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I started pastoring in the early 1990s when church growth principles and the seeker-sensitive movement were big. A decade later, beginning soon after 2000, the emerging church seemed to take off. We’re now beginning a new decade. What does the future hold for the Church in Canada?

According to John Neufeld, senior pastor of Willingdon Church in Burnaby, B.C., it won’t be another fad. “People are hungry for a Christianity that is real, lasting, and historic,” he says. Neufeld believes that many, especially younger people, have grown tired of a methodologically driven church-growth movement, and that the emerging church will not last because it doesn’t offer people enough certainty. “It’s the old mainline liberal movement with ripped jeans and guitars,” he says. But he’s noticing that younger people, as well as new immigrants to Canada, are hungry for a deep understanding of classic, orthodox Christianity. “My real hope is in the next generation,” he says.

For decades, Neufeld seemed out of step with the times. A friend tells me that he first heard Neufeld preach as a guest in a seeker-sensitive church. The topic? Hell. Neufeld preached on topics that many seemed to ignore, and stressed expositional preaching when others were stressing preaching geared to seekers.

Now Neufeld finds himself popular. He teaches a theology class for people in their twenties, and so many are interested he can’t fit them all. He notices them reading John Piper and Tim Keller, even centuries-old authors John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards. He’s never seen this before.

Neufeld is clear that seeker approaches are not completely dead. Some, especially baby boomers and some in the Bible belt, are still attracted to the movement. “The seeker movement played well with those who were bored with Christendom,” he says. “But it has not made inroads into the secular mainstream.” Secular communities like Burnaby are more interested in the hardcore message of Christianity rather than a watered-down version.

Neufeld finds this exciting. “We have a secular generation that is almost completely ignorant of the gospel. We live in a mission field. We can introduce them to Christ for the very first time. We’re actually proclaiming something that people have never heard, and it’s a message that’s exciting, offensive, and world-changing.”

Willingdon, the church Neufeld pastors, has started an organization called reFocus Canada, “dedicated to bringing biblical refocus to Canadian churches.” It is “is a gathering of individuals and churches who agree to stand together on a common theological foundation, to strive together side by side in developing skills and tools that will extend the impact of the Gospel, and to suffer together with those engaged in a conflict that comes for the sake of Christ.” Most members live in western Canada.

I asked Neufeld what advice he would offer to churches and pastors. Neufeld was clear that they should begin with committing to expositional preaching. “Learn how to exegete the text. Make it meaningful and relevant. Preach through books of the Bible. Reclaim the message that has been neglected. Lead people to the historic Christian faith rather than the latest fad.”

He also believes that pastors need to focus on the biblical role of elders: to teach and disciple. “I’m not throwing rocks at methodology,” he says. “We need to learn skills. But we haven’t studied 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus enough. We need to return to the biblical model of leadership rather than the CEO model of business leadership.”

Neufeld also believes that we need to focus on the large Canadian urban centers, which are predominantly secular. “Plant churches in them. Preach the Bible there.”

He also believes that we need to recover a biblical emphasis that we’ve lost: suffering. “Anyone going into pastoral ministry must see suffering as part of the package. When they realize that suffering is part of ministry, they can cooperate with grace. Do not pray for suffering to be removed.” The theme of reFocus Canada’s next conference in May is “Suffering for the Gospel.”

People are hungry for substantial ministry, and the church has an opportunity to return to its core. Neufeld finds this exciting, and he’s glad to know that he’s not alone.

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Just when I thought the discussion on the emerging church had ended, Jim Belcher comes out with the best book on the topic so far. It turns out the discussion isn’t over, and there’s still lots that can be salvaged no matter who you are.

The book is Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. It takes me back to the early days of the discussion before things got so polarized. Belcher describes the tensions that many of us felt in the early days. He is theologically conservative, and yet he was part of the early movement. He considers himself an insider and an outsider at the same time.

He’s written Deep Church for those of us caught in between, who “are unhappy with the present state of the evangelical church but are not sure where to turn for an answer.” It’s also useful for those who want to understand what the emerging church is all about, as well as for seminarians and pastors who want to sharpen how ministry is practiced in their context.

