photography by Maegan Guerette
When I first met Sue, her shaved head highlighted her great smile. Later, when her hair re-emerged, it was purple before she settled on a more mature fluorescent pink. She liked to saunter around the church in ostentatiously bell-bottomed jeans and an array of crazy colourful clothes.
Sue was initially involved in a Presbyterian congregation in downtown Toronto while studying engineering at the University of Toronto. She went with her friends. But the match was not made in ecclesiastical heaven. Her vocabulary does not include the word institution and now she does church elsewhere. Today, eight years since I first met her, she has five part-time jobs and she does them because she likes them — she likes the variety, the flexible hours, she even likes believing in a few of them. Having graduated at the top of her class in one of the most challenging undergraduate programs in the country, she practically defies anyone to call her a slacker. She doesn't fit the stereotype.
Sue is what they call “emerging.”
She is also one of the most passionate Christians I know. Sue loves church. She's a key leader in the Christian community where she now participates. She doesn't view her church involvement as duty. For her, it's friends, it's music, it's serious, it's playful, it's philosophy, it's purpose, it's real, it's everyday conversion, it's a beach-head building against her habitual cynicism, it's discipline, it's fun, it's green, it's growing, it's peace — all grounded in Jesus Christ.
You'll find Sue at the grassroots of a broad trend in North American church life that has come to be called the Emerging Church. Most view this development, for good or ill, as the result of young people choosing to bypass traditional religious institutions as they express their Christian faith in the language and forms of the new and emerging postmodern culture in which they have grown up.
Brian McLaren, on the other hand, occupies headier airspace. Known as the theologian of choice for many of the Emerging movement's leaders, he is an English teacher who became a pastor and then a best-selling author — no past seminary education for this guru of postmodern spirituality.
McLaren dislikes the term Emerging Church. He sees it as potentially divisive. He wants to avoid any misunderstanding that a church emerging might be pitted against others supposedly stagnant or less legitimate. But Emergent is nonetheless the name of an organization he chairs: Emergent Village (emergentvillage.com) described on its website as “a growing, generative friendship among missional Christians seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” Still, it has a board of directors.
“Emergent is primarily a network of friendships,” explains McLaren without alluding to boards of any kind. “It started as a conversation among a group of us who were frustrated that the churches seemed to be missing the point. It's a loose coalition of people asking the same questions about the culture, coming at them from very different angles, and not really satisfied with any of the answers, but continuing to talk and write and think and pray and engage in ministry along the way.”
In the 1990s, while serving as the senior pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, near Washington, D.C., McLaren became increasingly disturbed by the gap between the church world and the ongoing cultural shift that has been described as postmodernism. In response, he wrote his first book, The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix.
“It might come as a great shock to you,” says McLaren, testing my mainline mettle with his unPresbyterian unpredictability. “But I rarely use the word postmodern these days. The cultural problem we face is better identified as postcolonial. Christianity has long carried itself as a civil religion — a religion of power and empire and success. Canada and the United States have their differences, but we share this common heritage. The imperial instinct is always to control the lives and societies of the colonized. Christianity has tried to do the same thing.”
Canadian churches possess a distinct advantage, according to McLaren. They are better prepared to go postcolonial. “In the United States, Christianity is automatically associated with certain political positions,” he suggests. “To be Christian is to be pro-war, anti-environment, anti-poor, pro-Republican, anti-gay, pro-big business, anti-government and so on. Here in Canada, it seems to me, you have less vicious partisanship going on; you should have an easier time getting liberals and conservatives together. If you can debunk the myths and stereotypes associated with the name Christian and awaken the curiosity about Jesus which is always latent, then that's a recipe for hope.”
Broader theology is the real thrust of McLaren's contribution to the emerging church. In his latest book, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything, McLaren focuses on the idea that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
“The whole notion that heaven is the proper home for Christians has been disastrous for the church,” says McLaren. “The kingdom of God is not simply spiritual; it's not about getting souls into heaven. That is not a biblical idea. And yet, some people put all the emphasis on our spiritual evacuation to a better place in the after-life — as if that's all we're waiting for. But that's not what Jesus teaches. The truth is incarnation. The truth is God among us, here and now. The kingdom of God is at hand; it's everyday.”
Having separate spheres for the sacred and the secular is rampant in every part of the church, according to McLaren. Recognizing the kingdom of God breaking into the world can lead to radical new commitment in every aspect of life. McLaren argues that it reinvigorates the church's mission, bringing together the arts, social justice, ecology and evangelism. It also stimulates a return to a theology of creation by means of which Christians can recommit to what is local and physical — caring for the earth, opening up to their neighbourhoods, leaving the Christian ghetto.
