Submerging Church

I enjoy reading Eclectic Itchings because Matt keeps asking very good questions. His latest, on emerging being about more than just liturgical rediscovery got me thinking. In particular this line stood out,

“we need a submerging church more than an emerging church.”

Interesting thought. As an outsider and co-traveller I have often found myself asking the question “how emerging is emergent.” Without doubt the clamour for attention (book contracts, seminars, debates et al)doesn’t quite seem right to me (at times). Maybe I am wrong (hopefully I am wrong) but not an insignificant amount of attention seems to be being spent on attracting the attention of the exisiting church.

But surely the target for a missional church is not the structures of Christendom, but the spiritual yearnings of those outside those structures. Surely an emerging church that is really emerging would not feel the need to justify itself to those structures (or appeal to them for revenue streams).

I’m far from an expert on this and even further from having solid conclusions. However, I have a hunch Matt is going to continue to ask some good questions that we should be pondering. Maybe instead of looking for something that arises out of culture, we should be looking for things that bore down into culture.

[tags] Emerging Church, Submerging Church, Missional [/tags]