Belcher begins by telling his story. In the 1990s, he began to crave the deep fellowship he had experienced as a Ph.D. student at Georgetown, or the kind that Francis Schaeffer had developed at L’Abri in Switzerland. He started by inviting a few friends to his apartment for a weekly discussion. Within a couple of years, the group grew to a couple of hundred young adults. Belcher first thought that this group was unique within the larger church world, but he soon discovered that similar groups were starting all across the country. They weren’t satisfied with how church was presently done. Belcher began to develop friendships with other leaders including Rob Bell, now pastor of Mars Hill church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Belcher still appreciates a lot about the emerging church. He likes that people are trying to rediscover what the church should be like and how it should impact culture, and what it means to be a Christian in a changing world. He thinks the emerging church has done a good job of assessing the problems in the traditional church. But he also has qualms about some of the answers the emerging church has offered to the questions they ask.

In the main section of the book, he takes us through seven areas of discussion: truth, evangelism, gospel, worship, preaching, ecclesiology, and culture. Belcher wants both sides to understand each other, finding agreement in areas of classic orthodoxy described in the ancient creeds while allowing second-tier differences. “Learning from traditional and emerging voices,” he writes, “I believe that deep church moves beyond them to a more excellent way – mere Christianity.”

To be honest, I’ve been disenfranchised lately with the direction of the emerging church. Belcher’s book reminded me of what I used to appreciate. I’ve been wrong to be too dismissive. I needed this correction.

But if you’re worried that Belcher will be either too sympathetic or too critical, you can relax. I thought he did a good job of presenting the positions of people in the best possible light, refusing to paint caricatures or to take cheap shots. The endorsements from emerging thinkers indicates that he succeeded. But he isn’t afraid to analyze these arguments and point out where he thinks they are wrong.

It’s not a perfect book. Belcher probably errs on the side of graciousness. He may be too optimistic about the possibility of a genuine third way when things seem so polarized. I sure like that he is trying.

The real strength of the book is that it poses the key issues asked by the emerging church, questions which, after all, still need to be answered. It pushes us to a holy dissatisfaction with the weaknesses of the traditional church and shows us that we can do better. At the same time, it avoids the excesses of some who criticize the traditional church, and emphasizes the need for classic orthodoxy.

“It is my hope that Deep Church will become a platform for working out a third way in the church.” It’s a tall order – but it’s sure worth a try.

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Four challenges confront the church in Canada. These four challenges are significant and call for careful thinking. Two of these challenges have to do with the culture; two have to do with the church.

Culture presents us with two challenges.

Communicating the Message: The challenge of every age is to make the gospel intelligible to one’s culture; to speak the gospel clearly and yet without compromise.

When we present the gospel, we typically focus on sin as breaking God’s law, before describing the punishment for sin, and how Christ bore that punishment at the cross. This is a good presentation of the gospel, and I’m not ready to abandon it, but it’s not always clear to people at first. They have questions. Who are you to say what’s right and wrong? How can God be angry? How is it fair that Jesus was punished for the sin of others? Why couldn’t God just forgive? We need to understand and answer these questions if we are to make the gospel clear.

We can also think of other ways to communicate the gospel. There is one gospel, but it comes in many forms and uses many images. Scripture is full of images. Plays, movies, and fiction contain shadows of the gospel that help us explain it to others.

The gospel is always fresh. Communicating it clearly is a task for theologians and pastors, and also for songwriters, novelists, screenwriters, poets – all of us.

À la carte faith: People are open to Jesus, but often on their own terms. They’ll take a little of Jesus but not too much, and they’ll mix him with other beliefs. But Jesus is not one option among any.

This isn’t a new problem. Christianity began in a culture that tolerated almost any belief, except one that claimed ultimate allegiance. The gospel can thrive in this environment, but it means that we have to believe and proclaim that Jesus is Lord over all – and live as if we believe it.

