On Sun, 05-22-05 10:46 am
A post by Andy, one of my earliest friends in the blogosphere, caught my attention awhile ago and triggered some thoughts. You can read his full declaration at SmartChristian; here is the relevant paragraph:
I am thinking emergent these days. Why? Because those engaging in the Emerging Church Movement are at least asking relevant questions and not settling for the church status quo (Churchianity).
Just before running across Andy’s statement, I had finished Love Your God with All Your Mind by J.P. Moreland (a very good book, BTW). In his chapter Recapturing the Intellectual Life in the Church, he writes:
Third, we need to make a careful distinction between forms and functions in the church. A New Testament function is an absolute biblical mandate that every church must do – for example, edify believers, worship God, evangelize the lost, and so forth. Functions are unchanging nonnegotiables.
“By contrast, a form is a culturally relative means of fulfilling biblical functions. Forms are valuable as a means to accomplish those functions and should be constantly evaluated, kept, or replaced in light of their effectiveness . . .
“Serious harm has been done to our churches by confusing forms and functions and by clinging to the former just because we have always done them a certain way. We have no right to adjust our functions, but we have a duty to examine constantly our forms. A church that does not do this will have a lot to answer for at the judgment seat of the Head of the church.”
These cautions have applicability to the emergent church movement. Andy is correct when he says the movement is “at least asking relevant questions”; my concern is with the answers some are providing for those questions. The line between form and function has been blurred.
The function of the church is inseparable from the content of its message, emphases, and destiny. The form can and should change, as Moreland says, but the function must be intact if a local church is to keep its lampstand (Rev 2:5). When issues such as the content of the gospel, holiness, and others are compromised – or when a philosophy is adopted that is antithetical to absolute truth – then that church or movement is headed in a perilous direction.
It is not necessary to adopt the function that some emergent church leaders advocate in order to adapt the form to a particular church. To the extent that the questions being asked by the emergent church movement are focused on form, then every church should be examining itself to see if it, too, needs to change. But when the questions – or, rather, the answers – begin to alter the function of the church, it is time to be very discerning.
God has given us remarkable freedom when it comes to form. He basically says, “Do church however you want.” But He has also been careful to give us answers to the function of the church, and to meddle or modify these commands and imperatives is to trample on holy ground.
my take on emergent is that it is a conversation and not a way of being church. this goes even beyond cultural function.
this ‘conversation’ is seeking to engage with postmodern culture and as such asks some questions that will rock some theologies, but with the aim of freeing them from (yesterdays) cultural overlay. emergent disucssion should never take the place of getting on and doing the kingdom work. any type of church can be emergent – it doesn’t have to be a trendy one in a coffee shop with a DJ and bad attitude to authority! i actually go to a mega church (www.alm.org.uk).
rob
Interesting Faith Questions
Form often without function — yeah. But the form is what has preserved the ideas that lead to transformation. I am wondering if we really need a movement, or just a revival?
[...] og responded to a “thinking emergent” posts of mine by writing on the topic of the relationship of form and function in the church. In Mike’s pos [...]
While not aquainted with the emergent church (would like direction to reliable information) the bigest help in the form-function aria was from Gene Getz’s book Sharpening the Focus of the Church where he shows that where there is function there will be form and the form,even in the scripture, was only valid if it caried out the function. The body’s form should be in a state of flux, adapting itself in answer to the culture. (the church in Nigeria should not be a cookie cutter of the church in America)But when that form no longer caries out the function effectively it should be abandoned for one that will.