“The kingdom of God is a revolutionary, counter-cultural movement — proclaiming a ceaseless rebellion against the tyrannical trinity of money, sex and power. Its citizens resist the occupation of this invisible Caesar through spiritual practice,” writes McLaren in The Secret Message of Jesus. He goes on to identify three kinds of disciplined action. First, generosity towards the poor; second, prayer that focuses on relinquishing power and pursuing reconciliation; and, finally, various forms of fasting that help us to mortify the appetites urged on by our consumer culture.
But McLaren has also come under attack from conservatives for his growing emphasis on politics and activism along with a too-enthusiastic openness to the pluralism and relativism inherent in postmodern culture. Among others, Don Carson, a prominent evangelical New Testament scholar, has called him dangerous saying he distracts people from what lies at the theological core of the Gospel. McLaren is also often accused of being hesitant to affirm without reservation the truth of certain historic Christian ideas and of taking delight in creating chaos out of coherence.
Some find it hard to take McLaren seriously when the subtitle for another book he wrote recently, A Generous Orthodoxy, runs on like this: Why I am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/Anglican + Methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished Christian. But McLaren deliberately pokes fun at the labels we use, while daring potential readers to go beyond typecasting and pick up a book by a “mystical green liberal” or an “evangelical biblical fundamentalist.” He claims to be both and all of the above — which infuriates a lot of people.
“I love the historic denominations,” says McLaren. “I get really unhappy when I hear disrespect voiced towards traditional churches, as if they are passé. But I only rarely encounter that attitude. For the most part, when we hold Emergent gatherings throughout North America, people acknowledge that we need a great diversity of faith communities. There's no one correct way of shaping our life together. Whether it's café churches or mega-churches, Presbyterian cathedrals or spontaneous house churches, art gallery churches or communities that come out of the new monasticism — I'm excited to see so much variety and difference. The Spirit is generating fresh enthusiasm through it all.”
Hospitality stands out as one of McLaren's best qualities, says Brian Walsh. Walsh works at the University of Toronto as a Christian Reformed Church campus minister. He teaches at the Toronto School of Theology and is also the author of a number of books which deal with cultural change, including, most recently, a postmodern biblical commentary, entitled Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire.
“It's refreshing that McLaren makes his contributions as an unlicensed practitioner,” notes Walsh. “He's not trained as a theologian, which may help explain his wide appeal. He's open to a lot of unexpected stuff. He welcomes in a whole range of people and positions. There's a real authenticity to his genre, the way he writes and talks. He's trying to relate to the world in which he lives. You can see this in the conversational style he adopts in many of his books.”
In the book for which he is best known, A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey, McLaren uses a conversation between a burned-out pastor and a high school teacher to explore the problems that arise from the church's captivity to modern culture and then outlines how some postmodern ways can help Christians. The entire book, which became a trilogy, is written as a relaxed dialogue between two friends. The informality of both Brian McLaren and Emergent intersect nicely with the emerging culture.
I know someone who would agree. Back to Sue, emerging on her way through downtown Toronto, riding her mountain bike, with an interest in friendship, the environment, God, good music and among plenty of other things various allergic reactions, including a tendency to steer clear of institutions with rigid hierarchies — let's follow her to church:
Freedomize Toronto meets on Sundays evening in the sanctuary of St. Andrew's, King St. It's an ironic convergence of an emerging church community and the historic building of one of Canada's most storied Presbyterian congregations.
The people gathering are mostly young and white. They are hipsters, to some extent. They reflect an urban economy which favours the technologically adept and culturally sophisticated. They bring it all in with them.
Tim Fennell graduated recently from Ryerson. He now designs websites. He lives in a condo across the street from the Art Gallery of Ontario. He grew up in church, but never felt like he was “really a part of what was going on,” until he got involved with Freedomize Toronto.
“A lot of people here never knew church. And then those that do have church in their past are from all over the map: some from more conservative churches, and others from more liberal churches. The focus is really on the Christian calling to share our lives together in a way that I hadn't encountered elsewhere — and that seems to help bring people together. We try to be open about our failures and not legalistic. We talk about personal stuff: relationship problems, sexual issues, addiction to drugs or alcohol — and it gets talked about from the pulpit too. The preachers use normal language, sometimes even what might be considered bad language and, overall, we try to bridge the gap between church and what's real.”
Leah Hunter leads worship at Freedomize. As a professional, classically-trained musician who plays the flute, the music attracted her to the church: “The first thing that drew me in to Freedomize was the worship. I loved the atmosphere: the building, the stone, the stained glass, the architecture. There were hymns from a long time ago as well as songs written the previous week by musicians from within the community. The creativity just blew me away. It had never occurred to me before that something like church could be innovative. It seemed to fit me so well and I didn't expect that.”