The church faces two challenges of its own.

Moving beyond surface solutions: For two decades, many churches have focused on becoming more user-friendly and attractive. This isn’t all wrong, but it can create a consumer mindset. It also assumes that if you build a better church, people will come. But better churches have not produced the results we have hoped for. Many still aren’t coming, and slicker services have not always helped us retain even those who have grown up in church.

It’s hard to argue against better music and preaching, but we need to move beyond surface solutions. We need to reinvigorate our theology of the church, so we understand what it means to be the church, the people of God. We need a robust understanding of the gospel and how it applies to all of life. Of course, we also need the Spirit to empower us to be who he has called us to be. Better programs are not enough.

Moving beyond Sundays: Growing up, I spent hours in church activities: twice on Sundays, and at least two or three times during the week. Sometimes we spent too much time in church activities, but we did have deep relationships and we did learn the Scriptures.

For many today, church means attending a service on Sunday, and not even every Sunday. I’m not advocating a return to multiple meetings, but I am arguing that we need to think about church as more than a service. We need real fellowship. We also need catechesis – training in the basics of biblical knowledge and theology. That takes time.

These four challenges are significant. They’re going to require thoughtful reflection and action.

There are no quick fixes, but there are many reasons to hope. If we learn how to clearly communicate the gospel, and if we live as if Jesus truly is Lord over all, the world will notice. And if we understand what it means to be the people of God, and churches move beyond just services to deep fellowship and catechesis, the change will be profound.

These are the four biggest challenges we face. God is more than able to help us meet them.

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Resonate began as an online network of Canadian Christians, “a network of people seeking out Jesus Christ in a world and country that is transitioning from the modern to the postmodern era. It is a group of people who are looking at new ways of living out the faith in holistic ways.”

The most active part of Resonate has been its email list, which has connected participants across Canada in online discussions. Some participants have also organized meetings, called Greenhouses, for “for church planters and those interested in creating new forms of church.”

A couple of years ago, some participants wondered if Resonate should do more. “We’ve had this list going for three or four years,” says Len Hjalmarson, a pastor and student living in Kelowna, B.C. “We’ve had this open conversation. But there wasn’t a lot that was concrete. We began to think, what about a book?”

Participants began to talk, and Hjalmarson, along with Winnipeg writer Brent Toderash, took charge. The result is Fresh & Re:Fresh, a book that’s recently been released by Allelon Publishing. The book includes reflections from five church planters, three churches in transition, and four mentors of church planters. It also includes reflections from Hjalmarson, theologian and pastor David Fitch, Ottawa pastor Frank Emmanuel, and Alan Roxburgh from Allelon. (Full disclosure: I contributed a chapter on a church in transition.)

“We wanted to generate some learning out of church planters and churches in transition,” says Hjalmarson. “We have a good cross section of the diversity that exists in Canada.”

Hjalmarson was disappointed that they were unable to enlist a contributor from Atlantic Canada. “We found one,” he says, “but they didn’t have the time or energy.” But he is encouraged by the contributions he received, and hopes the book will accomplish its goal. “We’ve been pleased by the energy of the contributors. We want to generate some conversation.”

Alan Roxburgh writes that the essays in this book are important for the church in Canada. Our context, he explains, “is so unlike our neighbours to the south or anything the church has experienced before in North America – although it has become more and more the case in Europe.” Nevertheless, we often try to import solutions from south of the border.

“We are in a space where the call of God is to risk in experiments that are rooted in this Canadian imagination, not borrowed from leaders in the U.S. or gurus from some other part of the world. That’s why this set of essays is so important. The stories represent young leaders who find themselves in this clearing where there are few answers, embarking on experiments.”

Roxburgh appreciates that the contributors simply told their stories. “I want to resist the temptation of squeezing from them principles and themes that can then be applied across the board in other places,” he writes. “In this clearing where we find ourselves, we don’t have this option. We are all pioneers, there are no experts. What we need right now are more and more stories like the ones in this collection.”

