BuildingBridges

[73.1] ASSESSING EMERGING ENERGIES

A fine piece of writing from Alan Roxbrogh on the phenomenon of emerging church. Alan is on the staff of the Missional Leadership Institute. Thanks to Dan Walters for this tip-off.

Emergent Church (q.v.) is producing rich, creative experimentation. It is seeking to recover from the Tradition the riches of spiritual disciplines and liturgy. The levels of creativity in these areas are prodigious. The turn toward an understanding of reason as more than rationalistic propositions has created wonderful engagements with Scripture and the use of the arts as expressions of creativity and celebration. These new forms of worship and spirituality emphasizing ancient practices and more aesthetic, earthbound forms of worship are wonderful gifts to the church and are, in some places, attracting large crowds of younger generations in search of some connection with God.

But sometimes one wonders where the focus of and energy of all this creativity is moving. Sometimes it feels like an end in itself – the aesthetic becomes not just the medium but also the message. Questions lurk about where God actually fits into it all and whether it’s as postmodern as it claims to be, but only a different form of modernity’s enthrallment with the self.

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