Here is an email interaction with my friend Dave (I hope he doesn't mind!). He, like many others, is concerned about the emerging church conversation. What I try to do in this email is show that the conversation isn't about throwing everything out and coming up with a different Gospel, but rather about asking questions about things that we have taken for granted for too long. I don't particularly care who asks these questions - they are excellent questions - and it would seem that most of what the emerging church conversation is about is exactly this...which will seem threatening to those who have their neatly packaged answers and who aren't worried that the last 200 years calls their answers into question (not the fact of their answers, but the way in which those answers are held/believed). It's not enough to say, "In Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female," and let an evil, unjust system prosper, propped up by that very Gospel.

So here, fielded on the third man boundary due to a Chinese cut from a left armed batsman facing the hot wrath of Doctrinally Correct bowler, is my email.

Technorati Tags: emerging church, South Africa

> But what is of concern to me is that all this debate detracts from the basic needs of every believer Allow me to disagree with you. This is like saying, "Talking about how medicine helps people detracts from the basic needs of every believer." These things are not unrelated, of course, but the point of this debate (?) is to return to what the believer is supposed to be doing in the first place.

> of much greater importance to me is my walk with my Lord Jesus Christ. - the spiritual disciplines of prayer, reading God's Word and meditating upon it, Christi-likeness in our daily lives and in our dealings with others, confessing our sins to God and seeking to live a life worthy of our calling - our 'once-saved-always-saved souls' - or to put it in other words - the working out of our salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works within us. These are excellent things to be doing, and part of what the emerging church conversation is about is asking these questions again. What does it mean to have a bibliotech of the story of God's interaction with Israel? Why do we meditate upon it? What does Christ-likeness look like, and why in Apartheid did so many Christians confine that Christlikeness to their private lives and never allow it to spill over into a public fight against injustice (a strong theme of the Old Testament; a strong theme of Jesus's ministry; a strong theme of the "King" prophecies in the OT, where it was foretold that Israel's King would return to Zion and rule again, and all nations would be drawn to God because of that King)? And have we realised why (white) Christians in SA had such a strong discontinuity between public and private beliefs - and have we dealt with that yet? How are we supposed to deal with others? What does it mean to be saved? What are we saved into? What is the relationship between Christ and Culture? Why is it that only other people have a culture, whereas we are "culturally neutral"? Why has "seeking to live a life worthy of our calling" often (in evangelicalism) been so similar to materialism and consumerism (i.e. God has blessed you and will bless you - the Jeremiah passage on "For I know the plans I have for you...")? Why do we allow our pastors and leaders to burn out? Is our way of doing church set in stone or are we allowed to change it? Can we allow the insights of missionaries in cross-cultural settings to inform how we do and be church back home (given that the surrounding culture is different from church culture)? How have we let living like a Christian been synonymous with living the American dream? What does the Gospel say about the widening gap between the rich and poor, both in SA and in the world? Is this Christian faith just about "me and God" or "sin management" or is it more than that? How do Christians fit into the Abrahamic Covenant of God calling a group of people to "be a blessing to the world"?

These are just some questions off the top of my head (and part of what it means to work out our salvation with fear and trembling) - I'm not asking you to answer them! (Some of them are - apologetically - caricatures of Christianity which are not meant to be taken as generally true (like the American Dream one), but I'm sure you're able to think of Christians to whom they are meant to apply). I'm giving them as examples of the kinds of questions that are being asked by conscientious Christians around the world who know that the Christianity they were sold just doesn't work - in many cases it answers questions the people are not even asking (for instance, in poor 3rd world contexts, how can you preach, "Jesus loves you," and allow people to starve?) You can call this postmodernism or postcolonialism if you want to - I don't really care - the point is, good, fundamental questions are being (re)asked about the basics of the Christian faith - and people are realising that we've gone under too many assumptions for way too long (how DID the Western church get through the last 200 years without paying attention to the line in the Lord's Prayer where Jesus prayed, "on EARTH...as it is in heaven"?)....and it's time to get back to what the Gospel was all about. It's not merely an individualistic message about how to get to heaven after you die (apology for caricature).

This emerging church conversation isn't about throwing out the Gospel or Scripture or Jesus or salvation - it's about trying to recover all of those things in a world disillusioned with Christianity. For some people, it's going to look like some of these people are heretics, because they're questioning things that others have taken for granted for hundreds of years. And yes, people within the conversation are going to get it wrong and are going to need correction, but don't write off the whole conversation because someone said something you don't like.

As for me, I'm not entirely sold on this "emerging church thing." I think the term is unhelpful in South Africa and I wish we could just drop it. A lot of the controversial theological issues will simply not be concerns in SA - at least, not at this time - so let's let others debate them. But as for me, I am drawn towards contexts where people are asking the good questions of Christianity, and I know that for people hearing those questions for the first time, it's confusing. They will most probably feel like me when I had coffee with my priest from St Lukes, and he looked hard at me and asked, "What is the Gospel?" Years of correct theology and doctrine welled up in my head - I know the correct answers - but the way in which he asked it helped me realise that my right theology had not helped me come to grips with an answer. An answer that wasn't just right in my head, but also authentically in my life...and in what I tell others about what Christianity is. That meeting was disturbing, not least because I couldn't believe he asked me such a simple question, but also because I didn't have a real answer.

If these are questions you care about then let's talk around those things - it would be far more profitable than throwing stones at the emerging church conversation.

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