6/33 Guest Post: From a Caterpillar to a Butterfly
In this blog, we have been discussing the Challenges to the Christian Faith, including the the Counterfeit Religious System. We recently began to discuss this topic with one of our Guest writer, Pastor Sharon White. Her heart has often been to see the Lord’s people step into the calling we have. In responce to the topic of the Emerging Church, she wrote us this post.
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“The word “emerging” brings to mind the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Metamorphosis is a biological process in which an animal abruptly changes its form, habitat and behavior. The Emerging Church Movement might also be described as having engaged in the process of metamorphosis, seeing it cast off old structures and ways of being and doing church, to a changing of form habitat and behavior.
“The modern Western Church has seen a well documented decline in attendance since the 1960’s. Prior to that, when a family moved to a new neighborhood, they would look immediately for their nearest church. Often the local church was the hub of social activity in a community with sporting clubs, boys and girls brigades, etc. Sadly every year more and more of the smaller churches in our suburbs have to close their doors or amalgamate with two or three others in order to survive. The church has gone from thriving to surviving and there are many and varied reasons but one of them is that, times have changed but the changes in society haven’t been as quickly responded to by cumbersome church structures and hierarchies as they should have.
“Just as a caterpillar cannot stay in its cocoon indefinitely neither could the next generation of church goers entertain the idea of fitting in to what was considered outmoded and old fashioned ecclesial structures. Many rejected those structures and left the church in droves, meaning that church populations were not only declining but significantly aging demographically.
“These and other factors saw the start of a conversation around the disillusionment with organized and institutional church, and out of those conversations the emerging church movement was birthed. It was in some ways a knee jerk response to an unwillingness to change, epitomized in the refrain “but it’s the way we’ve always done it”, which saw the emerging expressions of church trying to do church without looking anything like it. They would meet in pubs, or around tables with coffee in hand (fair trade of course), and communion might take on the form of a meal in a restaurant and a toast to Jesus with a glass of water. Its forms and expressions were endlessly creative and non-church like.
“The emerging church community is also notable for its strong social conscience working hard for matters regarding social justice in society, which highlighted this as a missing element in many organized church structures.
“Today many of the leaders of this movement have kept their views regarding the need for the wider church to respond to it’s changing context of a postmodern society, but are now trying to engage with rather than rebel against it. Many churches are also now willing to enter into a dialogue about what it means to be church in our Modern Western society which is now a society marked by “rapid discontinuous change”.
“Certainly the church does need to revisit the question of what it is to be, and I say “be”, because what we are determines what we do. We don’t “go to” or “do” church – we “are” church, and with that in mind a new look at what the Lord has called his church to be is long overdue.
“If the emerging church movement has been a catalyst for a shake up for a complacent, increasingly irrelevant, non-engaged, church then I think we ought to be grateful to them for waking up institutionalized Christianity, to ask new questions about what church is, how it should do what it is, and therefore how it should organize what it should do.
“Scripture reminds us, in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit birthed the church and it continues to be a work of the Spirit in nurturing and sustaining it. In countries where the Holy Spirit has been allowed to do His work, such as China, South America and parts of Africa the church has flourished and increased its presence and relevance, so much so that they are now sending missionaries to the West.
“Whether it is institutionalized church or emerging church it is first and foremost “The Lord’s” church we would do well to remember this, and return to a reliance on the Holy Spirit to lead His church in the present and, into the future.”
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Our thanks to Pastor Sharon White for her comments on the Emerging Church scene!
Susanne Fengler, Blog Author
www.christianfoundations.jesus-treeoflife.info/blog
Tags: Emerging Church, Guest Post - Sharon White
Filed under: Challenges to the Christian Faith
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