Well, if you’re wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been engaged in a very busy quarter, reading a lot and recently writing a lot.  I just turned in my paper for the quarter.  It was 60 pages long, plus a 6 page bibliography.

The title was “Spirit and Truth:  A Study of Susanna Wesley, John Wesley, and John Fletcher as Participants in the Stream of the Spirit’s Work”

Here’s the conclusion:

As my goal was to look at Wesley as part of a stream of the Spirit’s work through the course of history, I primarily focused on those influences which fed into and flowed out of his significant contributions.  Although not within the scope of this present effort, the political, social, and religious contexts of his era were also vitally important and understanding these more fully is essential to understanding not only what Wesley thought but also how he applied and expressed his underlying priorities.[1] Wesley was, to be sure, an intellectual man whose eclectic reading and education shaped him significantly more than most of his era, yet a person can never be independent from their social surroundings.  Indeed, Wesley’s immensely practical interests make his social and intellectual climate even more important for study.

Seeing the work of the Spirit in an ecological rather than reductionistic fashion means that to most fully understand a context we have to look before and after, into the specific details of the people and settings, while keeping in mind the general patterns the Spirit seems to exhibit in every era. In this work, my goal was not to offer a comprehensive view of Wesley or Methodism, but rather to narrow my focus on particular influences which seemed to have led Wesley to explore certain paths, and shaped how he led others down these paths.  To be sure, there were even significantly more religious and literary influences which affected Wesley, each of which deserves fuller study, though I selected those which I felt were the most influential, with other influences often either honing or expanding what the initial influences prompted in Wesley’s continuing quest for a holistic faith.

This quest for a holistic, more purely expressed faith was not new to Wesley.  Indeed, this is the expression of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church since the day of Pentecost.  The Spirit has called and enabled the people of God to more fully participate with God in this world.  This participation calls people to turn away from their own attempts to bring definition to their life, which only lead to an incomplete identity in a struggle against the contrasting forces faced in this world.  The attempts to bring hope or definition or peace are, ultimately, unsuccessful.  For death entered into this world, and death calls all people into its grasp.  Death came into this world through the first man, Adam, but death was overcome by the new Adam, Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the cross but did not remain dead.

After three days, he was resurrected, in the power of the Spirit, the firstborn of all creation becomes the first of the resurrection, and offers this hope to all who seek him, letting themselves find their identity in his identity. In doing this, such people do not lose their self. By letting go of attempts at self-definition, by letting go of the ego’s attempt to form a false, defensive identity, the power of the Spirit reaches in and provides renewal, refreshing, and resurrection, even in this present life.  In the life of Christ, we are given life. In the power of the Spirit, we are reborn to new identities, able to take hold of the fullness of God’s reality, participating increasingly in his fellowship, and in this, participating in the fellowship of all his people.

This fellowship of God’s people in this present era is called the Church.  It is a reflection of God’s Kingdom, formed in unity and diversity to be a people who hope, who help, who love.  Yet, the Church, like present humanity, is not always, or even often, fully reflecting this call in the world.  In every age there are errors and heresies, mistakes caused by zealousness or distortions enabled by gross perversions allowed in sometimes even the highest leadership.  The Spirit who calls the people, who empowers the people, does not abandon the people.  In every age there is a constant work of the Spirit of God, calling people back to wholeness and truth, empowering those who truly seek Christ to be light in their contexts, teaching and prophesying, for the sake of the whole of God’s people.  This work of the Spirit often enlightens the people to a more fully realized truth, building on the insights of the past to help each generation see more and more clearly the fullness of the truth that God is calling all humanity to live.  This stream of the Spirit refreshes and enlivens; it sometimes breaks down but it also helps build up, bringing fresh life wherever it goes, even in the face of deep struggle.

Martin Luther participated in this stream, seeing the perversions of the Church of his era and fighting against them, and when they would not listen he helped lead the Church to new forms of gathering, forms in which the people could, once again, find more freedom in their worship and learning.  Yet, there was not an end to corruption or distortion.  The Spirit continued to work, however, leading men and women to find renewal as they explored the fresh paths of the Spirit. Often this involved looking back to those who had walked with God in previous generations. They followed the call to “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”[2] In England, a people arose who were known as Puritans, for they sought a refreshed purity in the Church of England.  However, even as many sought with a Spirit-enlightened spark, the church still had not found the full way of light. Errors were made.  People were lost.

The Spirit, however, continued to work, both in those who remained in the Church of England, and in those who Dissented from it.  Susanna Wesley, a daughter of Dissent, returned to the Church of England when she was a young teenager, following a call on her life that led her to a deeper spirituality, and an intimate relationship with a man who also sought God in his return to the Anglican communion.  They had many children, and Susanna saw it as her life mission to help these children learn how to participate with Christ, to truly walk with the Spirit in life and light.  The testimony to Susanna’s faithfulness in Spirit and Truth is seen in her children, the most famous of whom is John Wesley, a man who helped transform people not only in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, but also throughout North America.

