Emergent and Missional: US and UK?

With the visit of Ken and Leo from San Francisco to Leeds on business, there was an opportunity yesterday to compare these two strands of "emerging" Christian experience. Thank you to them for the fellowship and opportunity.

They were very surprised by what TLL was like and initially wondered if it was really "Church" - and subsequently shocked by participants ability to wonder that too!

What they had read about on blogs and web-sites felt very different in the flesh - very "un=Christian" in a positive though puzzling way - a way which rather pleased TLL core group!

The differences in emerging theology between the US and the UK seem to them to be.

In the US it appears to be experiencing a much more hostile reception from the mainstream churches, retain an evangelical obsession with numbers, still talk of "reaching out" from the Church, have a focus on becoming a denomination in its own right, and retain a much more obviously evangelical identity.

In the UK we/they noted that emerging/missional church was more a movement of the Spirit, (often through disillusionment with mainstream churches), had more positive relationships with clergy in mainstream churches, was more grass roots, had no focus on Sunday worship, the numbers involved are much smaller, the age group much narrower, and there was a strong emphasis on whole life discipleship.

What got them even more amazed was that TLL was considering a new way of meeting because it was getting " too big" with 50 or so participants - as Leo put it " that is very hard to comprehend if you are an American Christian"

(But there are some very good reasons - more of which later).

It was an interesting couple of hours, not least because what some of the Ken described of their "emerging Church" seemed to be precisely the kind of middle class evangelical church that several TLL participants had escaped away from - and they were quite taken about with the Yorkshire honesty with which this point was put across! It was interesting to see the national stereotype of " reserved English" being shattered!

This personal experience clearly has its own validity but it is on some respects born out in a wider context with the NBC and other media agencies in the US focusing on Emergent Churches. I would be hard pressed for example to think of a UK equivalent to this description of Jacob's Well in Kansas.

One of the thing that strikes me is that (IMHO) many of the American churches seem to be a deliberate attempt to live in a different culture (see Jacob's Well intro description) whereas in the UK many alternative/missional.emerging communities have derived from individuals being part of the culture.

Much of theology in the States seems to be about "reaching out" - "Jesus and the woman at the fringes of her culture" or "Paul learning about and adapting and reaching out to the Greeks culture" whereas in the UK the new forms seem to be emerging because Christians feel we are "the woman" or "Greeks" and have more in common with the culture ( and perhaps more provocatively see 'more of Jesus' in the culture) than in the Church.

Comments

[Derek]

Good post, Tom, with some really helpful observations.

Grace and peace

[Sara]

Not sure that I follow the comparison which feels typically anti-American. Could it be that because we approach it from a British perspective we can't understand or comprehend what is good about American faith trends?

[andrew]

really good post. great insights.and i see these often when i travel between the two countries

[Maggie]

Excellent post Tom - good description of the different approaches - but the last paragraph is a powerful vision for the UK future - not how do we "reach" in the sense of bringing "in" but how do we explore the "divine" in what is happening in people's lives - this is surely what is meant by being "salt".

Thank you, blessings for Christmas, and see you in the New Year

Maggie

[Adam Copeland]

Thanks for the post. I loved the link to Leo Sandon's article in my hometown paper, the Tallahassee Democrat. I blogged on that when it came out. Anyways.

First, I may "get what you're saying" when you speak of being more "a movement of the Spirit" but I think it's also helpful to remember that good Christians seek the Spirit's guidance in all they think and do, especially when it comes to church. Not what you were doing so, but it's never good when we start claiming priority of discernment of the Spirit.

Second, thanks for giving the cultural point--that American seek emergent to escape from culture and Brits b/c of it. I'll definitely be pondering that for a while. Briefly now: I think there's probably something in American culture that's actually driving this move, so it's cultural somehow but less easily explained.

http://adamcopeland.wordpress.com

[Tom Allen]

Hi Adam and thanks for the comment.
"The movement is the Spirit" idea is quite a different one from which you are responding to. I am not claiming any kind of priority for British experience - almost the reverse - whats seems to happening here is rarely sought by people, often really unexpected and perhaps more spontaneously puzzling. Two groups that I visited in the summer came about from the leadership of people who would deny that there sought the Spirit's guidance at all - it came from the Spirit. in fact such an idea seems to many British Christians as being a good examples of what I have described as the "ecclesiastical captivity of the Spirit" in a more recent post. What is happening here seems to be happening without or even despite of the kind of human endeavour you suggest. Perhaps that is another "church" cultural difference.

Tom