In the last decade of the 20th century, a small group of Christian leaders, now known as the Leadership Network, came together by their mutual conviction. They felt that evangelicalism had produced a subculture that was no longer the best possible representation of Christianity. The world that had given birth to North American evangelical institutions in the 1940s through the 1960s had all but disappeared by 1990. Thus, the church desperately needed renovation to respond to Western culture, radically changed since the 1950s.
This group of believers realized that pushing the same methodologies and outdated worldview would increasingly alienate popular culture and future generations of Christian youth. They even questioned the idea of methodology itself. By the early 1990s, this Leadership Network provided the initial platform to generate more discussions and host conferences. The new discourse adopted the name the Terra Nova Project, and when the Leadership Network later withdrew its support, they became known as Emergent.
The messages of Emergent explain that Christian faith has less to do with doctrinal formulations than with integrity and relationship with God, others, and society. Members of Emergent are sensitive to injustice, oppression, violence, and corruption, and resign themselves to sacrificial living in addressing these social problems. They experience a general dissatisfaction with what the church handed down, and an aversion to hypocrisy. Thus, the Conversation urgently seeks to revisit evangelical slogans and local dogma that no longer communicate or inspire spiritual growth. As they strive to erase any difference between their church life and their everyday life, they share a commitment to mission and a "wait-and-let-God-lead" attitude about the future. Each new church group expresses a preference for inclusiveness, a fondness for the metaphor of spiritual journey, and a growing appreciation for art. Through these approaches to doing church, they hope to recover the spirit of worship that engages the whole person, making it experiential and experimental in its nature.
What excites me the most about the Emergent Conversation is its potential. It possesses power that could trigger a new reformation to rival the changes of the Protestant reformation where Martin Luther's questioning caused changes in the Catholic Church. Emergent also has the ability to affect fundamental changes in spiritual lives around the globe.
Through joining Emergent, I seek to add my personal story to the Conversation and share an exciting new reinterpretation of God's relationship with mankind. Emergent is open to all voices. My personal story contributes and is relevant, in part, because of my background. As a disillusioned fundamentalist minister, I left the organized religious structure in the 1970s and planted a new church. This church, what we would now identify as an "emerging church", though it has evolved, is still growing and vibrant in the community. Today it seems that my mission of thirty years ago meshes with an Emergent passion for planting new churches.
At that time, I sought to rediscover the roots of what it means to do church the right way, just as Emergent seeks today. Relying on only my personal resources, I rented a house specifically to conduct "gatherings" in the front rooms and to make my home in the back rooms. My ministry attracted a spiritual family that explored then-unconventional ways of worship such as gospel rock music, comfortable couches and chairs in place of pews, and the absence of set doctrines and dogmas. I felt led to establish a multiplicity of leaders with no bearing on gender or race, as opposed to the traditional hierarchy that was all I had known as a minister. Initially, we only met on Friday nights, and had no traditional Sunday Service until several months later. Having opened our ministry to fellow worshipers as well as the disillusioned and homeless, we soon outgrew the house and moved to a larger building.
Many years later, in the fall of 1988, I found myself compelled to examine the plan of salvation that my Christian tradition taught me. As I looked deeper, more aspects of my early training underwent examining and questioning from an emerging inner dialogue. Out of the dialogue came a persuasive new meaning of the Gospels, a reinterpretation of Christianity's most beloved story, which I am pleased and excited to share with the Christian community. I anticipate that many parts of this reinterpreted story will be familiar. Yet, for many of you, other things will be startlingly new and different.