It was in England, however, that Wesley’s continued leadership through preaching, teaching, and writing found some of his most treasured growth.  A young Swiss man named John Fletcher was drawn into the Methodist fold, and was soon drawn into John Wesley’s own inner circle, becoming a helper and a friend, and one of the most important interpreters of Wesley’s theology, helping the many tributaries which poured into and out of John Wesley to find even greater cohesion.  They sought perfection, but not perfection as performance. Rather, they sought a perfection that was itself a gift and testimony of the Holy Spirit, a true holiness which was reflected in inner purity and outward actions, a purity that was at its very depths one filled will divine love.

This stream did not stop in the age of Wesley and Fletcher. Their contributions helped to steer others, men and women, towards an even better understanding of the call of God in this world.  Though there were also still temptations and distortions and many mistakes leading particular churches down wrong roads and out of the stream of the call of Christ, there was always a testimony of God’s Spirit in this world, calling and leading, enlightening and empowering.  John Fletcher called this great work of the Spirit in a person the baptism of the Spirit, seeing it as a continual Pentecost that can be experienced in each person, in each generation.

Those in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries understood this to be a true call to the signs of the earliest church, and sought a renewed Pentecost in holiness and healings, tongues and prophesying.  The renewal the Puritans sought in England found new insight in Susanna Wesley, who passed her wisdom to her son John, who was a mentor to John Fletcher, who gave new insights and understanding to men and women of, at first, two continents, and then many.  This is a church that is constantly emerging, finding both renewal and fresh insight in every generation.

This stream of the Spirit continues to pour out even to our day.  Often, as in the beginning, this work of the Spirit is warming hearts in unexpected places and among unexpected people and in unexpected ways.

Supreme eternal being!  Fountain of life and happiness! Vouchsafe to be ever present to the inward sense of my mind. I offer you my heart—take possession by the Holy Spirit for the sake of Jesus Christ.  Amen. Amen.[3]

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[1] Very helpful texts for understanding the context of Wesley, Methodism, and nonconformity in general are the earlier works of  J. Wesley Bready, England, before and after Wesley : The Evangelical Revival and Social Reform (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938) and  Maldwyn Lloyd Edwards, After Wesley: A Study of the Social and Political Influence of Methodism in the Middle Period (1791-1849) (London: Epworth Press, 1935).  For more contemporary studies see David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984); David Hempton, The Religion of the People : Methodism and Popular Religion C. 1750-1900 (New York: Routledge, 1996); David Hempton, Methodism Empire of the Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); James E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism: Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys, A History of Evangelicalism ; V. 1 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003); Patrick Karl O’Brien and Roland E. Quinault, eds., The Industrial Revolution and British Society (New York: Cambridge University Press,1993).

[2] Jeremiah 6:16.

[3] From the journal of Susanna Wesley, in Wallace, Susanna Wesley, 333.

There’s a lot of stuff out there on the topic of emerging church theology. But, I think a lot of it can be brushed aside fairly quickly. Much of it is being produced by people who are trying to attach themselves to emerging/missional thought, rather than really writing theology that derives from emerging/missional church emphases. Not all of it is, to be sure. And what is being written, what is coming out of emerging church influences, participation and priorities, is very interesting and, I think, often very helpful.

As I’ve mentioned before, my entry into PhD studies was prompted by a paper I wrote in 2007 on the emerging church and Moltmann in conversation. The professor invited me to apply after reading that paper. I did. I started. And here I am in the middle of my second year.

I’ve added a bit more to my studies since then. A little on the emerging church side, a lot on the theology side. Still interested in seeing how an emerging church theology might develop. I’m slowly coming to terms with, if not a final product, at least some priorities and approaches.

In the last post, I linked to a paper I wrote last quarter concerning a few folks from 17th century America. It’s a fairly meaty paper, so I don’t expect too many people clicked through. And of those few, I strongly suspect the great majority didn’t read the footnotes. With this in mind, I imagine very, very few people, if any, saw my wee little comments in footnote 97.

Here it is for those of you who missed it:

Maclear, 77 writes about Anne Hutchinson, “Clearly the winter of 1637-38 had not produced uncertainty or repentance but a profounder commitment to the spiritualization of Puritan faith and doctrine. Moreover, in declaring these principles Anne forged a connecting link between the ‘radical Reformation’ of the sixteenth century and the ‘realized eschatology’ of Quakers in the next decade.” In discussing the “many” similarities between Roger Williams and George Fox, Lovejoy, 209 mentions, “their faith in the evolutionary, or progressive, character of religious truth. Orthodox institutions tended to maintain that religious truth was more or less static, even rigid, and that the faithful of the present age had not much opportunity to improve upon and expand a knowledge of God. On the contrary, radical Puritans, in fact most radical dissenters, believed in ‘further truths,’ or ‘further light.’ With the help of the bible, inspiration, and discussion, new truths could be uncovered, truths God held in reserve until his people were ready to comprehend them.” This hits on an underlying similarity but gives it rather wrong explanation. Williams could not be said to embrace some kind of “further” truth, nor were the early Quakers interested in an evolutionary or progressive truth. Both were eager to find that whole revelation of God that was true at the time of the New Testament and was no longer whole in their age. This whole truth had, for the Quakers, the revelation of the Holy Spirit at its core, the presence of God himself for any who would listen, in any age. Barclay’s use of historical theology adds support to this.

