A Christian Affirmation 2005 and The Emerging Church, Part One of ?

I have been reading some books on The Emerging Church, but have not quite gotten through them yet, so I hesitate to offer up my opinion on it. However, I have been reading and thinking about A Christian Affirmation 2005, as well as being part of a discussion group on the document. If you have not read it, you should do so before reading the rest of my column. It would also be helpful to read Leroy Garrett’s Response to A Christian Affirmation 2005 and A Reply to Leroy Garrett. These will just be my initial thoughts and hopefully the start of a discussion.

I started out wondering why such a document was desirable or even necessary. One of my first inclinations was that it is a way to try to at least get some control over the direction Churches of Christ are going. With so many churches going to praise teams, some even considering instruments, and others really doing different things when it came to the Lord’s Supper, it seemed to me like a way to try and point us back in the “right direction.” While I’m not completely opposed to something like that, I just wondered about the timing. Why now? Then I started to read about the Emerging Church. This movement (though its main leaders, who don’t call themselves the leader of a movement and don’t call it a movement) is an attempt to reach the postmodern generations in ways that are very postmodern themselves. They are trying very radical ways of worshiping that really challenge mainstream Christianity, some things that sound a lot like what some of the more progressive Churches of Christ are doing, but this movement is doing them on a much larger scale. I began to think about how the two are coinciding and wondered if there was a correlation. I will have to save those thoughts until a future column, though, after I’ve read more about the movement itself.

So back to A Christian Affirmation 2005. It stresses the importance of restoration, baptism by immersion, weekly Lord’s Supper and a cappella music as part of our heritage in Churches of Christ. Although I cannot share what the discussion group said, I will say that as the introduction to the document states, it truly was intended, at least by many of the original signers, to be a way to start a discussion about what is important to our heritage—i.e. what we should seek to keep that is valuable, at least as I read it. I was actually quite impressed with the ability of people in the discussion group to disagree charitably and to still get along okay (as much as that can be seen in an internet discussion group). This is something I have not witnessed in Churches of Christ. It goes back to my article on July 24 about certainty. If I’m right then you’re wrong and you need to be taught the right way to look at things.

Here are my musings that I hope will generate a discussion. I understand as the document affirms that we have been about trying to restore the first century church. Many of our churches have that on their buildings somewhere in the form of “established in 33 A.D.” A question that has been raised is which practices are we trying to restore? Those of Corinth? Those of the Jerusalem church? Philippi? Colossae? Crete? That is just to name a few. I have serious doubts as to whether speaking in tongues was a regular part of the worship of the Jerusalem church, but it was clearly a part of the assembly at Corinth. The Jerusalem church was primarily Jewish and spent much time at the temple, worshiping and learning from the apostles (Acts 2:42-47). Philippi was a small, Roman colony and may have only had one church, rather than multiple house churches. I could go on. We also tend to view things through the lens of “Western” Christianity. Yet Christianity spread into Syriac-speaking areas very early, and there are certain reports of it spreading into India within the first two centuries as well. Though it is not as clear, Ethiopic Christianity is early as well as Coptic Christianity. So which of these churches are we trying to restore? Although there are at least some passages that seem to speak of widely-held practices (1 Corinthians 11:16), the language is so unclear that scholars don’t really know exactly what the practice was. Was it a veil women wore when praying? Was it that they just had long hair? The key phrase in question simply means “down the head” in Greek (although that is a quite literal reading). If we don’t know what it was, how to we imitate it?

The question I am raising is not whether or not our traditional understandings are important, but it goes deeper to whether or not restoration is desirable or necessary. The New Testament does not seem to indicate that Christians should seek to all worship alike according to some preconceived order. If such were the case, we’d expect something far more detailed like Hippolytus’ Apostolic Constitutions, which were much later. Or, perhaps we’ve even misunderstood restoration entirely. Luke tends to have a “restoration of Israel” theme in Luke and Acts, but it does not result in restoring the right worship practices for Israel. It is much more about Jesus fulfilling Israel’s hope and “getting it right” in the sense of actually being a light to the Gentiles, which was supposed to be Israel’s purpose all along.

Well, it is getting late and I need to post this. I would like us to dialogue about the desirability of restoration as a whole, what it should look like, and what are the non-negotiables of the Christian faith. I’ll also write more on unity, because that is close to my heart as well.

[P.S. Sorry this is just a bunch of ramblings, but we’ve had company this weekend and I’ve had several crisis situations at work I had to resolve this weekend. I’ll write more on the Emergent Church next week.]