midwestern based magazines tend to have midwestern emphasizing aspects–even as the midwest isn’t particularly a leading edge of… anything. That’s not to bash the midwest… midwesterners, in my experience pride themselves on going slow into change and doing things the way it’s always been done).

The fellas at Willow kept their eyes open for “women bathing on the rooftops”, or in other words, pastors doing really interesting things, and they plucked them from their commitments and had their way with them. The passage from 2 Samuel 12 is quite appropriate, I think.

Now, this isn’t terribly surprising, truth be told. For a long while, in a lot of traditions, there is a tendency for church leaders to live by different rules than those in the churches. People in churches are commended to commit, to stick it out, to participate, to not be consumers, to take seriously their membership, etc. Church leaders are not limited by such mundane realities. They have “a call” or “a vision” or some other pseudo-mystical appellation for their choices. They don’t go to the bigger church because of such crass reason as ambition. It’s a greater opportunity for ministry. They don’t emphasize particularly people because they want to be surrounded by the best. That would be consumerism. Don’t be silly. It’s congregations who do that, mostly because such people don’t have the spiritualized language that is, in essence, ecclesial adultery.

Pastors are whores. Maybe not for money… but there are other ways pastors are paid that might sound quite laudable on the surface.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Not all of them are whores. Maybe not even most of them. Some are extremely spiritual people who really do follow God’s deepest call in their lives. I’ve met them. And those are the sorts of people who have helped me come back from the brink of church rejection.

But there are particular temptations as a minister–and while such common sins aren’t often able to be expressed in terms of fancy cars or vacations or whatever–they have particularly churchy ways of expression.

So NewSong’s founding pastor was wooed away by the King of churches, at a moment in which he felt that he had done his part in leading NewSong and there was nothing more. The seven-year itch struck, and the commitments were broken. The details of this are in the appendix of Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger, if you want to know more.

There’s some key things I’ve learned from this, looking back. As I said, at the time I thought it was a grand idea, mostly for supposedly selfish reasons. I was in Chicago area after all. And, at the time, there was not a leading edge for the development of church after modernity. Dieter was it, in a whole lot of ways. And he did what he felt was right, and what was pretty common in the church leadership world. He wasn’t the only lamb Willowcreek snatched from poor families after all.

From his perspective, he had attempted a more seeker-sensitive approach at NewSong, and the people at NewSong didn’t have much response to it. Dieter was discouraged, felt his leadership was not viable. And this expresses a really common issue in emerging church and many evangelical churches, especially as the emerging movement was coming together in the late 90s and after. There is an expression of broad participation and the valuing of all involved, but at the heart of so many of these communities is a vision-centered orientation that sees the mission more important than the people.

In other words, if a committed person has a different perception than the anointed leader they are either pushed aside, or there is a collapse of the leader’s own self-perception. There is not, in essence, a respect given to those who have been equally called to that community. This is troublesome because in emerging/missional type churches all the rhetoric points towards active and welcomed participation so any kind of power assertion or vision dominance makes for extreme dysfunction in both pastor and congregation.

This isn’t to say there shouldn’t be a vision or a mission. Rather, that these are shaped by both the leaders and the followers, who together make up the call of God for that community, who all share in the gifts of the Spirit and so there can and should be correction given both ways. Dieter, in my estimation now, was not at the end of his leadership at NewSong, rather the people at NewSong were keeping focused on what could have been a more fully developed, culturally honed, church model–not one following in the footsteps of a Baby Boomer mentality, but one that was keyed to be a leader in the new expressions of church in this world. And the congregation knew it. There was a conversation that could have taken place that would have offered significant growth to both the leaders of NewSong and those who attended. Only Willow flashed its ecclesial cash, wooed the tempted pastor away, who essentially fled the church for more apparent fruit-filled pastures. And he left behind people who were not really ready to step up to the mantle of what NewSong might have become.

