'Emerging' churches going back to basics

By Frank Stirk

TODAY'S -- and tomorrow's -- churches need to get outside the four walls of their buildings and become "accessible" to people in their daily lives, according to Dr. Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

In a keynote address last month to an overflow crowd of church planters gathered at First Baptist Church, Gibbs cast a radical vision. He urged them to come alongside God, who he believes is creating "a new thing within our established traditions, whatever they may be. But God is also doing a new thing outside of those structures."

This "new thing," he told the three-day event sponsored by Outreach Canada, is what Gibbs and other observers have called the "emerging church."

"There still is, to use business-speak, a market for traditional churches. The trouble is it's a shrinking market. It's shrinking quickly," said Glenn Gibson, Outreach Canada's director of church revitalization ministries.

"A whole new type of church needs to emerge. We're in a culture that's interested in spirituality. To use Jesus' metaphor of the wine and wineskins, people still have a taste for the wine. But we have problems with our containers."

Gibson added: "It's time for us to re-think radically the forms. We've got to discover new wineskins. Some churches are going to need to undergo a radical change -- if that's possible. It will take going back to basics and starting over."

Although the emerging church is still largely underground in the U.S., "it is increasingly mainstream in the U.K., because the structures are beginning to crumble," said Gibbs, who is British-born.

And while insisting he did not know whether this movement had reached Canada, Gibbs suggested that based on walking around downtown Vancouver -- as he customarily does whenever he visits a new city -- there was scant evidence that it had taken root here.

"This is a vibrant city. You can feel the energy of the city," he remarked. "Nearly every place that I passed said, 'Come in' -- until I passed the churches. And they said to me, 'Keep out.'"

By contrast, said Gibbs, "My vision for the church is a church that is accessible -- a church that you cannot miss."

To reach that goal, churches -- both established and those just starting -- need to return to the simple, easily "reproducible" model of the first and second centuries, when the most frequent meeting places were in people's homes, he said.

In keeping with that early tradition -- and as a growing number of new churches are already doing -- they need to focus in their cell groups on worship as "the main event and the backdrop of everything that happens," he said.

"We are worshiping beings. And if worship is not part of the rhythm of our lives, it's going to look very artificial when we try it for one hour a week in the sanctuary. We've got to become a worshiping people."

That worship, he added, is increasingly taking place around a meal -- and not just in a home, but also in restaurants and cafes. "We are not there to evangelize the folks around; we are there to share with joy and enthusiasm that which means so much to us. We're always just glancing sideways and making room, because there are lots of lonely people out there."

In the context of this meal, "the bread is broken and the wine is blessed," he said. "It can be powerfully evangelistic."

"The churches where things are happening," observed Martin Robinson, national director of the U.K. evangelism group Together in Mission, "are situations where the people have been somehow encouraged to speak courageously and unafraid with their unchurched friends about the manifold goodness of God frequently. People are intrigued."

Also essential to the success of these emerging churches, said Gibson, is grace on the part of denominational leaders to stand by these innovators even when their experiments fail.

"They create that safety for the church planters to make mistakes with the confidence that there's blocking downfield, and that they can continue to work and innovate until they've unlocked the keys to the culture and the community they're in."

But veteran Vancouver-area church planter Tom Tan said his own experiences in attempting to partner with different denominations has been that most are unwilling to back emerging churches because it would mean a loss of control and accountability.

These churches and denominations need to allow them to develop their own "personality," said Tan. "I would say, 'Please release, empower and equip them.' Because every emerging group has the possibility to be a future church plant. Otherwise, we will be stuck in the old model, the one we've seen for the last 30 or 50 years."

"[The emerging church] comes as a great surprise to the leaders of so many of our traditional denomination," said Gibbs. "You can have a leadership that is sadly out of touch with what is actually happening, because they are embroiled in politics and with the issues of trying to maintain an institution which has largely outlived its shelf-life."