Yesterday I shared a bit about the conflicting developments in the Dutch society, today I will introduce the missional/emerging churchplanting context. This post will be mainly about the churchplantingcontext (I ignore the church revitalisation for the moment) I will give my own reading of it and spend some thoughts on its engagement with continental philosophy as a requirement for the future.
The missional/emerging context is as diverse as the Dutch society. Some community builders create safe places for existential doubt while others preach a straightforward message of grace by Jesus. Some intend te build big attractional churches while others work towards local networks of organic churches. Some know very well the meaning of Gods message of salvation and others keep wondering what the good news means for their specific context. Some buy buildings while others build virtual communities. Theologicaly almost every preference is present; baptist, reformed, (very)charismatic, pentacostal, evangelical and liberal.
The missional/emerging context in the Netherlands is small, just a few hunderd people are involved in any form of churchplanting or community formation, it is quite possible to know all leaders personally. This missional/emerging context is just a fraction of the christian subculture with its own dreams, dialoque and dynamics on missionality. The missional/emerging context is not only small it is also rhizomic, since Carl Raschke gave a seminar earlier this year we have a fancy word for something that just happend. It just happend probably because there are bothe very few of us and we are all very diverse and because of Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad and Twitter.
There is a theme that unites all things missional and emerging in the Netherlands: The focus on both Jesus and the Kingdom of God. This theme is like the centered set of all churchplanting in NL. The focus on the Kingdom of God is fairly strong, for a growing number of projects the term “churchplanting” is not relevant anymore. Much better is “ building communities of the Kingdom”. Although orthodox evangelical churchplanters give Jesus a very different meaning than their more liberal counterparts, they still unite in a desire ‘to be as He was/is´. Conversations on Jesus and the Kingdom are not easy in this setting yet they are highly productive.
Only recently Dutch missional/emerging stories were written down and published. So far all we could read were the usual suspects from the Englisch speaking world. During the last twelve months two handbooks on churchplanting were published (one practical and one more academic), two pioniers wrote down their own story and learning process. Together with Martijn Vellekoop I wrote down five different pioniering stories together with some theological thoughts that are not afraid of postmodernism and acknowledge the marginalisation of the church. These books are crucial to tell encouraging stories beyond the limits of blogophere.
The Dutch missional/emerging context is overall not very innovative. Last year Martijn Vellekoop wrote his MA thesis on churchplanting in the Netherlands. He found around 150 churchplants since the turn of the century and estimated that the real number would be at least twice as much. He also found that few churchplants were rural and most were located in the biblebelt with limited or no contextual awareness. If there was a contextual awareness is was most clear in the churchplants with a reformed theological background.
The missional/emerging context in NL has, I believe, just one real foe; A beast that hides in all of us: The christian subculture. It haunts us in several way’s. The obvious way is via (financial)support. Many projects are not sustainable, for the long run they need financial support (this is one of the problems of limited innovation in churchplanting) by more conservative organisations and churches. The less visible but more important way the christian subculture haunts us is within ourselves: Most churchplanting pioneers come out of a very subcultural conservative evangelical context and constantly have to (un)learn and recontextualise in their new context. Churchplanting is being a ‘overseas’ missionary in your own backyard. Part of the diversity in churchplanting I mentioned earlier is because people differ in their dealing with this re-contextualisation (the other part is the diversity in local contexts that each require their own reading). The majority of churchplanters is only partialy aware of this and resort to the “change the format but not the message” approach.
For the last two years or so, their has been a debate in the press on how to read the “return of the religious”, these last weeks opinionpages are filled on how to read the rise of the new xenofobic attitudes and the high precentage of christians supporting Geert Wilders. So far the debate has not been very productive for missionality. I feel this is partialy because most Dutch evangelical christians do have a rather simplistic reading of ‘the times’ where all things postmodern are kept at save distance instead of engaged. This engagement that may not always be easy but it will push the conversation “off the charts”: beyond the (orthodox/liberal) confinements of christian subculture into new religious territory. Today’s missional/emerging community may actually be a good starting point for such a journey of engagement: It’s small and based on personal IRL relationships. It is diverse yet has a strong spirit of cooperation. It has a, often forgotten, robust theological an philosophical history that both needs and allows for a postmodern turn for the Kingdom.
the emerging/missional movement in the Netherlands is still a small movement, but as far as i can see, rapidly expanding. that is a blessing and a challenge at the same time.
my personal desire is that there will be more projects and groups that try to really live out a post-church way of being christian, instead of just some more conversation and discussion inside the church-walls (which is in itself a good thing, of course)...
Posted by: relirel | June 17, 2009 at 03:01 AM