An opinion piece in USA Today by Tom Krattenmaker about the emergent church movement points out the increasing servant-ministry focus of the post-modern Christian communities spring up in and out of denominations.
“There’s a growing buzz about the emerging movement, and depending on your point of view, its robust growth and rising influence are worthy of applause, scorn, or perhaps just puzzlement. Fitting for a movement that eschews hierarchy and dogma, emergents defy simple definition. Perhaps the best one can say is that they’re new-style Christians for the postmodern age, the evangelicals of whom the late Rev. Jerry Falwell disapproved.
Postmodernity is nothing new. Philosophers will tell you we’ve been living in the postmodern age for decades. But its expression in the context of fervent Christianity, in the form of the emerging church, is a fairly recent phenomenon, only about a decade old.
Like the postmodern philosophy it embraces, the emerging church values complexity, ambiguity and decentralized authority. Emergents are quite certain about some things, nevertheless, especially Jesus and his clear instruction about the way Christians are to live out their faith — not primarily as respectable, middle-class pillars of status quo society, but as servants to the poor and to people in the margins. In the words of Gideon Tsang, a 33-year-old Texas emergent who moved himself and his family to a smaller home in a poorer part of town, ‘The path of Christ is not in upward mobility; it’s in downward.’
…The “downward mobility” […] applies as well to the church-growth strategy, or lack thereof, of emerging communities. Unlike the megachurches of mainstream evangelicalism, emerging groups do not emphasize attracting new members (although it seems to happen anyway) or constructing church buildings. Some emerging groups meet in rented auditoriums, some in people’s homes, some in pubs. There is less emphasis, too, on programming for members. In their view, the church exists not primarily to serve members but to serve the community.
Typical of the movement’s critics, [Jerry] Falwell accused the emerging church of trying to “modernize and recreate the church so as not to offend sinners.” That’s probably code for “liberal,” a shoe that would certainly fit.”
Read the full op-ed piece here.