Bruce Larson and Ralph Osborne state, “At the outset, we hope that this book will self-destruct in ten years!” (10). They are proposing a powerful model for the future of the church. They lament that fact that when most new churches are birthed, even those with solid financial backing and a core of lay-leaders to work with, that those new churches tend to be merely carbon copies of other churches. They propose, instead, that churches begin to look around, not at what other churches are doing, or how to replicate the success of another church, or even how to continue to repeat previous success, but instead to consider that kind of church Jesus would build in this community given the human condition of the people who live here.
The authors quote Isaiah 43:19, which says, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
I found this book at a used book store off Keith Street in Cleveland, Tennessee. It caught my attention because the title is, The Emerging Church (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1970).” The publication date, however, is 1970. The authors hoped that this book would be outdated in ten years because what was relevant in 1970 would be irrelevant by 1980. Yet, here we are in 2007 talking about the Emergent Church. Some might say, “See, Bruce and Ralph were right on.” But the modality that they envisioned has become the sodality of the Emergent Church. In the paradigm of Bruce and Ralph, there is no “Emergent” church, because the church never emerges. It is always emerging. The church, as they see it, is a dynamic growing entity/organism that is able to adapt and proactively respond to the changing cultures, worldview, and social movements of each generation.
It is true that many denominations became fixed in a method and a particular church paradigm that was outdated in ten years. It is also true that many denominations and independant churches are resistant to change. However, if the Emergent Church thinks they have found “the” way to do church, they are already irrelevant, they just don’t know it yet. They will eventually be a bunch of old members sitting around lighting candles, singing Kumbaya, and complaining that the young kids have really gone liberal with all this hymn singing stuff.
The danger for any movement is that it stops moving.
