Posts Tagged ‘emerging church’

Talking Logistics #1: Identifying w/ Jesus

November 9th, 2008

After a long delay, I thought it would be good to start walking through the nine themes covered in “Emerging Churches” by Gibbs and Bolger.  The first is “identifying with Jesus,” which seems pretty general and something every church probably claims for themselves.

In the emerging church, identifying with Jesus takes the form of  emphasizing the kingdom of God as the telos of the church.  This changes the direction of the church “from a centripetal (flowing in) to a centrifugal (flowing out) dynamic.  This in turn [leads] to a shift in emphasis from attacting crowds to equipping, dispersing, and multiplying Christ followers as a central function of the church (50-51).”  The point of church is not to get as many people as possible to come to a worship service on Sunday morning.  Rather, the point of church is to participate in the kingdom of God by focusing on discipleship or following Jesus.

In my opinion, a gift of the house church is the fact that it is not dependent on the number of people who show up on a given Sunday.  Since it is a small group that is not recognized as a formal institution, it will only be recognized by the ways that the group flows out into their local and global communities.

Emphasizing the kingdom of God as the telos of the church moves away from an understanding of the gospel as simply a matter of personal salvation.  Yes, personal salvation is certainly a part of the gospel, but it is not the whole story.  Many churches I am familiar with see as their mission to get as many people as possible “saved.”  The gospel is good news for individual sinners.  Emerging churches tend to see the gospel as God reconciling, restoring and redeeming the entire world.  The gospel is good news for the entire world  Therefore, the mission of the church is not just about saving individuals, but about participating with God in God’s work of reconciliation, restoration and redemption.

To summarize, for the emerging church, identifying with Jesus means moving the church outward instead of expecting movement inward, and seeing salvation as the kingdom of God, which is holistic and not individualistic.

I certainly resonate with this understanding of what it means to follow Jesus.  Do you?

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