Diving In Headfirst

I'm having a great time integrating some of the initial sources I have sought out. This spring, the group of worship facilitators at Mountain View United explore Dan Kimball's book "Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations". I did a quick cursory reading of it this Spring and have had a chance to revisit the book the past few days. My initial reaction was (and still is) mixed. I appreciated the book's practical approach to the issues involved in starting a worship gathering. There were many helpful tips peppered throughout. My concerns, however, were two-fold. First, the book presented emergent worship (EW) in such a way that EW appeared to be another model of worship that needed to be replicated. While I know Dan included sample orders for worship to be helpful, these models increased the levels of anxiety in our worship facilitators since they models made it seem as if we needed to replicate elements of the services. My second response to the book is that it had a very particular Christology (high) attached to its approach to worship. While I appreciate that this is where Dan is at personally, it made the book a lot less accessible for faith communities with a lower Christology. In the first few days of my forray into EW, it's interesting to compare individuals like McLaren (more expansive Christological formation) with Dan. Overall, however, I found Kimball's book a useful first step in my explorations. I also had a chance to finish Diana Butler-Bass' book "Christianity for the Rest of Us". As a mainline pastor, I REALLY appreciated her optimistic observations about where some of the mainlines are heading. I also liked the way Butler-Bass went to great lengths to document the life of communities that took radically different approaches to the issues at hand (i.e. high-churches/low churches; episcopally-based communities/congregational-based communities, etc). Her book gave me a much greater sense of the diversities contained with emerging communities than did Kimball's work. Butler-Bass really made the point that thriving communities are communities that embrace authenticity and are communities that are missionally oriented. This confirms my own convications so it's not a suprise that I loved her work. I also knocked down about 2/3 of Diana Butler-Bass' book "The Practicing Congregation". Part of me almost wishes I had read this book before "Christianity for the Rest of Us" as it does a beautiful job of laying out Diana's theological approach/orientation. I particularly appreciated the third chapter of the book titled "Tradition! Tradition!". The chapter goes into great lengths to tease out the fact that when conflict occurs around worship issues, the conflicts revolve not between a clash between traditional and contemporary values but rather between competing streams of tradition. In my first five years of parish ministry, I've realized how disconnected most lay persons from the historical and cultural roots of the Christian tradition. This disconnect has allowed many mainline Protestant church to drift from historic practices and commitments into a place of "feel good" assimilation where the worship like is shaped primairly by the likes/dislikes of members. This is a tremendously dangerous place to go as it reinforces a consumerist approach to our faith. The tensions Diana addressed reminded me of the tensions within the emerging communities that Brian McLaren addressed in the address I listened to yesterday between mainline emergent communities and evangelical emergent communities. McLaren had a beautiful way of reframing this potential conflict by creating room for both ends of the spectrum when he rejected language that suggested a singular emergent community in favor of the plural form of emergent communities. This awareness is crucial if we ever had hope of truly living together as the body of Christ - arms, fingers, goes, elbows, and all! I'm sorry if my postings seem to ramble. I'm taking somewhat of a "stream of consciousness" approach. I thank you for hanging in there with me. Hopefully you'll find some nuggets worth considering. Til next time...