Hjalmarson agrees. “You find both diversity and commonality in these stories,” he says. This allows the reader to reflect and discern what he or she can learn from each of the contributors. Each contributor comes from a different setting and a different denominational background, including Pentecostal, Free Methodist, Vineyard, Baptist, and Anglican.

You will probably not agree with everything in this book: the stories are diverse, and the theologies differ. You may be struck by some of the views expressed about post-Christendom ministry, especially if you are used to older models of ministry. Neither will you find a set of principles or lessons to apply. But I am grateful for Fresh and Re:Fresh, because it allows us to see what is happening in circles outside our own. It also offers opportunity for reflection and discernment. We may not need gurus as much as we need to see what God is doing around us.

Fresh and Re:Fresh is available through Amazon.com. You can find out more at the book’s website (http://fresh-refresh.com/).

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Summer is a great time to take a break from the normal grind and be refreshed. It’s also a great time for ministry leaders to reflect on the past ministry year and to prepare for the next one.

This summer I’ll be asking some questions based on John Frame’s Theology of Lordship series. Frame is known for arguing for a tri-perspectival approach: that it’s best to look at everything from three perspectives. Frame’s three perspectives are normative (God’s Word), situational (our world), and existential (ourselves). “The knowledge of God’s law, the world, and the self,” Frame writes, “are interdependent and ultimately identical.” These three perspectives give us a fuller picture and better balance.

I’ve found Frame’s three perspectives to be a useful grid for ministry evaluation and planning.

Normative: How is our commitment to God’s Word? I’m going to be looking at how we’ve used Scripture in our ministry. I’ll begin by looking at the preaching. I’ll be looking to see if I’ve been sitting over Scripture, inserting my own ideas, or sitting under Scripture in an attitude of submission. I’ll also be evaluating my balance to see what themes I’ve been missing, and what themes I’ve overemphasized.

I’ll also be examining how the rest of our ministry has used God’s Word. I’m sometimes surprised by how rarely we use Scripture apart from the preaching. Our entire ministry – our entire lives – should be shaped by Scripture. The normative perspective asks how much we’re shaped by Scripture and the gospel.

Situational: How is our understanding of our context? Some leaders think that it’s enough to exegete Scripture. But we also need to understand our context so that we can apply Scripture to our world.

Yonge Street Mission in Toronto recently presented research on how Toronto has changed. In 1970, most communities were middle-income. Today the city is largely polarized between high-income and low-income communities in 2005,. Many of Toronto’s churches were around in 1970. Unless these churches understand how their communities have changed, they will not minister effectively in their context.

I had lunch just the other day with someone who calls himself a youth culture specialist. I was overwhelmed as he described how drastically youth culture has changed since I was a teenager. Most pastors and parents, he said, don’t have a clue.

Every ministry needs to understand its context. This summer I’ll be looking at our local community and our cultural context and asking some tough questions. Are we attempting to serve a community that exists only in our minds? What do we need to know about our context that we may be missing now? What are the greatest needs of our local community and culture? How does the gospel apply to those needs? The situational perspective asks if we understand the world around us.

Existential: How well do we understand people? We need to understand Scripture and culture; we also need to understand people’s hearts. They used to call the Puritans “physicians of souls” because they had uncanny insight into how people think and why they are motivated to do what they do – the motivational structures of the heart. I need to understand what drives people to do bad things, or to do good things for all the wrong reasons. I need to know what good things have become ultimate things in my own life and the lives of those around me. And I need to understand how the gospel intersects with the spiritual disorders I find around me. The existential perspective asks how well we understand people.

This helps me not to panic too much when the situational perspective gets overwhelming. I need to understand culture, but I also need to remember that people are more alike than it appears.

Most leaders and churches have blind spots, and are weak in at least one of these areas. As a result, ministries struggle. But it’s beautiful to see ministry that’s been shaped by all three perspectives. Effective ministry takes place as we understand and apply God’s Word within a particular context to the needs of real people.