In emphasizing a leader-dominating vision, and spiritualizing less than spiritual motives of church leaders, a major crack develops in Christian communities that again and again undermines the potential influence and depth of particular communities. Because the Spirit works in both leaders and followers, in pastors and laity, to develop a holistic expression of God’s kingdom, when one side is dismissed, ignored, or undermined then chaos follows. Not always quickly. But it does follow. And this is a pretty regular pattern to see.

I’m jumping ahead again. Not necessarily in the story, but at least in my assessment. I think I need to step back a bit and talk about the path I got on which helped me be even more of an emerging-oriented outsider, and also what I was seeing from the outside that was going on with the proto-emerging church.

That’s the next post.

Also, to note, this all isn’t some kind of conclusive statement of objective reality. This is the story from my particular perspective, viewed through the lens of both my experiences and my training/study since then. I welcome other voices to contribute their perspectives–but my experience has shown that people tend to not respond, but instead judge quietly. That’s a big problem too… but that’s a whole other topic that won’t come up for quite awhile in this tale.

Beginning in the Fall of 1993, I was in Wheaton for most of the year. I’m not going to get into the details of my time at Wheaton because that would make this entirely more a autobiography than I had intended. Suffice it to say that I think Wheaton is an amazing place spiritually and intellectually, but a dismal place socially. I’ve talked to enough alum to have this confirmed, though people experience this in different ways. In terms of my experiences with church, I went to the Midwest straight from what was then understood as one of the most dynamic churches in the country, and one of the very, very few that were beginning to take notice of the peculiarly postmodern sensibilities.

Wheaton had a number of churches in the area, pretty much most denominations you could think of. But, they didn’t have a Flock that Rocked. Indeed, every church had a college group, but the church I had come from was, essentially, a big ol’ college group and I had some of the best leadership shown by college students. At the churches, college students were basically advanced high schoolers, with their special group meetings, and their special pastor and their special pizza and a movie nights. It was really, really difficult to be in situations where college students were talked down to so much, in essence, and treated as incapable. Even as Wheaton College itself was training and trusting and thrusting college students to new realms of knowledge and leadership.

This bring me to a very important part of emerging churches, that I instinctively began to thrive in during high school, and more so during my time at Newsong. It’s trust. Trust people. Trust them enough to let go control and hand off responsibilities. Trust them enough that God is not only speaking to people with advanced degrees, ordination, or church-provided salary. Trust always involves risk, and oftentimes this risk involves some level of failure. In the podcast I posted below, Eric noted that at the time Newsong didn’t really have a sense of what would work in a worship setting, so they took a lot of risks and just tried things. They felt free to experiment, and the broad range of activities outside the sunday service, and beyond the direct involvement of staff, and the super high morale of the attenders meant there was a lot of experimenting, and a lot of empowerment. People began to taste of walking in the Spirit and learning discernment and using their gifts as they could, where they could.

Wheaton was not far from what was then the reigning king of Evangelical churches: Willowcreek. Willowcreek was the baby-boomer church, designed from the ground up to minister to the sensibilities of the post-WWII generation. The driving philosophy behind this was being “seeker sensitive.” So, there was a sense that Willowcreek would have been the natural fit for me. Only while it wasn’t very far, Wheaton was far enough for this carless kid. It was a 40 minute drive or so. So, it wasn’t going to happen. I did visit a few times that first year, and honestly, it didn’t entirely grab me anyhow. It was extremely polished. Extremely professionalized. Extremely large in every way. Like going into a business meeting. The emphasis for involvement was small groups, so there’s that. But, it seemed there was a pretty clear boundary between those for whom church meant performance and those for whom church meant reception. Seeker sensitive meant there was a relatively shallow and topical message on the weekends, with a deeper more Scripture based service during the week. Looking at bullet points about the two churches it would be easy to see Newsong as merely a younger expression of Willowcreek. Only from my perspective, even as an outsider, it wasn’t at all. Newsong had a lot of talent, but it took place in a junior high gym. It had a lot of contemporary sensibilities, but it was a lot more of the people, than for the people. Newsong did things well–great music, great preaching—but it was a lot more raw. That trust thing again, I think.

