Post-Modern Church Time Capsule 1.3
Posted December 31, 2001
Intro
This year's time-capsule is much less sarcastic and critical than the last two years. 911 really knocked the wind out of everyone and 2001 was more about supporting each other and doing the best we can.
My first two capsules were posted on web sites (Young Leaders and The Ooze). I have posted this year's time-capsule on my personal blog spot as a celebration of the self-publishing revolution and the impact of web logging technology. Blogging engines were not around when I created my first blog site in 1997 called Andrew's Tea Salon. 1.3 will be hypertexted on my blog site and the links will be updated during the year for those who want to follow the stories and people.
1.3
From my much travelled but entirely subjective and biased viewpoint, here are the year's most significant changes that affected the emerging church in the post-modern transition.
1. Our world got more dangerous.
September 11, 2001 may have been the day when the Information Age stopped and the Security Age began. If the Information Age started in 1989 with the falling of the Berlin Wall (according to Freidman), then the falling of the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001 marked the end of carefree information exchange and the beginning of a world of suspicion, fear, caution and safety concerns. Some might call it The Surveillance Age, a time more like Orwell's 1984 than Huxley's "Brave New World".
The 911 tragedy saw thousands come back to the churches before general attendance regressed to pre-911 levels after 2-3 months.
911 brought the possibity of safety and persecution, even martydom to the church conversation, along with the question. "How do we do church in the security age?" There was talk about moving towards more streamlined, relational lay-powered churches that are less dependant on buildings, mega-finances, and a high profile presence. It is no co-incidence that the rising impact of house churches and monastic communities in 2001 found a greater level of co-hesion than ever before.
Further thoughts including Derek Chapmans prophetic poetry from New York in The Week After:Boaz Special Report
2. The post-modern transition got more personal.
Despite rumors to contrary, 911 did not put an end to the post-modern transition. The world is still changing and the church is still trying to figure out how to be the church in this new world. 2001 saw the conversation get more personal with Chuck Smith Jr.s book "The End of the World as we know It." Steve Rabey published "In Search of Authentic Faith, the most comprehensive and personal synthesis of the people making the post-modern church transition happen in USA. Tony Jones brought the conversation to youth with "Postmodern Youth Ministry" . I thought the most significant publication this year was The Postmodern Bible Reader
Emergent, with roots in Young Leaders and Terranova, came into being to resource the church in this transition. The flavor is no longer as angry as it used to be but more instructional and pastoral. They kicked off the year by hosting a open conversation with Dallas Willard and Nancey Murphy. Events are planned in 2002 for Houston and Prague.
3. Fantasy got more popular
2001 saw a host of role playing games and fantasy movies with spiritual themes. Among the most famous were the movies "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and "The Fellowship of the Rings". Rather than getting left behind, the Christian Bookstores had a neverending supply of fiction. Those looking to communicate eternal truth to the next generation were looking into redemptive analogies in current literature and the Christian fantasies of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald.
New questions for 2002: Is Harry Potter is an anti-Christ or a type of Christ? Are Christians closer to Witches or Muggles? Is the journey of following Jesus as exciting as the adventure that beckoned Frodo Baggins? Do we take 11 year olds seriously as spiritual practitioners?
4. Worship got more interactive.
Fully interactive worship happened during 2001. At Greenbelt Festival in England, alt. worship churches created immersive experiences in tents for people to experience God. The same happened at Epicenter Worship Installation in Austin, Texas, where young people created 15 worship environments to run simultaneously, none of which had a stage. The architects of the Labyrinth created a flash version for the internet.
In 2002, watch out for altworship.org
5. Leaders got more connected.
Email and instant messaging have helped people stay connected but so have a series of roundtables and gatherings that happended all over the globe, bringing together young emerging leaders to meet each other. I have some video of the big ones:
1. In Asia, The Great Commission Roundtable QT video
2. In Europe, Emerge QT video
3. in USA, Epicenter QT video
In 2002, look out for a web site called akingdomspace.org that will introduce 100 emerging networks and movements to the world.
6. Churchless believers got more vocal.
2001 was a year of listening. After 911, the churched listened more to Moslems. At Soularize in Seattle, evangelicals listened to Native Americans. But the group that may have got the most attention in 2001 seemed to be the churchless belivers. Secular newspapers published stories of Christians who had to leave the institutional church in order to progress spiritually, a group much larger than the church likes to admit. New Zealander Alan Jamieson listened to believers who had left the church and published "A Churchless Faith". A WCC consultation next year in Germany is entitled "Believing without Belonging? In search of new paradigms of church and mission in secularised and postmodern contexts"
7. Churches got more monastic.
Leaders everywhere were starting monastic communities. In England, and 24-7 Prayer started their first of many Celtic "Boiler Rooms and Tribal Generation UK started an intentional, residential, monastic community So did Solomon's Porch in Minnesota. And YWAM in Rotterdam. The Mustard Seed community house got famous in VIneyard circles, although The Prodigal Project was probably Vineyard's first intentional community.
