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Of Dying Breeds and Swelling Hopes: A Mainline Emergent in the Reformed Tradition

October 10, 2008 By Troy Bronsink 12 Comments

In the first part of this article (found in Fuller Seminary’s “Theology, News and Notes” Fall 2008 issue) I explore the similarities between the Emergent Presbyterians and the character Harold Crick, played by Will Farrell in the movie Stranger than Fiction. Crick overhears his narrator describing his “imminent death” and reacts with dismay screaming out loud, “What? What? Hey! HELLOOO! What? Why? Why MY death? HELLO? Excuse me? WHEN?”. In the PC(USA) Book of Order we are reminded that the church is itself “the provisional demonstration of… the new reality revealed in Jesus Christ [which] is the new humanity…” (G-3.0200 italics added). The church is “called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ.” (G-3.0400). While I am a minister in the PC(USA) I have only come to Presbyterianism in the past 10 years. Newer to this whole thing, I tend to deal a little differently with the bad news of our imminent death. I get to be like the viewer in the film, and less like Harold Crick. I guess you could say I see it coming. But that doesn’t keep me from stretching into the life that is mine, and leaning into the script with all the more courage and passion. By the end of the film (SPOILER ALERT), Harold gets to read the script. He sees the poetry in his own ending and he is faced with the choice of leaning into that masterpiece with his very life. And this, I think, is what Mainline Emergents are doing everywhere.

I was asked by Ryan Bolger co-author of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, to write a theological reflection on the Presbyterian perspective of the oxymoron of “mainline emergence” for Fuller Seminary’s “Theology News and Notes.” I have to begin by prefacing that a similar phenomena is happening in other religions including Judaism as well as many other denominations including our ecclesiastical siblings the Disciple, the PCA, and the EPC. Perhaps discovering others in this Emergence will be more an opportunity for reconciliation and integration and less an opportunity for division amidst an already small tribe. This, at least, has been the fruit of my friendship with Emergent Village, a generative friendship of Missional leaders of all stripes, ideologies, and denominations.

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Filed Under: Events, PC(USA), Presbymergent Tagged With: Agitators, Artisans, Critics, Designers, Emergent, Mainline, Presbymergent, Reformed

Troy weighs in on Worship 2.0 discussion

July 29, 2008 By Troy Bronsink 3 Comments

This last post has started a great discussion! Thanks for “outing me”, Clay. I think that worship styles and ecclessiology ebb and flow from one another. And so it is interesting to see the conversations in worship look to define the church’s mission or seek to be defined by that mission. I wanted to keep the pot stirring and so here are a few of my thoughts on Clay’s post and the comments that have posted so far.

1.@ clay: what is church for? I think a clearer way of shaping this is to consider church as a verb- those Spirit filled moments (synchronicities, to borrow Jung) when Word and Sacrament are ordered to join and anticipate God’s purposes in creation. This is more incarnational and avoids the platonic urge to pre-design an air-tight formula.

2.@ clay: can deep shifts happen in a 1/3 of the congregation? I can;t think of a time when transformation does not originate in “practices” or “postures” that catch on. In other words, a few folks begin to “do” and “act” differently and their minds are then transformed. Until a few more join them. And then a few more. So why not start with this third and invite them to include those from the other 2/3rds to reflect with them on what is happening. The “traditional” services do not need to change their style to join this more participatory way. An imaginative Traditional Worship Leader like Tony describes is a great way for this to start.

3.@ david: what is contemporary? David, most american church goers who consume pre-fabricated worship formats see contemporary as a closed genre. It is the byproduct of CCM’s successful branding in the 80s and 90s. Try introducing the word “contemporaneous” (remember this from Greek tenses- I believe it was Aorist) and asking how does the worship style or material we use in worship come from the actual everyday world around us (you can grab You-Tube videos, newspaper clippings, popular music, folks music, movie quotes, and styles/chord progressions). We can learn from the Word of God whom/which we follow into the world (C-67) as much as from a Word of God remembered.

4.@ steve: Interesting to pair up “force feeding” and “calling.” CCM and denominational(or ecumenical) top down curriculum has created a consumptive Christian way. How do we reverse this tendency and equip worshipppers to produce, to make their own testimony? Borrowing some of Tom Wright’s pneumatology, the community is sent gifts from the Spirit almost like the Israelite sampled fruit from the promised land brought by the spies. As such, the fruits of enthronement, adoration, and lamentation are gifts from the promised eschaton for worshipers to taste and enjoy. So worship is born out of calling and not out of a top down “force feeding.”