Why do I note this now? Because the same sort of interpretations are popular in our own era. There are those who see much of the emerging church looking for an “evolutionary, or progressive, character of religious truth”. This is in contrast to the orthodox positions of the wider, committed church world. They seek to point out ‘further truths,’ or ‘further lights’.

For me, and for a large part of those who are involved in the emerging/missional church, this is not the goal, not as it defined by many attaching a theology to the instincts and reactions of emerging church folks. I know my affiliation is not about that. My theological and ministerial interests aren’t about trying to reboot a progressive or post-neo-liberal theological project in the guise of popular, reactionary movement.

Rather, I’m eager to find that whole revelation of God that was true at the time of the New Testament, but has lost so much of its wholeness in the meantime. This is not an attempt to reboot some cobbled together, Frankenstein church that asserts its just like the earliest Christian communities. By no means! Rather, I see very clearly that the course of history has led through peaks and valleys. My goal is to be faithful to the work God is doing in this world, in our era, with the realizations that have been achieved over the last many centuries. God has been faithful to his church. He continues to teach and move and pull us towards a more holistic participation with his work.

And this means, in our era, we cannot simply repeat the patterns of past eras. But, in the same way, we cannot ignore the truths of those eras, the truths of the earliest eras, and the truths that men and woman of God–men and women who prayed–contributed. It’s not about a progressive theology, it’s about a better realized theology, one that addresses the key questions of our era, looks at the insights and the mistakes of past eras, contributing to a sharper awareness that brings light and hope and strength and power to this world. This is still Good News. We can find ways of exploration which our forbears did not, even as we stay within the faith they helped orient. We can explore because of the tools, the insights, the wisdom, the discernment which have been passed down.

We can explore because of the Holy Spirit who continues to draw humanity deeper and higher.

I come from a long line of men and women who have sought God with all their heart, and often served God in ways that went beyond casual observation. They were Methodists, and Plymouth Brethren, and Fundamentalists, and Baptists, and Pentecostals, and Evangelicals–whatever era pointed towards an active work of God in their generation. I am a part of that line.

And this is how I see working through an emerging church theology. This whole truth of God has the revelation of the Holy Spirit at its core, the reality of Christ at its foundation, the presence of God himself for any who will listen, in any age. And we participate in this whole truth in our era, contributing to a wider and deeper understanding of it, as we can. A task of a lifetime. It is an emerging theology. It’s going to be fun.

I came back to Southern California with an odd combination of being really high and really low at the same time. My plan to attend law school didn’t work out right away, and so I decided to move on back to the parents while finances and such were sorted out. I really had been so focused on attending law school that I had no other back up options. When my finances continued crashing through my senior year–to the point that it really is an absolute miracle of God and God’s people that I was allowed to graduate–I didn’t know which direction to turn. I flirted with joining the military–something that seemed to whisper at me for years and years on and off–but I felt like it would be, oddly enough, running away from my being, rather than running towards opportunity. I also was pressed with the barest whisper of the sense that I hadn’t lost my “call” to ministry. Though, I didn’t know what that whisper was saying at the time, nor how to interpret it except by being aware when that whisper yelled “no!” to certain paths.

What this meant for me was a summer in which I was really not sure what the next step was. It was, in a way, a summer break for me. I was able to relax, get a lot of sun, and spend time re-connecting with all the great people at NewSong. Some of the friends I knew when I started had moved on to other directions, moving away from the area, but others replaced them, keeping a steady, active feel to what NewSong was trying to do. My brother and his girlfriend (future wife) was really involved in leadership. She even was, I believe, asked to be on staff. She turned it down, but not because of rejection of the community. They were both extremely passionate and involved with the church even still. And I, through them, began to meet more and more people. Some of whom, for the first time, were insiders.

I wasn’t an insider, by any means, but I started hanging out with them.

NewSong, in 1997, probably wasn’t still at its creative peak, but it was still extremely interesting to people who made it their business to learn what was going on in the church world. And, now that I think about it, maybe it was still at its peak. Dieter was gone, engaged in his travail at Willowcreek. But others had stepped up, and then others, and then others.

Some of those who had very early been invested in by Dieter were now the leaders of the church. I think invested in is the right word. Each of them had very strong talents, to be sure, but they were not necessarily the polished figures other churches might have immediately endorsed. They were given responsibilities and space to explore their passions and gifts. And they were given room to grow, and occasionally stumble, and wander, and experiment, and lead. Before they had shown dazzling skills of dynamic leadership, they were shown a great deal of trust. And this trust, I believe, characterized not only those who took the leap and joined the staff of the church, it also was shown to all kinds of people, men and women, with all kinds of interests, methods, passions, talents, goals. NewSong was often known for the dynamic, cutting edge worship services and other more immediately visible Gen-X focused methods. What I saw throughout the nineties was what was happening outside of the Weekend services. There was a dynamic interest in a broad range of ministries. Certainly there was an evangelistic strain, but with this was also an interest in going beyond evangelism and seeking more of a holistic ministry. There was simply a lot of things happening, and these lots of things were more often than not being entirely spearheaded by people who weren’t on staff. There was a centralized leadership, but as they continued to wrestle with their own interests and passions, the church continued to move along, involving more and more people along the way, bringing in new leaders as others moved to new directions.