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The Gospel Coalition started as a friendship between theologian Don Carson and pastor Tim Keller. The friendship expanded to a group of pastors and churches from the Reformed heritage. Two years ago the Coalition went public with its foundation documents, which argue for historic beliefs and practices combined with social engagement and the integration of faith to all of life. The Coalition outlines a desire for ministry that is theological, gospel-centered and culturally engaged. They argue that this type of ministry is rare.

In April, the Coalition held a conference in Chicago. Some 3,400 people attended, including many Canadians. One of my friends observed that a similar conference 10 years ago might have attracted a couple of hundred older people. In contrast, this crowd was full of young adults. Carson estimated that 80 percent were under 40. They are, in the words of Collin Hansen, young, restless, and reformed—part of a growing trend of younger Christians who eschew church growth strategies and the modern reinvention of church and long for tradition, theology and transcendence.

A conference is just a conference, but the Coalition aims to become more. They aim to become a grassroots movement in which the best ideas don’t come from the leaders of the organization, but from the networks that develop outside of the conference. To help make this happen, they have launched an online social network on a site called The City.

The Coalition is modeling its approach on John Wesley’s organizational strategy in organizing bands and classes, which helped contribute to the Evangelical Awakening. Already, groups have started in the network for Canada, as well as for regional areas such as Ontario and Toronto. The Coalition hopes that the online connections will lead to local chapters for carrying on the work of the Coalition at the local level.

The Coalition borrowed this idea not only from Wesley, but from a recent book called Groundswell, which describes how social media spreads ideas and builds consensus in a way that can’t be controlled top-down. The Coalition hopes to find the right balance of top-down vision and grassroots momentum. They are also trying to stay sensitive to issues of American hegemony, so that they are not perceived as importing American solutions internationally.

Three of the Coalition’s council members are Canadian: John Mahaffey of West Highland Baptist Church in Hamilton, Ontario; John Neufeld of Willingdon Church, Burnaby, B.C; and David Short of St. John’s Shaughnessy, Vancouver, B.C.

What should we think of the Coalition and its plans?

It’s hard not to be encouraged by the number of younger people who are interested in ministry that is biblically faithful and culturally engaged. I have a quote from John Stott hanging over my desk: “I pray earnestly that God will raise up today a new generation of Christian apologists or Christian communicators, who will combine an absolute loyalty to the biblical gospel and an unwavering confidence in the power of the Spirit with a deep and sensitive understanding of the contemporary alternatives to the gospel; who will relate the one to the other with freshness, authority, and relevance; and who will use their minds to reach other minds for Christ.”

It seems that God is answering that prayer.

I’m also excited by the possibility of local networks starting in Canada. Some 20 people have joined the Toronto group in the first week. That’s not many yet, but it can lead to some important connections between groups that don’t normally meet. If this leads to a genuine movement in a place like Toronto, I will be very glad.

The Coalition faces its challenges. It is very difficult to hit the sweet spot between top-down control and grassroots momentum, and they will likely make mistakes. They are also putting a lot of hope in the online social network. It’s still too early to tell if that network will develop the momentum needed to sustain a movement across a number of different countries and areas.

I am encouraged, though, that someone is trying. I may be seeing the start of a biblically faithful, culturally engaged movement of young leaders. That gives me hope, and makes me want more.

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For a long time, I kept looking to new thinkers to teach me how to minister effectively in a post-Christian culture. New thinkers have their place, but I’ve also been learning from those who aren’t new. Some have been dead for centuries; others, like Jack Miller, have only been gone for just over a decade. But they, being dead, yet speak.

I forget who told be about Miller, but I bought this book The Heart of a Servant Leader just over a year ago. It’s a collection of letters he wrote on various topics: ministry, suffering, forgiveness, temptation, and spiritual warfare. The first time I read it, I marked almost every page. I keep returning to this book, reading a page or two, letting it sink in. It’s one of those books I can see reading dozens of times.

Miller was pastor of a small church in Pennsylvania, and taught practical theology at Westminster Seminary near Philadelphia. In the spring of 1970, after twenty years of vocational ministry, he was depressed and burned out. Neither the church members nor the seminary students were changing like he thought they should, and he didn’t know how to help them. he resigned from both positions and spent the next few weeks “too depressed to do anything except cry.”

