Life In Those Old Bones
By Ed Stetzer.
A variety of recent movements among emerging generations demonstrate the need and desire for rootedness and history. The church growth movement in the 1970s and ’80s (itself a kind of proto-denomination) perpetuated the mistaken idea that only new and novel methods were effective in reaching the next generation. In exchanging older traditions for newer methodologies, it unintentionally cut itself off from a rich legacy of faith.
A generation later, emerging leaders are yearning for a sense of rootedness. In an age of fragmented social identities, connecting with the past has become synonymous with finding purpose and meaning. We are seeing this passion in a number of current movements: the “young, restless, and Reformed,” the emerging church, and the late Robert Webber’s ancient-future movement.
The church growth movement in the 1970s and ’80s (itself a kind of proto-denomination) perpetuated the mistaken idea that only new and novel methods were effective in reaching the next generation. In exchanging older traditions for newer methodologies, it unintentionally cut itself off from a rich legacy of faith.
These are sometimes overlapping, sometimes distinct, and sometimes competing movements. But each has been informed and fueled by a resurgent yearning for historical lineage and religious heritage. Many leaders of the baby boomer generation untied their churches from tradition and charted their own courses; many of the boomers’ children have spent the last decades looking wistfully to the shore. Denominations have not done a good job of making the case, but they can provide history and legacy to a generation longing for stability.
The need to connect with our spiritual lineage and Christian heritage drives us to shine a light on how we have arrived where we are. Historian and futurist Leonard Sweet offers the metaphor of a swing. A swing’s physics depends on interdependent motions of leaning back and pressing forward.
Many leaders of the baby boomer generation untied their churches from tradition and charted their own courses; many of the boomers’ children have spent the last decades looking wistfully to the shore.
Likewise, denominations can tell inspiring stories of pioneering (leaning back) and progress (pressing forward). They can offer a rich sense of theological and ecclesiological legacy that an independent church simply cannot.
Read the full article here.
Martin
on June 29th, 2010
It is easy to yearn for shores from which those who have gone before us have departed. The generation that looks on upon the time of a previous, can easily do so without appreciating the reasons for charting the present course. Similarly for those that have not had to deal with the challenges of the time in which others had to act, they seem to find it comfortable to cherish the wisdom and righteousness of their ways as opposed to their blatant foolishness. Myself I think that people have a desire to be righteous, and often when we disparage the folly of others, we tacitly take for granted the sanctity of our. Or rather clearly they are stupid … if only they were like us… But it is difficult to see the wood for the trees.
We can attempt to chart the dangers of the course that we are on. Doing so without the lessons of the previous generation seems foolish. It is one thing to image what a path will bring it, it another to walk. In my experience God has often refined me through testing according to the territory which that course brings us into.
To measure the value of something in theory, divorced from reality brings a perverted picture of it. However we are finite beings. Different congregations may be on different courses to the same destination. As long as there are these differences, it seems that ‘denominations’ will continue. However it does seem that tacit level divisiveness that accompanies the term is fading and that an awareness of our unity in The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit is arising.