What was key in this transitioning period was that, as far as I know, people did not tend to leave NewSong due to burn-out, or alienation, or maturing past the ministry style. For the most part, as far as I could tell, the primary movement away from NewSong came with the realities of the demographic. If your church is primarily young, early to mid-20s, single, and often in the area for colleges or other temporary life positions, then as the years pass life moves people on. People got married, had kids, moved away after graduation or for a better job opportunity that would propel their early career. A solid group of people stayed, and as people moved away it seemed the ministry was able to maintain a fluid participation that somehow could incorporate both loss and newness in the overall ministry life of the church. A big part of this was the continued success of the small groups, which functioned as small house churches involving holistic participation for a small group of people.

People were invested in, given space and place to grow. They were trusted and valued even as different gifts and interests continued to blossom. The first wave of leadership was joined by a second major wave of leadership in the mid-90s. Some of these were not from NewSongs neighborhood but joined up as they caught sight of the vision of the church. Indeed, Dieter in Illinois inspired some of these new leaders to move west and see what church was doing on this left coast. The church expanded to include the new faces, some of whom were more officially acknowledge as interns, or staff, but these were not necessarily the only source of dynamic leadership.

And these new faces, with the old, continued to push for new forms, new expressions, new approaches. The Gen-X language began to be dropped. Postmodern ministry began to be emphasized. And from NewSong, some of these leaders expanded out and started new churches. These new churches were some of the early, more exact, representations of what were later termed emerging churches.

I wasn’t a part of either of these. But I knew a number of people involved in them. As for me… I remained on the outside.

One of the consistent problems throughout the church is the “I don’t have that problem, so neither do you” attitude that pops up whenever someone expresses a bit of discontent, shares a tale of negative experiences, or otherwise points to a problem they feel needs to be addressed. This is yet another expression of that quite persistent core fault that so many have which I call “generalizing self”. My gifts are what everyone should be doing. My causes are what everyone should address. My priorities should be everyone’s priorities. My experiences are like everyone’s experiences. And if my experiences are like everyone’s experiences, then if I have had good leadership and good church community, then those who speak against church clearly have issues of sin–maybe relativism, or consumerism, or whatever. On the other side, if I have had bad church experiences, then clearly everyone supporting the church as it is currently formed is just a silly sheep or a hungry wolf, power hungry or sycophantic. They’ve joined forces with the Man and need to be shocked out of their oft suburban lull.

This can often be hidden in either strong leadership that forms a community shaped after their own image, or in leaving a church, so that the discontents are muted, and the battle over non-generalized church identity exists only in occasional small flareups.

The emerging church changed the dynamic of this pattern. Those who felt the burn of discontent realized there was a spiritual burn in this, a burn that did not abandon Christ but sought him with more and more passion. Only this passion was given no space, no room, no expression within the standard models of 5 songs, lecture style sermon, prayer, occasionally communion, then done. Pastors, of course, didn’t often see a problem as they were exercising their spiritual gifts, often well beyond their gifting. The assumption that the role of most of the rest of the people was to hear the preached word made sense to them. However, hearing is not one of the spiritual gifts in any of Paul’s various lists. The gifts are active and contributory.

So in the angst of not having new models some breaking took place, some reactionary responses began to stew before popping out in various places in various forms. Often this was expressed in standard church growth models. People who start churches are given a free pass to stretch their wings and bring along a small group of people who can express a church the way that is in their souls. A small community is an active community, for the most part.

Some of these new expressions were formed within established churches, with a goal to reach those who the “generalized self” churches weren’t reaching. If I generalize my self, then I’m not aware of people different than me. If they don’t respond to me, then I blame them for not being as good a me as me. They’re wrong for not being me, apparently. So, if they reject the church that is like me, I don’t feel a need to do anything different to reach out to them. They should just respond right, after all.

But not everyone sees it like this. They realized that the church of our era is not inherently exactly what Paul or Jesus were getting at. And Paul and Jesus were both quite good about going into the streets, reaching out to the other, not with a generalized message but with a particular message to specific people in specific contexts. This isn’t a different Gospel, it’s the big Gospel focused in different ways.

So, communities were formed within churches–a church within a church. That’s what Dieter started at Willowcreek after he left NewSong. Gen-X ministries were still the buzz-word, but not nearly as much so.

These ministries often ran into a wall, and it was often the same wall. Freedom was accepted as long as it stayed within the bounds of the vision of the minister. The lead minister, in essence, became the surrogate spirit for the congregation. People fed into him, and he fed into them, giving identity and good teaching and meaning.

In healthy communities these kind of issues might appear, but there’s a common value of unity that seeks to give and take, respecting the other, leading to people making allowances and giving space. Other communities that have had the living water harden into ice, the fractures break apart, leading to anger, and dismissal, and more angst. This pattern can often repeat itself, as seen in the massive multiplication of denominations.