But, the similarities were there. Dieter Zander saw Bill Hybels as a mentor, and even as NewSong was not a seeker sensitive church there were elements of the bigger in the smaller. And, given NewSong’s success, Dieter was a rising star, and if there’s something the biggest church in the country (at the time) liked, it was drawing in all the rising stars.

Dieter left NewSong in late 1993 or early 1994, I believe. To go start a new ministry at Willowcreek, a Gen-X ministry. I heard from friends that he was leaving, and the emotions they were feeling. At the time I was pretty selfish, and wrote Dieter a note saying I thought it was a great decision and the Midwest needed such an influence. I thought I could get involved, find the same atmosphere that I missed back home.

I was wrong. About all of it. And in the next part I’ll get into why, and I’ll start giving some of my more… difficult… opinions about emerging church habits and history.

I’m continuing my story on the emerging church, but for now there’s a really interesting addition now available.

Earlier this summer, my friend Eric Herron and I sat down with Aaron Klinefelter of the Praxis Podcast. We chatted for about an hour about emerging/missional church stuff and our own projects that seem to come out of it.

Just was posted online. Have a listen: Praxis Podcast Episode #41: Patrick Oden & Eric Herron

Big news. We found a church. First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena (paznaz!)

We’ve been cautiously looking for a while now, more actively in the last few months. Seemed right. But both of us have seen so much of churches, and had so much experience, that we each had these inner lists. Honestly, we didn’t have a list of what we were looking for. So much of it was about feel, or what may be cognitive reasoning but hidden under a fair share of vagueness.

My friend Robert, who was teaching a series in an adult Sunday School class, asked me to fill in for him about three weeks or so ago because he was going to be gone. I did. Taught on my recent thoughts about holiness. Amy came along with me, and we went to the church service afterwards. All throughout the morning there were curious little hellos to each of us, things we became intrigued by, surprised by, welcomed by. We left the service, turned to each other and nodded.

But the lead pastor wasn’t there. We took a couple weeks off, then went to a Wednesday night teaching series he was doing on Wesley. I like Wesely. I’ve studied Wesley a fair bit. So, I thought this might be an interesting chance to see where the pastor was coming from. We both really liked him, and the “this might be it” continued.

Went to the morning service on Sunday. Then to a new visitors lunch right after. Pretty casual. There was a taco bar. And most of the staff were there. No big presentation. Just introductions and brief conversations. I sat next to the youth pastor, who spoke on our first sunday. Good guy. Amy sat next to the pastor of visitation. Ninety two years old and very friendly.

All throughout my exposure I had gotten the sense they were a lot more open to the emerging/missional conversation than I would have ever expected. I’ve long been a fan of Wesley, was baptized in a Wesleyan church, but had the sense of Nazarene’s as being a fair bit legalistic. I was quite wrong, at least about this congregation. They very much seemed to value my Sunday School teaching, and I kept picking up hints and whispers that the leaders had read a bit of Rob Bell and Alan Hirsch and others. Curious.

Today I was poking about some more. And found the pastor, Scott Daniels, had earlier this summer done a series of posts on the emerging church. And, it turns out, they were some of the best overview posts I’ve read on the subject… and I’ve read a whole lot on the subject.

So, I’m linking to those. A Nazarene view of the emerging church:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

For those who’ve poked around dualravens.com for a while, you’ll know that such an interest in a church that I’m showing now is a pretty interesting thing.

Stay tuned…

In 1992, I really was an outsider in this proto-emerging church. Not in a bad way, mind you. In fact, I would say in a very appropriate way. I was 17. What did I know? A little bit, but not too much. And I think I have always had that trait of knowing what I know and knowing what I don’t know. I was an outsider in that I didn’t have a place on the inside. But that’s perfectly fine, and the way NewSong was flying at the time the outside was a perfectly great place to be.