Freedomize started in 2000 as the church-plant vision of a couple of friends, assisted by The Acts 29 Network — “a network of pastors from around the nation [U.S.] and world whose dream is to help qualified leaders called by God plant new churches and replant declining churches.”
Cyril Guerette serves as co-pastor of Freedomize while he finishes his doctoral dissertation on Anselm at St. Michael's College, U of T. He and his wife, Maeghan Westdorp, a photographer, share leadership responsibilities as they await the arrival of their first child later this spring.
Guerette explains that Freedomize is Emerging, but not Emergent. “We have no affiliation with Brian McLaren. We're doing our own thing. Sure, we're a part of all these new churches appearing, but our focus is local. We actively discourage the image that we're a hip church. We're not a purposefully postmodern church — we definitely do not talk about ourselves that way — but we're from that POMO culture and we're meeting a need by communicating the gospel to our people in the cultural forms of this generation.”
These cultural forms are not pre-fabricated. Artists at Freedomize make it real and bring the prophetic to bear. Through works of art by a variety of participants, the principle of the priesthood of all believers comes to life. The new vernacular will not be mediated by printing presses, but by a multiplicity of media which magnify and complicate the power of scripture – the message diversified, not standardized.
“An embrace of the arts is integral to the Emergent worship experience,” suggests Guerette who is himself a published poet and hip-hop artist with three CDs to his name. “Baby boomers built utilitarian buildings to house their megachurches. Emergent communities seek out space that supports beautiful liturgy. And that liturgy will be diverse. It becomes a worship pastiche created by the whole community in response to God, rather than an exercise in marketing church to your target audience.”
The interest in liturgy points to a recovery of tradition. Emergent church leaders often try to draw upon a pre-Reformation history of Christianity that Protestants have neglected. Freedomize takes a cue from the Eastern Orthodox in the use of icons. Catholics help out with spiritual disciplines. Leaders at Freedomize regularly receive guidance from Jesuit spiritual directors at places such as Loyola House near Guelph.
Community is perhaps most non-negotiable at Freedomize. After a surprisingly rigorous eight-week membership course that goes into considerable theological depth, members are required to participate in small group communities that meet weekly. The church strongly promotes membership. In these groups, Freedomize members are encouraged to work out their response to the culture around them.
For example, Emergent churches have been at the forefront of a forceful Christian critique of our urban society's escalating consumerism and the misguided capitalistic assumptions that we may take for granted. “The idea is that our culture is sick with materialism and waste and we need to work out ways to counteract that as we learn to live together in community,” says Guerette. “It's a key part of our witness to the transforming power of Jesus Christ.”
Two years ago, Freedomize affiliated nominally with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada for the sake of financial accountability. But the ties are very loose.
“You won't find that people at Freedomize think of themselves as Pentecostal. Another key aspect of the Emergent scene is the way it's post-denominational. We're not as weighed down by Christendom. And we reject a lot of what comes with denominational labels as unhelpful. That's not to say that our independence doesn't come with its own set of challenges.”
Blair Bertrand, associate minister at St. Andrew's, Brampton, Ont., studied the Emergent movement while doing graduate work in youth ministries at Princeton.
“Emergent folks don't go to church because their parents did or out of a sense of duty. If they go at all, it's because they want to. Their understanding of community demands a higher level of intimacy. The idea is that if you're going to show up, it had better not be about going through some religious motions.”
Bertrand points out that Presbyterians remain focused on the church edifice. Declining churches tend to cling to their buildings for dear life and healthier churches struggle to get out beyond them. For Emergents, however, sanctuary space is secondary; the primary focus of a building is often a coffee shop or an art gallery. When they say the church is not the building, they mean it.
According to Bertrand, “Our mainline paradigm is still the business world where bigger is better: more people, greater resources, additional services. Growing churches usually don't think of planting new churches that are sometimes risky ventures. They want more of the same success for themselves. Are we willing to let go of central control to allow local bodies, groups, individuals try new things — and not just giving them permission, but having the institution actively support them?”
Critics of the Emerging Church movement have panned its homogeneity. Brian Walsh views it as primarily a white, middle to upper-class phenomenon. “Emergent for what?” He also asks. “Does Emergent have any wider implications? Will it stimulate any commitment to our global mission?” Others dismiss Emergent as “cool church” for young people exclusively.
There may be a gap between historic denominations and the churches of the Emergent movement, but many recognize the need for a closer relationship. The Freedomize gathering in the building of St. Andrew's, King St., serves as a powerful symbol of that disconnect — and of the potential for more practical unity.
Perched atop her mountain bike, my friend Sue says it best: “I often wonder when I'm worshipping on Sunday nights what happens in the morning at St. Andrew's and then I think how amazing it would be if we could be together. It seems sad, maybe even wrong, that we're not. I'm not sure how that could happen.”