That’s the generalized story of the late 90s. Where was I? I finished my senior year, continued in the various problems that had plague me throughout Wheaton, which was pervasive financial disasters hitting from every direction. Moved back to California. I was entirely broken. When he was 63, John Wesley wrote his brother Charles and said that while he did not feel the wrath of God, neither “do I love God. I never did.” He continues by writing “and yet to be so employed by God; and so hedged in that I can neither go forward nor backward! Surely there never was such an instance before, from the beginning of the world!” This is how I felt. I felt poured out, outside all that I had tried to pursue, empty, but I still had faith. Which was something. Even as I stayed on the outside of a whole lot of what was going on around me, often very close by.

A lot of people make their way to church, through church, into the life of the Christian community, then find themselves dry, beaten, worn and worried. Faith once bright becomes dull and tarnished. Life interferes, sometimes so does sin and mixed motives. But sometimes a person once bright and light finds their path marked by bogs, mud, brush. Sometimes the path is overrun and lost. Sometimes the path ends. It becomes dark and difficult, maybe even impossible.

The river ends in a shallow sea. The waves crash over the beached hulk. Wearing down, tearing down, that which was once lithe and free.

Battered senseless by trauma, or emaciated by starvation, or weakened by drought, a person can only depend on the Spirit of God to work. Because, in those moments, most of those around have no idea what to say, what to do, or where to go. Especially in the contemporary Evangelical churches, where the emphasis has so long been on bringing new people in, there’s significantly little awareness of the paths towards the depths of God. And because of this little awareness, because of this little understanding, people are allowed, even encouraged, to languish in a middle maturity. Many have no idea there is more. Others know there is more but become frustrated at finding that more. They don’t know how to look.

For a lot of people this process begins in the season they really begin to look deeply at Scripture–seeing a holistic reality in the Gospels, in the letters, in the Law, Prophets, Writings.

For me, it was in the engagement with spiritual disciplines–prayer, fasting, study–all while enmeshed in problems far too broad for me to respond to, all while seeking to serve as I knew how. The more I did, the less there was–less experience of God, less grace and perspective, less existential identity. I became a shadow–though no one knew the extent of my wispy reality. I didn’t understand it either, so tried to walk in the world of men, even as I became increasingly emptied of self and being.

I hit bottom. I had nothing. But… it turns out I still had faith. I believed God existed. More than that. I believed Jesus died and rose again. I was no longer sure why. My theology was in shreds, my religious self was unmade.

All the structure and forms and edifices that made up my religion were burned up, torn down, washed away. But there was still faith.

And that faith I can credit to the examples of my parents, and to the writings of those long dead–who knew God, wrote what they knew, sharing the depths of their faith to one as distant as me, before they went on to know in full what they had only before known about in part.

There was a way forward. But no church I had ever been a part of was able to point me to this way. They didn’t know it. Maybe some involved did, but they didn’t share it.

I was well-trained to search. And search I did.

Turns out there were a lot of people all around the country and all around the world who were lost, then found, who realized that the church they had been a part of also was a wan, emaciated thing–able to speak much to a certain audience, but without the kind of holistic good news which reached broadly and deeply to all those who Jesus called.

In the same movement there was weakening and strengthening. There was hope and there was darkness. Darkness covering what no longer was sufficient. Hope for the reality that brought so much more than ever imagined.

Turns out that some of these people were like me, more contemplative, more mystic. Others were more outward, their angst turning towards new organization and new awareness that something in the church was needing to address the wandering sheep. They didn’t know what to do, but there was something that had to be done–the prophetic demand could not be ignored. It was too potent, and it turns out there were many voices seeking a longer path.

This angst did not know where to turn or where to go, but it demanded to those who felt it that they must go. Go farther and deeper and higher. Some had contexts where this could be worked out within the bounds of an established community. They were blessed. Others had no where to turn, and in their often wordless angst were turned out. These too were blessed. Though, like the Israelites in the wilderness, the blessing was a hard blessing to endure.

The Spirit of Christ calls men and women to the presence of Christ, to the depths of Christ, to the heights of Christ–and as is shown throughout Scripture–when this call is hindered or ignored by the established structures, the Spirit continues to work, outside the bounds of what is established or acceptable, raising up men and women for Christ, and pushing them into the wilderness.

The Wilderness is a difficult place, however. Some thrive. Some don’t. There are complaints. There are expressions of faith. There are expressions of faithlessness. In the wilderness one man might show himself a champion of God in the midst of overwhelming opposition. Another might reveal himself to be weak, distracted, getting more lost as he begins to embrace that which is not God–the promises and appearances of the foreign gods begin to sway.

This is what happened in the mid-90s to a particular group of people all around the world, who by the magic that was the burgeoning internet, were quite surprised to learn they weren’t alone. There were people experiencing the same things, trying out surprisingly similar ideas, taking new risks and pushing through their angst to find what was next.

But what was next? That question took a long time to answer. Especially for me.

During the summer after my sophomore year of college I worked as a mailman, delivering mail to addresses all over San Dimas, filling in for the regular carriers who were on vacation. A great summer job. Good pay. Lots of sun and exercise. Very nice after the Chicago winter. More than this, I was back at NewSong. For the most part, NewSong was still a Gen-X, proto-emerging church. The ministries were still quite dynamic, there was a lot of spread out leadership, and an openness to multiple visions and needs all uniting in a shared community. I was still very much an outsider as far as the leadership, but was very involved in the goings-on of small groups and community events. People were involved in ministry and in each other’s lives.