5.@ tony: You wrote, “gatherings exist for the sake of the world.” I love it! Spot on. Somehow blending our “target audience” to include God with us, the body of Christ in which we are united, and the Christ of the Emmaus way- these are how worship looks beyond our congregations. A friend of mine says it this way: the church is not the end user of the gospel. I agree, and neither are we the end users of worship.


6. @ tony: to paraphrase you said, “our worship and everything else would be better if it were subservient to the Word.” I have found folks use this to marginalize order/art/testimony to only “illustration of the preacher’s sermon or the platonic idea presented by the Bible.” I would suggest that the Word is hidden and being revealed, and that the risk of missing is unavoidable… The Word is hidden in our past (such as Jesus’ exposition of the collective memory of the Emmaus road disciples) AND the word is also being revealed ahead of us (such as the angel instructing shepherds to go and see these things, and the voice telling peter to get up and go meet…). As such worship is discovery and not “explanation” or “illustration.” We meet God as we sing and pray. Our bodies are put into play as we kneel and raise hands and kiss one another and wash feet and ‘pray double’ through song. And as such, worship that serves the Word is less of a coersive predetermined posture and more of an open receptive posture. I might be splitting hairs here, but my purpose is to suggest that we cannot avoid the risks of stylizing or crafting or “ordering” our acts of worship by being more “Word” centered. Instead worship is to enter into that risk. Perhaps we can, however, make space for the hidden Word to be revealed in our sacramental habits. And, then, to make space for faithful-yet-risky responses of conversion.

Filed Under: Emergent, Emerging Worship, Liturgy, Open Source, PC(USA), Presbymergent, Theology, alt.worship Tagged With: church as art, troy bronsink

Better late than…

March 19, 2007 By Troy Bronsink 11 Comments

Sorry to be so late. I hesitated leaning into this site for many reasons:

The main one being time sensitivity. While serving as a validated minister inthe PC(USA) for a couple years since seminary, I recently joined my practices with a historied community of Presbyterians 30 minutes north of my neighborhood as their solo-pastor (their’s got to be a better word to get this point across). How I ended up there/here is a conversation for another time. But the responsibilities of pastoring a redevelopement-transformation congregation on top of buying our first family home (in our old neighborhood), my wife starting a small buisness (scrap booking), and organizing the mainline emergent/s event at Columbia have been about all I’ve had time for.

The secondary, underlying, reason for my being a late bloomer for Presbymergence, is the suspicion I hold for denominationally centered renewal movements. I, like many of you, have connected to the PC(USA) late in life for reasons that I can understand and ones I don’t know (how/why God and God’s new creation have conspired to bring me here, is still being discovered). Here are a few I have begun to articulate

1. because of the utility of the reformed articulation of faith practices (tangling Word, Sacrament, & Shape)

2. the polyvalence of a book of confessions (tangling many people/contexts)

3. the dialectical tension between tradition’s handing over of belief and the openness of conscience (tangling past/future with the need to act generatively now)

But I must confess I’m brutally pragmatic about these things. I’m not so sure that being tangled to some “good thing” that does not accomplish its end, is actually that “good”. At the Mainline Emergent/s thing I learned a bit more about this. We Presbyterians PC(USA)ers share many of the same blind spots and benfitted from Cooperative Baptist Fellows and Episcopalians, etc sitting next to us. I also learned that all the fruit the Mainline Emergent/s event brought, was intended for then; for that day/week/season. The future of missional communities in the way of Jesus will continue to necessitate the cross-pollination of the institutionally encrusted and naive, but cannot center on the cross-breading of the two. Emergence implies a comming anticipated newness, not a calculated hybrid. And so to preserve the generative and timely ethos of the Mainline Emergent/s event risks forming yet one more special interest group within the denomination and risks totalizing the naive or encrusted. In short, our dreams and realtionships get tangled up in helping the church, instead of edifying the church in her task to join the transformation of God’s world.

In the seven months I’ve been at Church of St. Andrew I have begun to learn the need for my colleagues here to know what will happen to “their our thing”. The existence of an established entity creates an inertia toward seeking the future of its establishment. The church, PC(USA) included, must continually give itself away to God’s creation, as Christ has for us all. I have my vows and tangles within this congregation, and the Presbyterian church. To truely serve with energy, intelegence, imagination, and love, I (and you) need more than the PC(USA), we need all of the church, and even beyond the church where the Spirit is moving and regenerating…
BUT, I’ve been reading the site and enjoy what I see. I am usually the last kid to jump in the pool or the river, but eventually I get in all the way and laugh and play. So, all that being said, I’m in. I hope that we can together seek the future of Presbyterianism God’s creation, utilizing all of creation the Reformed tradition that might be of help- and not the other way around.

peace | courage | beauty

Filed Under: Churches, Culture, Emergent, Leadership, PC(USA), Polity, Presbymergent, Theology