Let me tell you a little bit about the demographics. Roughly 70% single. And the average age was probably somewhere around 25. This for what was, I think, about a 1200 person, regular attender, church. I might be off on that last number, so don’t quote me on that. I was on the outside after all. Me and my brother started attending after a good friend told us about the church. The music there was amazing, the preaching was amazing, and all with a really strong sense of deepening spirituality. It wasn’t emphasizing a seeker sensitive message, even though Dieter Zander was a big fan of Bill Hybels.

It was, in my mind, defined by a real openness to those who were there, to be shaped by those who came. While there was a clear leadership team, there was also, it seems, a lot of investment in all kinds of people, giving opportunities for all kinds of participation.

The church, at that time, met in a gym. Every week there they set up the stage, the lights, the sound, the chairs, the whole thing. And that was my first area of participation there. I don’t know why I did it, but I suppose it was because I wanted to somehow contribute to the church as I could, and I could move chairs and stage parts and stuff. Couple times a month I would show up early on Saturday evenings and stay late after the Sunday service, helping to set up, and then helping tear down.

This wasn’t my only area of participation. My brother became a lot more interested in getting connected than I did. I still had my high school friends and my high school youth group helping me feel involved. He needed Christian friends, and a place to find some holistic influence from others. So tried various small groups and finally got really excited about one. In the summer of 1992, my friends and I went on a month long road trip around the country, to DC and back again in a big loop. During this same time my brother got more and more involved in this small group, where he was very quickly welcomed in and included. The group was entirely made up of college age men and women, the leaders were a sophomore at Claremont McKenna and a student who I believe went to APU.

Jon, my brother, invited me, and I started going around the fall of 1992. This group, which I think was named the Claremont Care Group, was technically a small group as commonly conceived, but in just about every way, thinking back, it was a real proto-emerging church. There was leadership, but it was functional leadership that provided order not power. There was a regular meeting time, but this was surrounded by casual activities throughout the week, not formal, but friendships developing and deepening. We sat together on Sunday mornings at the big celebration service and ate together afterward. There was pretty lively conversation, and hearty laughs, and earnest sharing. There was going beyond conversation and people pushed to be involved in ways outside the group, helping others in the community, bringing others in wherever they were at in their spirituality. It was open, it was inviting, it was deep. To this day this remains the best example of a small group I’ve ever experienced.

It was led entirely by those who were in their early 20s. NewSong helped. They gave an environment and a weekly service which was encouraging, and challenging, and inspiring–lifting morale and reminding of the call. They also had a great leadership structure (from my perspective), in which all the various leaders of all the various small groups met together regularly for their own meeting, and were taught and helped and led in a way that both gave opportunity for freedom within a context of growth.

There was a lot of trust in those days. Most other churches treated their college students like augmented high schoolers, with college groups reflecting only slightly more development than high school groups. But NewSong was one big college group, led by college students, who “did church” better than most people I’ve seen since. And, given my training since, I’ve seen a lot.

Now, the insiders of NewSong weren’t all on staff. There was a massive leadership network in which people were identified, encouraged, trained, given responsibilities (sometimes beyond their abilities to meet). There was trust and there was a lot of risk, risk that the God who calls people works in those people, and that those people, given a place, will express a diverse creativity within a shared unity. People began to take notice, from all around the world there was visits and conversations and observations. For the most part those people talked to the staff and saw the weekend service–a big production that while meeting in a junior high school gym had world class talent–people who got involved because they saw their involvement was valued and excited and shared.

I loved those weekend services, still remembering the days where Communion was served as being among the most spiritual, prayerful, resonating communion services I’ve been too. But, I treasure that Claremont Care Group, an earnest expression of what church was always meant to be–diverse people sharing life together and growing together in spiritual maturity.

It was the Flock that Rocked. And it really, really did. I was an outsider, but even an outsider at that time felt part of something, felt included and valued. That’s a good trick.

My 1992 turned into 1993, and in the Fall of 1993 I left Southern California to start at Wheaton College. I was eager to deepen my intellectual and spiritual life, and that was the place, I felt, it could best be done. But, I never left NewSong. I was 2000 miles away during most of the year, but it was still my home church.

