05/17/2009

Emergingish Churches

I was listening to someone talk about why they liked going to The Journey the other day, and I heard three basic things - the allowance of visual art into worship, "the music," and the pastor's being so frank and honest. I think a lot of the good emerging kind of pastors are very frank and today I was trying to think through why it is that people like these kinds of churches. I wonder if the frankness plays a kind of boundary-crossing role that produces a feeling of intimacy. I remember reading Dawn Eden talk about her days of one-night-stands with men and talking about how much she enjoyed that unabashed, forced intimacy that happened. Frank people do kind of take the clothes off of their rhetoric and their subject matter; it is a naked discourse. Then, it seems to go like this, but I could be wrong - the frank pastor creates the intimate connection which is kind of titillating, and then he gets a mulligan on the issues of decorum and this can lead to decorum and restraint and order being viewed as the enemies of authenticity. The children are in children's church so the pastor can talk about pretty much anything in adult company. Church is PG13. Once this naked mood is established, encounter group type of dynamics come into play and this can lead to overdisclosure - people being "real" with each other. Worship is very emotional, with a kind of wall of sound that one can get lost in; songs move from one to the other without much break or with talking that is, itself, accompanied by background music. These churches often have very active, even weekly small group meetings, where people stay connected and continue throughout the week to disclose to each other their brokenness. What I'm suggesting, I guess, is that there is a real reason why these types of arrangements are attractive to many. It is nearly the opposite of the isolating decorum that characterizes so many lives, but of course the opposite of an unhealthy approach is not guaranteed to be any healthier. Anyway, the foregoing is just some unformed (probably uninformed) thinking out loud, for what it's worth. But put the children back into the sanctuary, bring up the lights, tuck in the pastor's shirt, put a robe of authority on him, and nakedness becomes creepy, and "authenticity" starts to look a bit like looking for spiritual power in the admission of our brokenness rather than in a meal of reconciliation over the broken body of Christ.