Emerging Church?

A group of believers had become fed up with what the traditional church had become. There were several problems they had with the traditional church. For one thing, the sermons were predictable as well as boring. Every week, it seemed like preachers offered up the same tired, formulaic sermons. Preachers utilized confusing outline formats, with multiple points, and tried to wax eloquent, but obtained the same old results. Even though they preached from the Bible, sometimes with very careful studies of the Greek and Hebrew, and tried to apply it, somehow it didn’t seem like people’s lives were changing all that much. It appeared that many people attended church out of a sense of duty and little else.

These believers also felt that the traditional churches had leadership structures that were authoritarian and formal. The churches were cold and sterile places where there seemed to be little appeal to the emotional side of people. There also seemed to be little place for women in ministry as well. Church leaders clung to their formal leadership structures, but at the same time appeared to be insincere about their faith journey. Where was the authenticity and transparency? These believers desired a dynamic walk with God, but the traditional church just was not meeting their needs.

To make matters worse, the traditional church spent a lot of time and energy on two tasks: first, they defended their doctrines against other churches that disagreed with them. Their theologians wrote bigger and bigger volumes of doctrine and systematic theology, to the point where every aspect of the faith was scrutinized and refined. Second, the traditional church had seminaries and universities that turned out educated ministers, trained in the traditional ways. They interpreted the Bible, preached sermons, and led their congregations in the ways in which they had been taught. It seemed that in every way, the status quo would be maintained.

One Christian man believed that things had gone on long enough. He and a group of these disgruntled Christians decided to start meeting in his home every Wednesday and Sunday. What would they do? Their ultimate goal was to come alongside each other and encourage each other in the Christian faith. This emerging church encouraged all believers—men and women alike—to live out their faith and minister to others, and to rely less on formal structures of church leadership. They met regularly in homes to pray, to discuss the previous week's sermon, and to apply passages from Scripture and devotional writings to individual lives.

This leader of the emerging church eventually wrote a book outlining the problems with the traditional church, as well as what could be done about it. In it he criticized the ministers of the traditional churches for substituting cold doctrine for warm faith. He also outlined six basic values to which he believed this emerging church should hold:

1. There should be more of an extensive use of the Bible among Christians, and that Christians should help each other in their spiritual journey.

2. That each believer is called to serve others, regardless of gender, education, background, etc. Every believer is a priest. Believers should not rely on professional ministers to do the works of ministry.

3. Christianity should go beyond mere knowledge and be demonstrated by everyday practice, in the workplace, home, school, or church.

4. There should be restraint as well as love regarding religious disputes. He felt that rather than arguing people into the Kingdom, Christians should show love toward nonbelievers and those who wish to argue, and to pray for them and be kind to them instead.

5. Theological schools should be reformed: Future ministers and church leaders should be trained not just in academics but also in how to love others in practical ways, and how to succeed in a life of Christian devotion with the help of other Christians.

6. Preachers should preach sermons that actually build up their listeners, rather than engaging in pointless and technical sermons, in which few were interested or could even understand and/or apply.

So take your best guess: What period of time in the church’s history am I describing?

Believe it or not, this is not a description of the postmodern ‘emerging church’ of today that is fed up with traditional, modernist churches and is seeking its own way. All of this took place in Germany nearly 350 years ago, in 1675. A group of Christians, led by a man named Phillipp Jakob Spener, became known as the “Pietists” because they desired to emphasize more the practicalities of Christian life and less the formal structures of theology or church order. The Pietists had a profound impact on Christianity as they tried to help and encourage each other live out the Christian life in practical ways.

Some Pietists, like August Hermann Francke, were profoundly impacted by Spener’s teaching. Spener and Francke went on to found the University of Halle in Germany in 1691, and Francke taught the students by example what Pietism could mean when put into practice. He opened up his own home for poor children, founded a world-famous orphanage, established an institute for the training of teachers, and later he helped found a publishing house, a medical clinic, and other institutions. At Halle, Francke encouraged the translation of the Bible into other languages and encouraged graduates to go into foreign missions, which they did. Other groups, like the Moravians, also sent out some of the first foreign missionaries, as they tried to put Christian faith into practice.

The Pietist movement would also have a major impact on Wesley and what would become the Methodist church. Pietists also worked among German settlers in America in the 18th and 19th centuries and had a major impact there as well as in sending out others to the mission field. Even today its influence is felt in the church as there is still the desire among many Christians not to rest until they find intimate fellowship with God himself.

(This article drew on the article by Mark A. Noll, "Pietism" in The Elwell Evangelical Dictionary).