I talked about roots in the last post. Roots are important because nothing comes out of a vacuum. There’s always a context that pushes people to react in certain ways, to ask certain questions, to develop certain responses. One of the big problem so many people have with interpreting contemporary issues is that they have attached other contexts to present answers, or present contexts to older answers. So, people reject early church writings because of what Popes did in the 15th century. Or they reject contemporary forms of church or emphases because of what what was taught by similar emphasizing folks in the early 20th century. It’s a social Gospel! That means they reject the Bible and reject Jesus as God!

So, context is important. But, that’s not the story I’m trying to tell.

My roots led into my continued active church involvement throughout my growing up years. For a variety of reasons we attended a number of different churches when I was young. My first church was a non-denom Bible church–Wheaton Bible Church–broadly Evangelical–as that fits into the pattern of my religious tradition. I was born in Wheaton, but my family is all Californian going back, mostly, generations. My parents moved back to California and at some point early on we started going to a Wesleyan church. I was baptized there at the age of 4 or so. Yeah, it was a conscious choice on my part. I asked to be baptized. I wasn’t an adult, but I still very much remember that time and there was a conscious awareness of wanting to be identified with Christ that I feel has been maintained.

We moved to Santa Barbara when I was about 8 or so. Now, my memory of churches there is a little bit hazy. We moved from there in 1988, and we went to a Baptist church part of the time and an Assemblies of God church the other part. Got our Pentecostal on. My parents were, from my earliest memories in churches, always involved in some aspect of teaching or leading children’s groups. Both had degrees in Christian ministry, so it’s not surprising. Being involved and active in churches was the modeling I had–as was seeing the various kinds of reactions being too invested in a church can bring. Churches are, after all, territories, and the alpha male sometimes feels there’s a need to defend his own territory. My parents were also, a bit before then really, involved in some of the Third Wave charismatic movements happening at that time. We were never really entirely enmeshed in those communities, though I do remember going to at least one Kenneth Copeland event, and we did attend the wedding of Matt Crouch–the apparent heir to the TBN throne–something that was open to all who were interested in supporting the TBN family.

I remember speaking in tongues beginning, well, I think I must have been probably about 11 or 12. I don’t remember when that first started–though I distinctly remember being really turned off in a kids group that was rather oppressive about the “have you received the gift of the Spirit?” question. I remember saying “I had”, even though I’m not sure I had ever spoken in tongues (the sign!) before that. So, I was certainly answering to get them off my case, but I don’t remember if I was lying. Anyhow, I have memories of speaking in tongues at various church events.

So, I was always pretty spiritually forward thinking. I still remember asking, and being really nervous about asking, my mom the question, “How does one know if he’s been called to be a pastor?” I was probably about 12 at the time. I think I was so nervous (because I strongly felt I had that call) that I tape recorded the question and played it for her, and we talked about it. That’s when I also first decided to go to Wheaton College.

Life happened. Won’t go into the details, but we left Santa Barbara without any of us having any desire to do so. Moved back to the LA suburbs where I had spent my early life. There was a significant amount of trauma in that transition, and that trauma at a key developmental stage in my life had significant repercussions. My spirituality seemed to get left behind for a while, though I can’t say I was really backslidden. Just spiritually vague and unconnected. We started going to a Brethren church, where there was a good pastor and a pretty active youth group–though the youth group was mostly made up of upper middle class kids–and I was decidedly not dealing with the same issues they were dealing with. Felt really alienated and alone. Church had absolutely nothing to say to me, the issues we were dealing with, and while it tried to include me within its package of generalized ministry, there was utterly nothing that shared with me good news about God’s work.