Those I knew were excited about God, excited about ministry, excited about participation, excited about growing deeper in faith and action, and were holistic in how this was worked out. They were predominately young and unmarried still. The whole church, essentially, was a singles ministry–but one that took quite advantage of what seems to be the Pauline understanding of singleness. They have more time and less family responsibilities, so can devote themselves more to the work of their community. Even as this shared work often meant relationships forming and blossoming.

I wasn’t a leader really, but my brother was involved in the lay leadership, as was his girlfriend (now wife–they met at the small group), and many other friends. People had the chance to rise and grow in participation and leadership basically to whatever level they were willing to go.

Dieter had left, and the church was still doing fine, moving along on the shoulders of those who called NewSong home.

Dieter had made for a broad based leadership. In addition, rather than pulling people out of other churches, or recruiting on seminary bulletin boards, he had reached out to men and women who had somehow found themselves involved in the church, or connecting to NewSong’s overall vision. The staff were people who had been diverted from various other goals, and seemed to have found a new passion in this dynamic community, willing to let go their other plans so as to devote themselves full time to helping NewSong’s ministry. People were raised up from within the community, encouraged, and given a trust of leadership that wasn’t necessarily founded on resume or experience, but more on what Dieter saw in them, who they could become. He then increasingly let people take up authority and responsibility, with a lot of learning on the job taking place. This meant things weren’t perfect, but there was in this a huge freedom for experimentation, creativity, and dynamic exploration of what church meant for postmodern generations.

That’s what it looked like from the outside.

Needless to say, going from this dynamic community back to Wheaton–where I had some friends, but nothing even closely resembling the kind of holistic, Christian fellowship of NewSong–was difficult. Wheaton offered something NewSong didn’t, however. Intellectual and spiritual training that would deepen my faith and push me farther than I even knew possible. I got back with high expectations, having ended my sophomore year on a strong note. Within a month it seemed like everything had turned sour. My junior year was the consummate Dark Night of the soul. I felt immensely isolated. Immensely lacking. Immensely in need of God. Only I didn’t know where he had gone. The fullness I felt of his presence during the last year had almost entirely disappeared, even as I had, in just about every way, sought to press farther and deeper in every aspect of my spirituality.

I was co-leading a ministry to underprivileged children. I had added a Bible/Theology major, which meant I was getting more and more into the study of the Bible and faith. This study opened my eyes to even more spirituality. I had continued to read the writings of the early church, and then began getting very much into reading John Wesley. I bought Albert Outler’s small volume of Wesley writings, and found significant insight, direction, and trouble. Trouble because Wesley was, well, Wesley. And while I didn’t have near the extroverted leadership sense he had, I did have quite the constipated, single-minded devotion to finding God’s work in my life. I looked at the early church and at Wesley as models for my own burgeoning spirituality.

Yet, things got worse in my life. I seemed to have less community than ever. I seemed to have less contact with God than ever. I seemed to have more troubles than ever. I pressed on. Wesley fasted twice a week. I started doing that. I was learning Greek, and learning prayer, and hearing from some of the greatest Christian leaders of our day during Wheaton’s regular chapels. Yet, I began noticing that I didn’t resonate with those who other people at Wheaton resonated with. The more deeply I found myself going, the less connection I had with others. And I had no idea why.

I began getting quite depressed. Seriously depressed. Clinically so. Only I didn’t know it at the time. I only had the training of my Evangelical roots to go with, and it had not at all prepared me for the emotional waves of deeper spirituality. I was given tools for evangelism and tools for apologetics. Back in California, the community aspects of Christianity were all too easy–right before me, I would just show up and I was a part. At Wheaton, all was dark and struggle, no matter what I did or tried it fell flat.

I asked a pastor who I knew at NewSong what was going on. Why were things getting so much worse even as I was trying to do more and more in pursuing Christ. His answer? Unconfessed sin. I must be sinning in a way that was blocking God’s answer.

Everything in me said no. This wasn’t it. Not that I was perfect or had everything together. I was only 21 after all. I was growing, but I was still fighting against so much. But it wasn’t sin.

This pastor was a friend, a good man, someone who I trusted. And I know he valued me. Yet, at the time I needed a pastor the most, someone to say God was still working, that “this” was what was happening, I had nothing. I found relief in reading Philip Yancey’s Disappointment with God–who pointed out a particular work of God in the Dark Nights. I found relief elsewhere in reading–reading books that others I knew hadn’t heard of and didn’t talk about. Answers in traditions that were, increasingly, either outside of my own or not referred to by my own.

My junior year I took a class on Paul’s life and writings. My major paper in that class was on Paul’s Purpose for the Church.

First, the earliest church and Tertullian, with their holistic portrayal of the church in the midst of a pagan society. Then a major study on John Wesley which thrust me into the midst of a holistic understanding of the Gospel. Then a study of Paul’s theology, driven by in depth consideration of his letters and the stories in Acts. All stacked on top of my own worship experiences that went well beyond entertaining today’s youth of the 90s, and was, for me, a comprehensive exploration of community life in shared pursuit of Christ. All this experience and all this study, all the depths of intellectual and spiritual wrestling that was so far beyond anything I had understood growing up that I had a hard time communicating it to others–all then stewing together in a year of profound social isolation and troubles home and there. I was being emotionally and spiritually torn apart.