Gradually, Miller began to realize that his motivation for ministry had been wrong. Instead of being motivated solely by God’s glory, he had been looking for personal glory and approval from those he served. He repented of his pride and his love of approval from people, and his joy in ministry returned. He too back his resignations from the church and the seminary. He realized that he had been relying on the wrong person to do ministry – himself. He began to rely a lot more on God’s vast promises and the Holy Spirit’s power.

This marked a turning point in his ministry. Miller helped found a new church and mission, and found himself and those around him renewed. But he never forgot how far he had drifted, and how it had affected him and his ministry.

There are some lessons you can only learn from someone who has been crushed in ministry. It’s especially valuable to learn from such a person who has found life on the other side of despair. There’s a depth in his letters you won’t find from someone who hasn’t been humbled. You get the sense that Miller has found the essence of something important, and can speak to those of us in ministry who need to be renewed in the middle of overwhelming needs and endlessly changing demands.

When I feel the need to validate myself through ministry, I need to be reminded: “You don’t have anything to prove to us or the world. The work is finished at Calvary, and that work has unlimited meaning and value. Keep your focus there.”

When I get too focused on activity and technique, Miller pulls me back to what matters most: “the old, old story of getting the gospel clear in your hearts and minds, making it clear to others, and doing it with only one motive – the glory of Christ.”

When I start to think too highly of myself, Miller brings me back down to earth. “A pastor really needs to be broken before God every day, or he will break up the church of God with his willfulness or let it slip into spiritual death through his sloth.” Elsewhere: “Frequently humble yourself…Let the team see you as the chief repenter.”

And so on, on issues of prayer, busyness, leadership, change, conflict, and suffering. The book includes letters he wrote to all kinds of people: new missionaries, a discouraged pastor, sick friends, and to people embroiled in conflict. Miller is brutally honest, even as he confronts his own weaknesses, and as he struggles with cancer. To borrow a phrase from Miller, this book is full of “the basics brought home with love, tenderness, and clarity.”

The Heart of a Servant Leader is not a how-to book, and it’s not specifically about ministry in post-Christian Canada. But no other book has prepared me for ministry in our context like this one.

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When I started pastoring almost twenty years ago, I put a lot of energy into making church better. My first church was small and homespun. I tried dressing it up, but it never worked. It reminded me of a family trying to behave for guests. You can tell something’s not right, and Uncle Ernie always manages to embarrass the family anyway.

I remember flying back from a megachurch after a conference. I was overwhelmed, and I returned to my little church with dreams and frustrations. It was hard to make connections between a church with a staff of hundreds and what happens in a little church with a few dozen people.

We eventually learned to be ourselves, but I then moved to a new church with more polish. This time I thought we had a chance to do church better. It didn’t work. Within a few years I realized that we were more like my first church than we were the megachurch at the conference. We were slightly more polished, which only meant we could pretend not to be homespun a little longer.

Around this time, I noticed others giving up on trying to do church better. Better music, parking, and programs are bad, but it was becoming clear that they’re not panaceas. Some in the church began to work through Reggie McNeal’s book The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. “You can build the perfect church, McNeal wrote, “and they still won’t come.”

To my surprise, people from my church agreed with McNeal. Doing church better is not the answer. We weren’t alone in this discovery. McNeal says that people used to ask him why he wrote the book. Then they started saying, “This is how I feel; I just didn’t know how to say it.” Now they ask, “How can we do this?”

That became our question: how can we do this? If we give up on merely doing church better, what do we do now? We didn’t want to become ingrown. We were looking for answers.

It took some time, but almost accidentally, perhaps out of desperation, we stopped focusing on our church so much. C.S. Lewis said that humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it’s thinking about ourselves less. If that’s true, maybe we’re beginning (I stress beginning) to learn humility. We’ve begun to get some perspective on our role, even though we still need frequent reminders.