I met a friend in Junior high. His dad was a pastor of a Foursquare Church (a pentecostal denomination). Sometime I guess my sophomore year, or early junior year, of high school we started going to this small church. Had all the ups and downs, with their particularly Pentecostal versions of the same common church characters. The youth group here stood out to me. I’m not sure why, thinking back, but I suspect it was because there was an inclusion. All my three close friends started going, so there was a real deep friendship happening as, I think, we were all going through pretty distinct problems, though each of us had quite different problems we were dealing with. There was also a pretty strong involvement and participation. It wasn’t about entertaining. Or about dealing with adolescent angst. It was a really solid Pentecostal church that took even us seriously as participants with the Spirit of God. I was active, I was involved, I was full on Pentecostal and there was a mutual respect happening. Not that I was some stand out spiritual giant. No, just that the spirituality and depth I did have as a somewhat normal teenager (who had encountered a series of not as normal problems) were given acknowledgment and room to find expression. Pentecostals are good at that.

The youth group was great. We started a wee little band. I played saxophone. I was involved in a lot of different directions. Graduated high school and didn’t go straight to college. Spent a year off and worked at a retail clothing store. Out of high school my connections to the church somewhat broke. There was something new going on not too far away, after all, and it was particularly geared towards Gen-X, that up and coming generation who were such a curiosity to themselves and to researchers for a season of time. I was on the tail end of Gen-X, but was still part of it, and at some point my senior year of high school I stopped attending the Sunday services at the Foursquare church and started attending the weekend services at NewSong. This was early 1992.

NewSong, for those keeping track of such things, is considered one of the proto-emerging churches. The founder of the church, Dieter Zander, is considered one of the key shapers of what later transitioned into the emerging/missional church we know today.

And I was there. At age 17. At what was by all estimation its peak.

There are lots of different sources and versions of when what has been called the emerging church began. And these different versions depend a bit on the different ways that the emerging church can be defined. Trying to define the emerging church is itself its own set of posts, so I’m not going to get into that now. As I’ve studied and participated, however, I’ve come to some of my own ideas on how it’s defined and how we can understand its beginnings.

The trouble with the emerging church as opposed to say the Pentecostal movement or Methodism or the Anglicans is that there’s not a definitive founder, nor is there a definitive principle that sets it uniquely apart from other movements in the present or in history. Which means that to speak of the emerging church in our present day is to see a contemporary, semi-cohesive, amalgamation of communities with shared emphases and values. This contemporary expression takes the form it does because of two aspects of contemporary culture, both dependent on mass communication. The first is that these contemporary expressions allow for substantial interaction between what would otherwise be quite separated contexts. A small community in east London can learn about what a small community in Sydney Australia is doing, and share thoughts with participants from Minneapolis or Denver. What may have been isolated pockets of local reforms have been given strong validation by interacting with similar minded men and women throughout the world. “There are other people thinking like us” is a very enabling and encouraging sentiment.

Next, mass communication as it presently works does not depend on power brokers or communication managers in order to train, share, teach, order, and convey values/mission to various congregations. Indeed, we can say that now bureaucracy slows down communication by forcing the almost instant sharing of information to be taken out of ready channels and be put into artificial models of control and conversation. Now, communication certainly isn’t the only reason for a hierarchy to exist, but it has been, historically, a major factor in why otherwise fluid movements begin to harden into some kind of institutional form.

In other words, if there’s no need for a central system to share information and convey direction, then everyone can share with everyone in the exact ways that best fuels mission in their particular context. We can, then, find mentors and guidance and hear key questions and learn key answers within moments of a simple search. The power of the priests to read the texts and communicate the important bit to the masses has been almost entirely overthrown.

So, that’s the difference in our era. This is an important point because instead of saying that the emerging church is doing something particularly new, I’m saying that the emerging church is a contemporary expression of a long standing drive within the church–but has its particular character defined by the ease of communication and the issues (and problems) of our present society.

What’s this have to do with me?

A whole lot. Because my family history is filled with religious zealots who broke away from established movements and sought to find the ways in which there was an active passion for the full work of God.

I come from a line of zealous religious discontents.