Best resource for those monastic communites (until somebody publishes "Starting Celtic Monastaries for Dummies") is Godspace 4 The New Edge, by Brad Sargent.
8. Emerging Culture Got More Global
Example. August. I am in Cartegena, Colombia . I am sitting with a Japanese girl called Mika, one of 30 young people in Japan who have started house churches in their apartments. She calls it a "party". The young people who come to it are into hip hop. Rudy Carasco is sitting with Mika. Rudy is an Hispanic from Pasadena and their church, in this case more of an intentional community called Harambee, has a hip hop band who might tour Japan. Rudy's church in Pasadena has just invested in a karaoke machine for their worship experiences. Rudy brings Jamal with him - a teenage African American who I thought would not fit in. In actuality, he could name the entire Colombian soccer team and was therefore made a token Colombian. Also present in Colombia is Fernando, the leader of a youth church movement in Santiago, Chile called Despised and Rejected. We are banging our heads and moshing to Fernando's hard core band, "Perroatropellao" - 'Beaten Dogs' -who sound exactly like the hard core bands that I heard in Germany at Freakstock this year. And the hundreds of Christian hard core bands that exist in USA. The band members play hard core but they are really into a Brazilian martial art that incorporates flowing dance-like movements with tribal music. The same thing I saw young people doing in Little Five Points, Atlanta, where Tim Andrews has a growing network of house churches . . and so it goes on, all around the world, irrespective of geography.
9. House Churches got more organised.
House 2 House began its journey as the premiere house church magazine. Neil Cole's Greenhouse Training made a big splash in California. Wolfgang Simson published his "Houses That Change The World" in English. I made it to the excellent house church conferences in Ohio and Austin but missed Denver and Amsterdam. Athough these new organic living room or coffee shop based churches are not the final answer, and despite the fact that many young people do not like the term, I believe house churches are the cookie dough of the new ecclesiology. Fresh, soft, warm, pliable. Perhaps more tasty now than they will be later when they firm up and become part of the mainstream church. Or, if Simson is right, they will be the new mainstream.
BTW -I ended off the year as part of a new house church network of young people in Prague.
Andrew Jones, who is about to let off a few New Year's skyrockets from the balcony of hisPrague apartment.
The Boaz Report is sent out to leaders of emerging ministries. You can request it at The Boaz Project
Posted December 31, 2001
Intro
This year's time-capsule is much less sarcastic and critical than the last two years. 911 really knocked the wind out of everyone and 2001 was more about supporting each other and doing the best we can.
My first two capsules were posted on web sites (Young Leaders and The Ooze). I have posted this year's time-capsule on my personal blog spot as a celebration of the self-publishing revolution and the impact of web logging technology. Blogging engines were not around when I created my first blog site in 1997 called Andrew's Tea Salon. 1.3 will be hypertexted on my blog site and the links will be updated during the year for those who want to follow the stories and people.
1.3
From my much travelled but entirely subjective and biased viewpoint, here are the year's most significant changes that affected the emerging church in the post-modern transition.
1. Our world got more dangerous.
September 11, 2001 may have been the day when the Information Age stopped and the Security Age began. If the Information Age started in 1989 with the falling of the Berlin Wall (according to Freidman), then the falling of the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001 marked the end of carefree information exchange and the beginning of a world of suspicion, fear, caution and safety concerns. Some might call it The Surveillance Age, a time more like Orwell's 1984 than Huxley's "Brave New World".
The 911 tragedy saw thousands come back to the churches before general attendance regressed to pre-911 levels after 2-3 months.
911 brought the possibity of safety and persecution, even martydom to the church conversation, along with the question. "How do we do church in the security age?" There was talk about moving towards more streamlined, relational lay-powered churches that are less dependant on buildings, mega-finances, and a high profile presence. It is no co-incidence that the rising impact of house churches and monastic communities in 2001 found a greater level of co-hesion than ever before.
Further thoughts including Derek Chapmans prophetic poetry from New York in The Week After:Boaz Special Report
2. The post-modern transition got more personal.
Despite rumors to contrary, 911 did not put an end to the post-modern transition. The world is still changing and the church is still trying to figure out how to be the church in this new world. 2001 saw the conversation get more personal with Chuck Smith Jr.s book "The End of the World as we know It." Steve Rabey published "In Search of Authentic Faith, the most comprehensive and personal synthesis of the people making the post-modern church transition happen in USA. Tony Jones brought the conversation to youth with "Postmodern Youth Ministry" . I thought the most significant publication this year was The Postmodern Bible Reader
Emergent, with roots in Young Leaders and Terranova, came into being to resource the church in this transition. The flavor is no longer as angry as it used to be but more instructional and pastoral. They kicked off the year by hosting a open conversation with Dallas Willard and Nancey Murphy. Events are planned in 2002 for Houston and Prague.
