As the journey toward inner revolution began, I began to realize that I was out of touch with my world and the current state of the church across the board. I began going to YouTube, BeliefNet, and other websites seeking out new vistas and viewpoints. Some years before I had heard of the Emerging Church and was familiar with the name of some of the leaders therein. I began to look up folks like Tony Jones, Frank Viola, Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, and Brian McLaren (to name a few), and to read whatever I could get my hands on.
The Emerging Church is hard to define. They refuse to call themselves a “movement”. They prefer the term “conversation” because it’s on-going and non-solidified. A movement would have parameters of doctrine and beliefs, but a “conversation” would have only open dialogue and seeking of common ground to work from. There is also a “conversation” that refer to themselves as “Emergent”, but at the moment, I forget what the main differences are. (I read a terrific article by Christianity Today that explained the differences and characteristics very well; I highly recommend it.) An online friend who is into a more conservative branch of the Emerging Church conversation was a huge help to me at this point in the journey.
Much of what I discovered on this leg of the journey was that the Church in America had failed miserably to not only reach the culture but to try to understand or show compassion. I’m not talking about what passes in the media as tolerance these days. I’m talking about a refusal by the Church to live the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Instead, American Christianity has created its own gospel (the prosperity gospel) which, as St. Paul said, is really no gospel – no good news – at all. The culture has seen priest sex abuse scandals and seeming cover-ups; greedy and immoral televangelists living extravagant lifestyles; fundamentalists zealots who picket funerals of homosexuals with signs saying “God hates fags”; and evangelicals who equate Christianity with patriotism and being Republican. The Church, which should be a safe place, a sanctuary, a refuge of hope and love, has instead become (in large part, not all) an unsafe place, filled with prejudice, hatred, self-righteousness, commercialism, consumerism, rejection, and condemnation toward all who disagree, even other Christians. Now, I may not agree with all of the accusations and I certainly don’t agree with some of the reactions and answers that have come down the pike, but these issues have to be faced head-on, looked at, and repented of (if necessary) by the Church in America. Some of the Emergent guys want to re-invent the wheel; some want to return to the ancient practices of the early Church, but with a modern twist here and there. I don’t believe that is the answer. I believe the Church should publicly repent wherever it finds itself guilty of any charge and should seek to live the true gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ came declaring and demonstrating as laid out essentially in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Gospels. Still, in all of this searching, I discovered that I was guilty of many of the charges above. To be frank, I was a self-righteous ass-hole. Repentance had to begin (as it always does) with my own heart. And while I did find a lot of helpful insights and truth among the Emerging conversation, there were two men on the fringes of the evangelical mainstream who were to have the most impact upon my crumbling christianity – and still are to this day: Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne.
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