The church has always had them. And it’s important to see the emerging church in the line of the small communities throughout history who pushed the religious establishment to be reminded of its own values, of missed parts of Scripture, and of the emphases that might better help the church reflect the fullness of Christ to this world. Now that’s a big thing to say, I know, but this isn’t to say that any of these communities were without their problems. It’s to say that the goal, at the heart of it all, is the Kingdom of God. For Christ and his Kingdom means something to these people, and it may mean pushing against the establishment and it may mean including the excluded, and it may mean emphasizing the forgotten in order to bring renewal to the broader world.

There I go, sounding like a cheerleader again.

I’m currently near the end of grading papers for the summer intensive class of systematic theology 502 here at Fuller. This is a class that covers mostly Christology as well as pneumatology and aspects of sanctification. I’m just the TA, but the professor involves his TAs a lot in the class, so I’ve gotten pretty good experience with grading and teaching.

Generally, I’ve found, there’s always one or two students who will write on the emerging church. Often, I’ve found, these are theological treatise’s against the emerging church which generally make use of D.A. Carson’s book, then go about cherry picking quotes in order to “suggest” that the emerging church is “reminiscent” of gnosticism, or some other major heresy. Now, having written a lot on the emerging church over the years, I’m pretty good with that category, and generally find that the criticisms are really awkward and shallow. Which is a shame. One reason these works really frustrate me is that the emerging church really needs criticism, but it needs real criticism based on what it is and what it does rather than on categories that others are trying to place on it from the outside in order to dismiss its oftentimes helpful reforms.

The trouble now is that there is a defensive stance that tends to brace itself against the invalid criticisms and which, then, ignores a needed critique. This is trouble because if there is not a consistent critique of the emerging/missional churches then these churches will again and again run into the same sorts of difficulties that so many small communities have already encountered.

I have been, admittedly, a bit of a cheerleader for the emerging/missional church. I’ve had the defensive stance as I hear and respond to the more misguided criticisms. I’ve even written on the emerging church in ways that idealizes a lot of the core principles without getting into the common problems. Mostly this is because outside the narrow circles of the initiated, there’s just not a lot of understanding of what the emerging/missional church is about, what the priorities are, or what the Biblical/Theological basis is. Instead, those with rather… inflammatory criticisms often have big audiences of one type or another and use their influence to push some pretty strong misunderstandings and, I think, bear false witness against many men and women who are seeking Christ. So, as I have studied more deeply I’ve become more curious about sharing why I think the emerging/missional churches are approaching what might be a more thoroughly Scriptural perspective on church than far too many churches throughout history.

But, as my last post suggests, a lot of my present blockage has to do with my own church experiences, and a lot of those experiences have intersected with emerging and missional churches. I must admit, I’ve never been a pastor or an obvious leader in any of these. My position has generally been what I call the educated outsider–part of the congregation, among the people, but with a theological and ministry education that often surpasses the paid staff. I certainly don’t see my education as giving me some kind of superiority over vocational ministers–and I certainly don’t think I know it all or have understood it all or can fix it all. One might even charge me as talking without any experience. But, even as I’ve not a great deal of experience as a vocational minister, my life history reveals having experienced a great deal of trauma–including living with poverty and sickness, disappointment and rejection, and all sorts of other things that give someone insight into the need for deep spiritual awareness and insight into spiritual counseling. So, I can’t show my resume here and point to all the ribbons or trophies of my pastoral insights, but I think I’ve lived enough life with people who have encountered darkness in life that I am not writing from an isolated academic position. My frustration with emerging churches comes from two directions: my education and training, and my experiences in life. The former places me as an insider in any church discussion, the latter has almost always placed me among the outsiders–who really need a church to be a church.

This is my introduction then to something I’m going to work on, both for myself and my renewed interest in writing recovery, and maybe as a helpful critique that might spur others to focus better on what are more actual problems and dangers in the emerging church–problems that are often carried over from other traditions and which continue to be a cancer in the communities.

So, with this as my preface, I’m going to write about my experiences and insights and whatever else comes to mind as I think back on my experiences and exposure to proto- and active emerging/missional churches.