3. Fantasy got more popular
2001 saw a host of role playing games and fantasy movies with spiritual themes. Among the most famous were the movies "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and "The Fellowship of the Rings". Rather than getting left behind, the Christian Bookstores had a neverending supply of fiction. Those looking to communicate eternal truth to the next generation were looking into redemptive analogies in current literature and the Christian fantasies of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald.
New questions for 2002: Is Harry Potter is an anti-Christ or a type of Christ? Are Christians closer to Witches or Muggles? Is the journey of following Jesus as exciting as the adventure that beckoned Frodo Baggins? Do we take 11 year olds seriously as spiritual practitioners?
4. Worship got more interactive.
Fully interactive worship happened during 2001. At Greenbelt Festival in England, alt. worship churches created immersive experiences in tents for people to experience God. The same happened at Epicenter Worship Installation in Austin, Texas, where young people created 15 worship environments to run simultaneously, none of which had a stage. The architects of the Labyrinth created a flash version for the internet.
In 2002, watch out for altworship.org
5. Leaders got more connected.
Email and instant messaging have helped people stay connected but so have a series of roundtables and gatherings that happended all over the globe, bringing together young emerging leaders to meet each other. I have some video of the big ones:
1. In Asia, The Great Commission Roundtable QT video
2. In Europe, Emerge QT video
3. in USA, Epicenter QT video
In 2002, look out for a web site called akingdomspace.org that will introduce 100 emerging networks and movements to the world.
6. Churchless believers got more vocal.
2001 was a year of listening. After 911, the churched listened more to Moslems. At Soularize in Seattle, evangelicals listened to Native Americans. But the group that may have got the most attention in 2001 seemed to be the churchless belivers. Secular newspapers published stories of Christians who had to leave the institutional church in order to progress spiritually, a group much larger than the church likes to admit. New Zealander Alan Jamieson listened to believers who had left the church and published "A Churchless Faith". A WCC consultation next year in Germany is entitled "Believing without Belonging? In search of new paradigms of church and mission in secularised and postmodern contexts"
7. Churches got more monastic.
Leaders everywhere were starting monastic communities. In England, and 24-7 Prayer started their first of many Celtic "Boiler Rooms and Tribal Generation UK started an intentional, residential, monastic community So did Solomon's Porch in Minnesota. And YWAM in Rotterdam. The Mustard Seed community house got famous in VIneyard circles, although The Prodigal Project was probably Vineyard's first intentional community.
Best resource for those monastic communites (until somebody publishes "Starting Celtic Monastaries for Dummies") is Godspace 4 The New Edge, by Brad Sargent.
8. Emerging Culture Got More Global
Example. August. I am in Cartegena, Colombia . I am sitting with a Japanese girl called Mika, one of 30 young people in Japan who have started house churches in their apartments. She calls it a "party". The young people who come to it are into hip hop. Rudy Carasco is sitting with Mika. Rudy is an Hispanic from Pasadena and their church, in this case more of an intentional community called Harambee, has a hip hop band who might tour Japan. Rudy's church in Pasadena has just invested in a karaoke machine for their worship experiences. Rudy brings Jamal with him - a teenage African American who I thought would not fit in. In actuality, he could name the entire Colombian soccer team and was therefore made a token Colombian. Also present in Colombia is Fernando, the leader of a youth church movement in Santiago, Chile called Despised and Rejected. We are banging our heads and moshing to Fernando's hard core band, "Perroatropellao" - 'Beaten Dogs' -who sound exactly like the hard core bands that I heard in Germany at Freakstock this year. And the hundreds of Christian hard core bands that exist in USA. The band members play hard core but they are really into a Brazilian martial art that incorporates flowing dance-like movements with tribal music. The same thing I saw young people doing in Little Five Points, Atlanta, where Tim Andrews has a growing network of house churches . . and so it goes on, all around the world, irrespective of geography.
9. House Churches got more organised.
House 2 House began its journey as the premiere house church magazine. Neil Cole's Greenhouse Training made a big splash in California. Wolfgang Simson published his "Houses That Change The World" in English. I made it to the excellent house church conferences in Ohio and Austin but missed Denver and Amsterdam. Athough these new organic living room or coffee shop based churches are not the final answer, and despite the fact that many young people do not like the term, I believe house churches are the cookie dough of the new ecclesiology. Fresh, soft, warm, pliable. Perhaps more tasty now than they will be later when they firm up and become part of the mainstream church. Or, if Simson is right, they will be the new mainstream.
BTW -I ended off the year as part of a new house church network of young people in Prague.
Andrew Jones, who is about to let off a few New Year's skyrockets from the balcony of hisPrague apartment.
The Boaz Report is sent out to leaders of emerging ministries. You can request it at The Boaz Project
