Energetic church – progressive church – emerging church. Whichever qualifying participle we use, we are likely to be theologically redefining the church in response to perceived or desired change. We are also using such words to describe the various ways the church expresses its life and evolves, even metamorphoses, within successive cultures.
I’m reading about 19th century revivalism – and am intrigued by the parallels between then and now. Those who generated revivalist practice and theology, and those who criticised and resisted it in the 19th Century begin to sound like Maclaren and Carson arguing about who is being faithful to the Gospel / Scripture.The same polarisations about developments within / out of Evangelicalism that arose over revivalist practices bear some similarity to the current tensions created by ’emerging church’ as it encounters more conservative expressions of Evangelicalism.
Interestingly Revivalism in the 18th and 19th centuries was seen as doctrinally suspect by many of the most influential Evangelicals, while other Evangelical leaders offered supportive Gamaliel arguments (if it’s of God it will prosper, if not it will not). Revivalists such as Finney and Moody were imaginative, innovative and provocative in their methods and approach to evangelism; and while their preaching aimed at radical and enduring conversion, they were also concerned about the subsequent church experience of converts.
Their approach was unabashedly pragmatic, often theatrical in expression, the theology focused and clarified in a Gospel presented in ultimatum terms, accompanied in some of its expressions with emotional extremes climaxing in conversion, while others encouraged hearers towards a quieter controlled experience of conversion in which religious affections and elementary theological awareness combined. But I doubt if we have any idea how radical it was in the early 19th century to hold Christian worship services in theatres, to advertise them with flyers as if they were local gigs, with ink-drawings of the main celebrities, and for preachers to perform like religious sales personnel (I avoid the gender restrictive ‘salesmen’, cos some of the finest revival preachers were women! – until revivalist congregations and denominations aspired to social respectability after which women preachers all but disappeared). (See Wolffe, 128).
Here is one religious journalist’s description, from 1836, of the energetic and progressive piety of American revivalist churches:
If churches relapse into a low state, they are not satisfied long to continue so; but they begin to enquire into the cause of this declension and the means by which it may be remedied. They entertain confidence in the success of suitable means, and are often at once sagacious in the discovery and prompt in the application of them to the condition of particular congregations. Should plans be suggested which have for their object to waken professors from a state of slumber, and arouse the unconverted from their sleep of death, objections are not urged against them because they are new; they do not restrain zeal, lest it should produce innovation; and are more afraid of incurring the guilt of lukewarmness than of being charged with the extravagance of enthusiasm. (Wolffe, page81)
Was this the 19th Century church accommodating to cultural change, on pragmatic missional grounds deliberately adjusting Christian experience and church expression to maximise connectedness with the changing life around it? Was revivalism as a movement, a 19th C equivalent to emerging church?
And before assuming this is oversimplified comparison, and unhelpful anachronism, perhaps we should try to understand, using some historical imagination, just how radical – and transient – such accommodations have tended to be. That might help us see the importance, but only the relative importance, of contemporary accomodations – such as emerging church. And maybe instead of putting participles in front of church (doing words – which do tend to put human activity in the driving seat!) we should put the adjective after – as in church militant – church triumphant – church universal. I have a feeling it’s words that way round that best remind us the church isn’t ours, nor is its future in our hands – and that the church of Christ will always be bigger than our participles!!
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