Anglican bishop N.T. Wright talks about showing up early for an appointment with the head of an organization. He had met her once before, but he wasn’t sure he would remember what she looked like. A porter met him at the front door, and handed him to an assistant. The assistant took him up two grand flights of stairs and through an imposing door. There he met a well-dressed woman who walked up to him with a smile and outstretched hand. She wasn’t exactly what he remembered, but she looked familiar. He shook her hand and said, “How very good to see you again.” She looked surprised, walked across the room to an inner door, lightly tapped on it, and opened the door. There, in the middle of the room, was the woman he had some to see. Wright had mistaken a personal assistant for the head of an organization.

This is the problem with some of our approaches to church. We think we’re the main attraction. In reality, we’re like office staff. We’re porters and assistants, nothing more. We take people by the hand and introduce them to Jesus. We don’t keep people in the outer office to talk about ourselves. If we did that, we would be disloyal, and we’d be missing the point.

Reflecting on what happened, Wright says, “Our job is to make Jesus known, and then to keep out of the way, to make sure we don’t get in the light.” Maybe that’s what Paul meant when he said he didn’t preach himself, but Jesus as Lord. Our message isn’t what’s good about our church; our message is what is supreme about Jesus. And then our job is to get out of the way.

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Once in a while I look at the title of this column (“Emerging Issues”) and feel guilty. I don’t always write about the emerging church, even though I try to stay close to the assignment Doug Koop gave me three years ago. “What are some of the key issues challenging effective and appropriate Christian witness in Canada today and down the road a bit?” he asked. ” How can we respond most faithfully and constructively?”

It’s probably time to take a look at how the shape of this discussion has changed in the past three years.

Dan Kimball, who wrote the book The Emerging Church in 2003, now writes, “I can’t defend or even explain theologically what is now known broadly as ‘the emerging church’ anymore, because it has developed into so many significantly different theological strands. Some I strongly would disagree with.”

He’s not alone. The emerging church is in increasingly slippery term, and the movement has gone in several different directions. Emergent, an American organization, first centralized, and is now decentralizing. Some used to call themselves emerging, but now distance themselves from the theology of others in the movement. Even proponents of the emerging church have given up using the term. It’s hard to even know what the term “emerging church” means anymore.

Emerging issues have gone mainstream

The early issues raised by the emerging church are now being discussed within the church as a whole.

A conservative denomination is planning a conference this year on what it means to be missional. A pastor of a large church is wrestling with what it means to be small and organic, rather than just large and institutional. Evangelical churches are discussing the importance of social action, and how to effectively minister in a post-Christian society. These are no longer emerging issues; they are issues for all of us now.

This is significant. Even if you reject the beliefs of the emerging church, there is no question that they have caused the church as a whole to rethink how to live effectively in our changing culture.

Traditional churches are supposed to be dying, and younger people are supposed to reject the old. But, surprisingly, the traditional church seems to be doing just fine. A recent study by Professor Bruce Guenther of ACTS found that attendance at evangelical churches has actually grown by 50% in two decades. Mainline churches, as well as Catholic churches in Quebec, are in decline and skew the numbers, but evangelical churches aren’t doing as badly as many seem to think.

Journalist Colin Hansen writes, “While the Emergent ‘conversation’ gets a lot of press for its appeal to the young, the new Reformed movement may be a larger and more pervasive phenomenon.” New churches are launching with an emphasis on reaching younger people with solid, orthodox theology. Conservative conferences like Together for the Gospel attract mostly younger crowds. I keep bumping into people who love the writings of John Piper or the sermons of Mark Driscoll or James MacDonald. While some embrace authors like Shane Claiborne and Rob Bell, just as many embrace authors who are anything but emerging.

The emerging church has raised important questions about effective ministry in a changing culture, but that not everyone is satisfied with the answers they offer. We can thank them, however, for their concern for social justice and orthopraxy (right action), and for raising the questions.