Some time late in the first semester of my junior year I had read the first chapter to Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and was stuck on verse 21. To live is Christ, to Die is gain. I didn’t know what that meant. I mean I knew what that meant, but I didn’t know how to say that for myself, and I didn’t know, really, what it was to say ‘to live is Christ’. For Christ, with Christ, in the power of Christ, in the teachings of Christ. To live is to serve Christ, to worship Christ, to seek Christ. These things I knew. I didn’t know what “to live is Christ” meant. And, one day, while walking back to my apartment I prayed I would be able to really understand that verse.

God answered that prayer, and is still answering that prayer. All while I was increasingly on the outside of every formal movement. He was doing his own work, and my gurus were men and women who lived centuries ago, and a couple of key contemporary writers. I had completely run out of the faith that the church of my youth had taught me.

It was burned away through physical, social, spiritual, and emotional disasters that kept knocking me off my feet.

That was my junior year at Wheaton. I was utterly submerged, my head deep below the waves. Choking and no longer able to breathe.

One of the biggest assumptions about those in the emerging church is that they are trying to find an easier, more comfortable, more theologically loose version of church. Now, it’s difficult to make sweeping statements because there are always exceptions, but in my experience and study it’s entirely wrong to say those in the emerging church are looking for an easy way out. Indeed, I think it’s entirely to the contrary. Much of the emerging church, in my estimation, is propelled by seeking more from a church community than most churches are willing to give. Men and women, in essence, mature past the bounds that churches know what to do with–and in response may a few different directions. The first response is to become nominal. There are lots of causes of nominality in a church, so to apply one or another cause as the only explanation is dangerous. Typically, church leaders like to throw out the charge of “consumerism” for the nominals in their midst. However, a big cause of nominality (and indeed a nominality that may lead to consumerism) is low morale, no longer finding or expecting paths of contribution or maturity beyond the repetition of the established messages.

In other words, men and women become nominal when they have reached a point of Christian maturity where they don’t know how to find more growth, and the church they are a part of does not have the ability to lead them to new depths of involvement or understanding. People can exist in this state for a good chunk of their lives. Those who value cultural institutions might linger in a church, might even have a low level of involvement. Those who don’t have that value will probably drift away, as many do.

But, other people have different responses. Some depress their maturing and stay active at a reasonably involved pace, doing what they can do, as they can. These people tend to form the bedrock of any church–and generally they’re really good people who may or may not have a vague sense there’s something more.

Other people don’t go nominal but they don’t settle. They are pushed to do something, and often this will take the form initially of trying to do something in their own church setting, which if honored by the staff, might even allow for new paths of growth for that person and many others. If not, if pushed back against, these people become lost in that morass of loving Jesus but frustrated with present church realities. This can result in church shopping, or it can result in going emerging–something that has been a reality for most of church history in my opinion, but gone by different names and responses in different times in history. With the breakdown of denominations and the lessening education gap between clergy and laity, there is the ability to press on even in the absence of sanctioned ecclesial support. Sometimes, this pressing on makes all the difference in maintaining a faith.

Which brings me back to my story. During my freshman year at Wheaton I attended Wheaton Wesleyan church. I was baptized in a Wesleyan church when I was 4, and was fairly comfortable with that tradition. Some other friends went as well. The pastor was an older man, who had been at the church for quite a long while. My memory is he was a very godly man, one of those dear pastors who people are blessed to have in their life. It had the feel of a nice family, though there wasn’t an obvious path of involvement, so I never really found a place there. The end of that school year or so the pastor announced he was retiring.

This seems to be pretty much the pattern in my life. Leaders leave. Mentors move. Sometimes I catch them at the end of a long tenure. Sometimes they abandon ship early. Sometimes they have good reason to move just when I happen to have been building a relationship. I don’t take it personally. But it has affected me. And, no doubt, it affects my views on all kinds of things.

For instance, have you ever studied the leaders in the Bible? If you are wanting to pull out principals of leadership it might be a helpful task. If you’re wanting to be reassured about leaders, it’s a bad place to go. Because the Bible is full of leaders. And for the most part they’re leading people into disasters, or sin. There are exceptions. Thank God for the exceptions.

I really could have used a mentor while at Wheaton. I tried a few directions. I was involved, but my problem was, again, my problems. I wasn’t the type of person to get into the whole dorm/residential life world. I was at Wheaton because I was desperate to meet God. And I did meet God at Wheaton.

But not through leaders or mentors. In fact, it was only when I moved away from looking for such that I began to find wisdom and direction again. Only now I’m again jumping ahead in the story.

My freshman year was my year of trying to play the part. It was mostly miserable, and empty. I prayed a lot, was desperate to find God, to get help from God in finding deeper friendships and relationships. I was constantly around people, way too much for an introvert, yet I was entirely lonely.

