The Great Emergence or Clearing out the Attic

from my sermon on Oct. 30, 2011, from I Thes. 2:9-13

Tomorrow is .....Halloween. For us in the church it is All Hallow's Eve, the day before All Saints's Day. For much of the culture it is a day about ghosts, goblins, and witches. It is a scary day. Can I tell you something even scarier than Halloween? The Church is being transformed. Can I tell you something even more exciting? The Church is being transformed.

Today is Reformation Sunday. When I told the worship team that I was thinking about preaching on the Great Reformation, they said....yawn...boring... wake me up when you are finished. But stick with me just a minute. About 500 years ago, on October 31, 1517, on Halloween, a priest in the Roman Catholic Church named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses on the door of the church in Witttenburg, Germany. It is easy to mark the Great Reformation to that exact date. However, a process had been going on for some time before including: Gutenburg's invention of the printing press in 1440 that made the Bible available to the masses in their native languages, Columbus who sailed the ocean blue in 1492 thereby reshaping all of the maps of the world, and Copernicus who in 1514 proved that the earth revolved around the sun no longer making the Earth the center of the universe.

I read a book recently entitled the Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle who says "about every 500 years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale." In order for God to do God's new thing some old things have to be cleared out of the way.

Stay with me. Five hundred years before the Great Reformation was the Great Schism. In 1054, the Greek/Eastern Church based in Constantinople split from the Roman/Western Church based in Rome. They fought over such things as leavened bread versus unleavened bread and whether the Spirit come from the Father only or from the Father and the Son.

Five hundred years before that was a pope named Gregory the Great who gave rise to the monastic movement. After the fall of Rome and the beginning of the dark ages, culture, scholarship, worship, Bible study, literacy, etc., was carried on through the monastaries.

Five hundred years before that was the birth of Jesus the Christ. We Christians say that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Phyllis Tickle says that today, 500 years after the Great Reformation, we are in the midst of the Great Emergence. Let me illustrate. I have a niece named Beth. She grew up in a strong UM family. Both of her parents are active in their local church in Abilene. Her grandfather was a UM pastor, even serving as an assistant to the Bishop in the North Texas Conference. I performed Beth's marriage to Alex. They are not a part of any denomination or any local congregation. They are however, very active in a home church. Wherever they have lived, they have started a worshiping fellowship in their apartment complex or block. They read the Bible, pray, sing, look out for one another. When one is sick, they take care of the kids. They bring meals. They play together. It sounds a lot like the first century of Christianity. They have plenty of problems, issues, and conflicts in their house church just like the institutional church, but they continue to follow Jesus in their own way.

A second example is from United Methodist Youth Fellowship, which meets on Sunday evenings. The whole time I have been here this program has struggled. It seems like the youth around here are over-committed, tired, wanting to rest or do homework on Sunday evening. However, the Bible studies are thriving. Monday night the Sr. Hi's meet in people's homes. Wednesday night the Middle Schoolers meet at Starbuck's. On Thursday morning, the Sr Hi's meet before school at Tx Honey Baked Ham. It seems like the youth want to meet Jesus in the Bible. The mission trips thrive. In the summer, there are trips to North Carolina or to the Tx coast or around Austin. The youth have gone to Central America and to Uganda. It seems like they want to meet Jesus in the touching of other people in service.

A third illustration is from something I have called "Rethink Church." Each of the last 2 years I have called off morning worship, and we have gone out to "be" the church in the world. Some of you have asked if we could do this every Sunday. And the answer is "yes." In fact, the new movement within this congregation called the "Point" is doing exactly that. Each week this group gathers to worship and scatters to serve. The start of each worship service involves some mission outreach: making flood buckets, or fire relief kits, or bags of grace to hand to those who live on the street.

Let me tell how I feel about this Great Emergence. I don't like it. It is messy. It is challenging. It is hard. And I love it. Look at this stack of books. Don't they make a lovely flower arrangement!? Here is some of what I am reading: Recreating the Church, Journey in the Wilderness, Direct Hit, Shaped by God's Heart, Simple Church, the Externally Focused Church, Communicating for a Change, Unbinding the Gospel, Leadership without Easy Answers. Are you geting this? A Great Emergence is happening. It is messy like cleaning out the inside of that pumpkin for Halloween in order to make room for the light inside. It is happening with us and sometimes in spite of us. You know our typical UM way of doing things? Let form a committee to study this and report back in 4 years! This is much messier and challenging. I don't like and I love it. The native Americans have a phrase for it: stumbling is moving ahead faster! That's what I am doing, stumbling forward.

I have 3 pieces of good news from the Great Emergence. Phyllis Tickle says: 1. a new, more vital form of Christianity does emerge, 2. the organized expression of Christianity is reconstituted into a more pure and less bound expression of its former self, 3. the faith has spread dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas. When the attic gets cleaned out, the Spirit has room to revitalize the Church.

I could have come up with a lot of scripture tie-ins, but I am glad to find this line in this morning's reading, I Thes. 2:12, " urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory." Get the emphasis, God's own kingdom and glory. We have a role to play, but God is doing this sometimes in spite of us.

What does this look like? This past Tuesday, we had a Bd of Ordained Ministry meeting. We had so much to do that we spent 2 hours in prayer, listening, discerning, and worshiping. We asked more questions than we came to answers. We committed to fasting. God is doing something new in our midst.

Our worship leader was John Elford, now the pastor at University UMC here in Austin. I knew John down on the coast where I was at Portland and he was at St. John's in Corpus Christi. He told us about a time there when a young man came to him and said, "Say pastor, me and my band were wondering if we could practice at the church. It's Christian music." John wanting to be encouraging said, "Sure, just don't play between noon and 2 p.m. because that's when the preschool kids have their nap time." The band respected the time limits. They were given a key to a room, and they practiced. John said, "they were loud." After some time, the young man came to John, "Say, pastor, we would like to have a worship service for some other young people. Would that be OK?" John wanting to be encouraging said, "Sure." He worked with them. At the worship service, he came prepared, wearing ear plugs. The music was loud. Not just heavy metal, but shredding metal. During one song he leaned over to his wife Linda and asked, "What do you think about this?" She replied, "What? What did you say?"

John said, "contrast that with what we do." (I put a cloth over my arm). Hello, my name is Lynn and I will be your server today. Would you care for a spot of worship? We have our traditional fare at 11:15. If you like something a bit edgier, you might like to try our 9 contemporary service.

Back at the shred metal service, the young ones were engaged with their whole being. They were dancing, shouting, head banging, sweating, singing, laughing. It reminds of the first great commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength. They were living it. They were totally involved with worshiping God.

The good news is that there is a Great Emergence happening in our midst.