Traditional, orthodox theology and ministry is just as relevant in a post-Christian culture as it has ever been. The most effective ministries I know have not changed their theology, but instead are rethinking how to let that theology shape their ministry in a world that has drastically changed. Michael Wittmer writes, “To remain faithful to the gospel we must regularly update our understanding of it.”

We should be encouraged. The challenges are significant, but God has shown himself more than equal to them. He has not abandoned his people. He is still on the move no matter how bad things sometimes seem to be.

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Tim Keller is pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, and author of the recently published book The Prodigal God. I recently interviewed Keller about effective ministry in a changing culture. Here’s the second part of the interview, continued from the October 15 issue of Christian Week. (You can read part one here.)

Some seem to have risen to the challenge of effective ministry in a changing culture. Who can we learn from?

I am actually a bit reluctant to lift anyone up high as a shining example—including Redeemer Presbyterian. Let me put it like this: John Stott at All Souls Church in London pioneered a new kind of church that united vigorous gospel evangelism, concern for the needs of the neighborhood and the city, discipling people to integrate their faith and their secular vocation, a high regard for the arts and a high regard for expository preaching. This is a very remarkable balance. Most churches tend to major in just one or at most two of these—either evangelism/church growth or social justice issues or arts and culture or sound doctrine and exposition, and so on.

All Souls and other traditional “city-centre” churches (like Tenth Presbyterian in Philadelphia) in the last generation found ways of balancing these ministries and keeping them inter-dependent and inter-related.

Today, I see a whole lot of younger ministers, especially in cities, starting churches that aren’t marked by the “venerable” cultural conservatism that often went with older downtown “cathedrals,” and yet are still solidly biblical and keep this same broad range and balance. This is a great trend. Richard Lovelace in his Dynamics of Spiritual Life said the mark of a revived church was this same breadth and balance.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the challenges that the North American Church is facing. What keeps you encouraged?

Prayer. Meeting God in prayer. Sorry to sound so trite. Prayer and meditation brings joy. God is on His throne—everything’s going to be fine in the end. The new heavens and new Earth are coming in which “everything sad is going to come untrue.” Don’t get too bent out of shape because your church didn’t grow this year.

How do we change in order to contextualize without changing the gospel?

That is the practical question in ministry. If you under-contextualize your ministry and message, no one’s life will be changed because they’ll be too confused about what you are saying. But if you over-contextualize your ministry and your message, no one’s life will be changed because you won’t really be confronting them and calling them to make deep change.

If this scares you and you say, “Well then let’s not even try it,” then you have to remember something: to over-contextualize to a new generation means you can make an idol out of their culture, but to under-contextualize to a new generation means you can make an idol out of the culture you come from. So there’s no avoiding it.

There’s far more to say about this subject, but I’ll just give you one bit of advice. The gospel is the key. If you don’t have a deep grasp on the gospel of grace, you will either over-contextualize because you want so desperately to be liked and popular, or you will under-contextualize because you are self-righteous and proud and so sure you are right about everything. The gospel makes you humble enough to listen and adapt to non-believers, but confident and happy enough that you don’t need their approval.

Please tell us about why you’ve written The Prodigal God, and if you have more books planned after that.

Probably the single sermon in which (I feel) I get the gospel across most clearly is the sermon I have preached several times over the years on the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. So I decided to turn it into a short book.

I chose the name The Prodigal God for the book. For years I’ve publicly prayed to God “thank you for your prodigal grace” and I’ve heard other people pray that way too. Most folks know that “prodigality” and “prodigious” mean abundant and generous. It can also mean recklessly and irresponsibly extravagant. Spurgeon once preached a sermon titled “Prodigal Love for the Prodigal Son.”

I have noticed in the past few years that the negative aspect of the word’s lexical range seems to be getting more dominant. That is, more and more people think of the term as meaning only “wayward.” So I was trying to do a little philological rescue and recovery project! And the title helps people realize the only way God can deal with our sin is through a kind of grace that appears irresponsibly extravagant to Pharisaical “elder brothers.”

Yes, I’m working on another book now on what the Bible says about “doing justice.”