Zadok Perspectives on Emerging Church
Monday, February 6th, 2006Zadok Perspectives is the quarterly journal of the Zadok Institute of Christianity and Society, based in Sydney. The most recent issue, Summer 2005, features articles on the Emerging Church, from an Australian perspective.
Stephen Said provides an overview of the ‘emerging church’ concept. In his article, “What’s in a name”, he suggests a few emphases associated with ‘emerging church’:
1. Attractional verus incarnational
2. Unleashing Christ from modern culture
3. The Kingdom of God
4. Sacred and secular
5. Alternative worship
6. Social justice
Barb Daws, SU Victoria’s Children and Families Mission Coordinator and part of the Solace Community, writes on “Children and the emerging church”. She remarks on the resonance between emerging church values and the vision painted in John Westerhoff’s 1980 book, “Will Our Children Have Faith?”.
Adriahna Jensen, 16 year old poet and missionary in Melbourne, writes on her experience of participation in an experimental church in Pomona.
Matthew Stone, missionary-apologist in Sydney, tells a ‘fish out of water’ story in his article, “Don’t Circumcise the Gentiles”. He writes about his own experience of developing Christian faith as a seeker out of the New Age Movement. He gives examples of modern-day circumcision of the Post-modern Gentiles - communication gaps over the use of religious language, focus on clothing style, neglect of the needs of vegetarians, demonising anything associated with the New Age. Matthew holds together a warning against cultural imperialism and a plea for Christian unity.
Mick Pope, review editor of Zadok, talks with Brian McLaren, in “Dialogue with the Jesus Movement”. Brian has some interesting things to say about an emerging global postcolonial theology.
Dan McCredden, lawyer and congregational leader with Northern Community Church of Christ in Melbourne, asks, “Can an existing denominational church be emerging?”
John Jensen, missional church planter in Melbourne, tells the story of “The Kids of the Black Hole”. At the age of 20 he invited his brothers’ punk friends to move into their apartment.
Anne Wilkinson-Hayes, regional minister with the Baptist Union of Victoria, reflects on the place of the small missional church in the Baptist context. She asks if if ‘new missional churches’ are provieding a more authentic, gospel-centred approach to living our the faith in our society today. She highlights, from her experience in the UK, the small fragile groups that are not trendy, not led by people who publish every waking thought on the internet. They’re largely led by women. She says that if groups can move from the rhetoric and become truly engaged in their communities, then the “Emperor is fully dressed.” If groups settle for more interesting worship in a less formal setting, then the Emperor of Emerging Church is prancing around in embarssing nakedness.
Book reviews in this issue of Zadok include Rhys Bezzant, church historian at Ridley College, on The Da Vinci Code, Dan McCredden on Steve Taylor’s “The Out of Bounds Church”, Doug Hynd, lecturer at St Mark’s Institute of Theology in Canberra, reviewing Stuart Murray’s “Post Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World”, and Darren Cronshaw on “Bridging Divided Worlds: Generational Cultures in Congregations“, by Jackson Carroll & Wade Clark Roof.
Darren Cronshaw, adjunct lecturer at Bible College of Victoria and Whitley College, has written an introductory reading guide to the emerging church phenomenon, covering 50 books, a number of internet links and blogs.
Tags: Australia, Brian McLaren, Darren Cronshaw, Emerging Church, Matthew Stone, Reading, Theology
Friday 17 February
