In my dealings with forums and stuff I found a thread that talked about emerging church and I spent an hour and a half crafting a response.  I guess I'm proud of it and as a community that is experiencing kingdom living with me I kind of need to know if I'm off base with this whole thought process I am on.  Like am I just completely off my rocker?  Are my thoughts and conclusions immature, unpractical, heresy?  I'll post the response below and please let me know, those of you who can figure out what I'm talking about if it sounds reasonable and true.

Hey All,

    Ajax, I just want to say I completely agree with you.  You said, "You are emergent when you study your community and the culture with which they swim and invite them to come follow Jesus in the midst of it." 

As a junior youth leader in a community of Christ followers who would identify themselves as an emergent church, that is exactly where we are at.  I would recommend Rob Bell, his book Velvet Elvis and his nooma resources as a good start to understanding the emergent culture, or at least this whole idea of Kingdom Living. 

That is truly what it is about.  Postmodernism and the emerging church movement is not about moral relativism or subjective christianity.  It is about examining the context of theology when it is not a response to individualism.  Within the canadian setting and I would say to a lesser degree, the californian setting, postmodernism in the secular sense is already here.  It's not going to go away. 

The question now is how do you share Christ when they don't care about the "case for christ" anymore.  How does Christ impact a life when proving him doesn't matter?  Postmodernism has arisen as a response to the weaknesses found in individualism.  People are once again becoming concerned with the teleology of things.  They are asking not just the how things came to be but the why things came to be questions.  This is why Rick Warren's book "purpose driven life" has been such a hot seller!  People want to know that their existense has a why to it! 

The emergent movement is asking the questions about theology not from a liberal or conservative criticism because they don't recognize that the two exist (some may...that's the beauty of emergence).  Emergence is about stepping out of the shell of Christianity that has been a response to individualism for 200/300 years and trying to figure out the culture that is here now and how to make the absolute truths of Christ and his message come alive for people today. 

This has been a reality for junior high leaders for a while now though because we uniquely understand the importance that students place in their peer groups and what I would call community.  Middle school students for the most part care about one thing, what their friends think.  We've long known that our job is to create an environment where students who are beginning to think abstractly can explore the ideas and lifestyle of faith safely.  Games will never change, gross stuff will probably never change and neither will a students need to feel accepted by the communities they choose to pursue.  For the first time, adults are starting to question their individualist perspectives.  An emergent or postmodern church recognizes that the message of Christ displayed through a community that practices kingdom living ("your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven" and seeks to create a place where the kingdom of heaven is lived out and not just waited for is what attracts people today.  In our setting we would say that many people wish to belong before they believe.  As emergent churches our responsibility is to make church a safe place to explore following Christ and to really make it irresistable because it is such a clear reality of what the kingdom of heaven looks like when it's actually lived out. 

Our staff team recently had a retreat where we discussed 3 key terms to represent the call of our church within our community:

1.  Distinct
2.  Transformational
3.  Irresistable

I would challenge you in your community of believers to evaluate your ministry areas in light of these three concepts.  How can your middle school ministry be distinct, transformational and irresistable? 

One of the big things we work hard at here in our community is the idea of messy christianity.  Instead of putting up a front that everything is perfect, nothing is wrong, we want our community to be a place where people who have issues (as we ALL do) can be open and honest about their hang ups.  We don't want to create cookie-cutter Christians we want to create Christ following barbarians who are just crazy enough to follow a God who is untamed, scary and dangerous.  Following Christ is not easy and we aren't perfect, we don't think the way we should, we don't act the way we should, the first step in any recovery program is to admit that you have a problem.  Many churches and many people can't admit that they have problems.  Every community has to work through that I guess.

I don't know if this is shedding any light onto the whole emergent church thing.  It kind of started off there but moved more into other areas.  In response to the idea that we aren't called to be culturally relevant, I'm just going to come out and call it what it is.  Laziness.  Every day Jesus spoke in culturally relevant terms, every story he told every parable that left his lips had to be understandable and graspable for the people who had to hear it.  I am sick of people attempting to justify their laziness and lack of drive by misquoting scripture and misrepresenting the church's mission.  That was a harsh statement and if you feel attacked, maybe that's a good thing.  Is this making any sense?  Jesus was an anomoly in his culture not because he was culturally inept but because he knew it so well that he knew exactly what he needed to say and do in order to make his message the clearest it could be.  Jesus didn't go in to his middle eastern community speaking chinese and living like an english celt, what makes us think we're going to be more effective by speaking christianese and creating a culture that people who aren't born in to it just won't get?  I haven't even gotten into Paul (to Jew I am a Jew, to a Gentile a Gentile, to a greek a greek, to a roman a roman, to a central canadian, outdoorsy, moose hunting, hockey loving, coffee drinking person, that's who I am so that by all means some might be saved).  Is this idea, this thought getting through?  I apologize if I sound frustrated, I am but I am trying not to be condescending (I'm trying to inspire).

The church was never meant to be a hiding place for Christ followers anyway, the early church had to be culturally relevant and we know they were striving to be the kingdom of heaven lived out on earth because that's what attracts people and they did just that (and more were added to their numbers daily...).  If your ministry isn't adding numbers daily you have to ask yourself if you're doing what you've been called to do.  The church is missional, this is not a new phenomenon, this is not a random idea from some emergent hokey-pokey trying to weasel his way into a conversation, this is a command from Christ!!  Go into all the world making disciples...

Ok, this one's long and I guess my rant is over.  My earnest prayer for every leader who reads this is that they don't shut down because it's harsh or because it's got the word emergent in it.  Be willing to look critically at your ministry!  Be willing to ask yourself if you can do better!  If you have 800 in your group why isn't it 2000?  If you've got 3 why isn't it 5?!!  This is not meant to be a note of fear but a message of hope!  What could your ministry be?!!  Ask yourself that question!  Dream GOD dreams!  The spiritual lives of too many are at stake for us not to be barbarian-like in our passion and zeal to see them encounter a living, LOVING, God!

Your friend and brother in Christ,

James Giroux
www.emergentjuniorhigh.com
www.tribestudents.ca

That's it.  all said and done.  again, any thoughts and comments are really welcome at this point.

James.