My sophomore year things changed in curious ways. Better living situation, I was a friend with my roommate, and while dorm life was far from ideal it was a bit more comfortable. I was involved in a weekly ministry, which offered both contribution and interaction with peers. But more than this I was finding a curious deepening with God. I was still desperate to find him, and in that desperation he seemed to pull back the curtains a few times in ways that still resonate.

There were small epiphanic eruptions, but the most biggest, the main one, came during the four day Fall break in October of ’94. Everyone else had gone somewhere else. I was, mostly, alone. I was inspired to read Paradise Lost, and sat on the big Wheaton lawn all weekend. This isn’t the place for details about that, but it’s enough to say that this weekend filled me with an incredible sense of God, his calling, his eternity, his hope, his life. Later that year, in the Spring, there was a revival on campus–week long public confessions of sin, worship, and pretty clear works of God in people’s lives. This was pretty intense, but it was not necessarily new. God had been doing this in my life throughout the year, leading me into increased depths of mystical, intellectual, and historical understanding of his presence. I had really good teachers at Wheaton, who opened up new paths of learning–but they were not as much mentors as they were guides, pointing me in the new directions. And, it was the pure work of God himself who opened up my heart and soul in the ways he was moving. I was moved onto a path where my mentors were God and ancients, reading and prayer, even as I was able to manage a more decent social life than before.

My sophomore year was a year of gifts, a year in which God opened up to me his presence and possibilities, revealing in undeniable ways his fullness and work–ways which I had echoes of before. This all occurred almost entirely outside the confines of church. In fact, I have no memory of what church I went to my sophomore year.

There was not really an emerging church in 1995, but I was emerging, pulled along by God’s Spirit in profound ways. I was on the seashore for much of that year, one foot in heaven and one foot still on earth.

The next year it all dried up. Which pushed me further into needing the depths of God, and further from finding any path to that in traditional churches.

My bringing up Tertullian is a pretty good indicator why I’m an outsider with an insider’s understanding of the emerging church.

I doubt there are a lot of people who would bring up Tertullian as an emerging church patron saint, but I’ll argue the case. Though maybe not now.

My early church history class was a lot more than studying that prickly Father. We read Eusebius’ Church History, the first volume of the ante-Nicene fathers, and a few other texts which have no doubt blended together among my influences over the years. My major paper in the class was on Tertullian–so that’s why I have an affinity for him. Or rather, I found a major affinity for him, and so read all his works over a few weeks and wrote the paper on him.

What struck me in that class was the depth of the faith. I had grown up in the church. Was pretty active at each level. I knew it, had done all the things expected of a young Evangelical. I knew the basics, and I thought the basics were all there was to know.

It wasn’t. So, at a time in which I was doing well I was introduced to the depths of the faith, sparking something deep within me.

How is this related to the emerging church? Oddly, in a lot of ways. The more obvious is that emerging churches are characterized by an interest in broader Christian spiritualities. No one ever told me there was something interesting outside the Evangelical tradition, indeed I was taught to have a suspicion of such things. Wheaton was amazing, in part, because in both my degree programs–I started as a history major and added a Bible/Theology major after taking the early church history class–emphasized reading primary documents. Historians, and others, characterized primary documents as those written by people who actually were involved in a certain situation, or who were historical figures, or otherwise were able to speak about something they experienced. Secondary sources are those written about an era or movement or something else, without having direct exposure to it.

Reading Tertullian is reading a primary source, reading a book that lauds the contributions of the early church is a secondary source.

That’s a tangent… Basically, my time at Wheaton exposed me to some key, broader influences of spirituality that opened my mind and soul to the broader work of God in time and space. At the time I didn’t realize I was doing what a whole lot of other people around the world were doing. Realizing the inadequacy of far too much church teaching in helping to build a substantive Christian life and message, leaving popular theology increasing irrelevant to far too many people, and doing it in a way that made people think that the whole of Christianity was irrelevant, shallow, and often destructive. A good many of these people had grown up in churches, and many had even been very active in churches. Some were broken by temptations, but a good portion of society was just exhausted with the show and the flair and the lack of substantive community. There was broken morale and people broken by power hungry, striving men and women who had a “rev.” in front of their name but didn’t know God nearly as much as they thought they did.

So, in essence, people had in fact tried church and found it wanting. Which was something I was going to discover very quickly during my junior year.

That’s a key part of understanding the emerging church. For all its mistakes the great bulk of what has happened is not about heresy or trying to make Christianity easier or prettier. It’s realizing there’s something missing, and what is missing isn’t about coming up with something new–it’s realizing what is missing is what characterized the church and theology at its strongest moments in history. The lack of these things absolutely affects the influence of the church in today’s world–especially in places where the church had longstanding influence. The questions, and some of the errors, come in trying to understand how these deeper characteristics of theology and church can be applied to today’s postChristian world. It has a lot of similarities to a pre-Christian society but some very strong distinctions too, and these distinctions haven’t quite been sorted out in practical expressions.

I was, at Wheaton, emerging from my Evangelical roots, into a stronger, deeper, wiser Christian. I was increasingly an outsider, as I had no mentors at that time showing me the way, and did not learn about these emerging tendencies from a popular writer or guru. I was in the middle of it, and found my light in the writings of those from long ago.

A discovery that may have, literally, saved my life.

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.