The Process of Reimagining Christianity



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The Process of Reimagining Christianity

Roger Oakland  –
October 19, 2009   

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Perhaps we as Christians today are not only to consider
what it means to be a 21st century church, but also and
perhaps more importantly–what it means to have a 21st
century faith.1–Doug Pagitt

Emergent church
leaders often provide testimonies explaining how they became
involved in their journey to reinvent Christianity. In his
book Church Re-Imagined, Doug Pagitt tells how and why his
church originated:

“Our attempt at
being a church began in January 2000 in a small
second-floor loft space in a hip little neighborhood of
Minneapolis called Linden Hills. The church was actually
birthed much earlier, from conversations between a few
friends who shared a desire to be part of a community of
faith that not only had a new way of functioning but
also generated a different outcome. At that point I had
said, on more than one occasion, that I didn’t think I
would be able to stay Christian in any useful sense over
the next 50 years if I continued with the expression of
Christianity I was currently living–pretty
disconcerting stuff for a pastor.”2

Pagitt explains why he
felt he needed to find a new expression of Christianity that
was different from what he had been accustomed to
previously. He states:

“This was not a
crisis of faith in the typical sense; I never doubted
God, Jesus, or the Christian faith. And yet I had a deep
sense, which has actually grown deeper since, that I
needed to move into a Christianity that somehow fit
better with the world I lived in, not an expression
reconstituted from another time.”3

Pagitt goes into more
depth on how he views fitting “better with the world” he
lives in:

“We also
understand ourselves as part of a global community. We
are required to live our local expressions of
Christianity in harmony with those around the world. The
beliefs and practices of our Western church must never
override or negate the equally valid and righteous
expressions of faith lived by Christians around the
world. It is essential that we recognize our own
cultural version of Christianity and make ourselves open
to the work of God’s hand in the global community of
faith.”4

Notice the emphasis on
a “global community of faith” that permits all “expressions
of faith” by anyone and everyone who claims to be Christian.
As we are going to see, Pagitt bases his ideas of changing
the profile of Christianity on an ecumenical view that
permits beliefs and experiences not found in the Bible. Not
only are they not found in the Bible, the plan can’t work
with an intact Bible. In order for the emerging church to
succeed, the Bible has to be looked at through entirely
different glasses, and Christianity needs to be open to a
new type of faith.
Brian
McLaren calls this new faith a “generous orthodoxy.”5

While such an
orthodoxy allows a smorgasbord of ideas to be proclaimed in
the name of Christ, many of these ideas are actually
forbidden and rejected by Scripture.

Pagitt believes that he is part of a cutting-edge response
to the new postmodern world. It’s a response he and others
see as completely unique, never having been tried before in
the history of man. Pagitt states:

“It seems to me
that our post-industrial times require us to ask new
questions–questions that people 100 years ago would
have never thought of asking. Could it be that our
answers will move us to re-imagine the way of
Christianity in our world? Perhaps we as Christians
today are not only to consider what it means to be a
21st century church, but also and perhaps more
importantly–what it means to have a 21st century
faith.”6

Many people I meet at
conferences who come from a wide variety of church
backgrounds tell me the church they have been attending for
years has radically changed. Their pastor no longer teaches
the Bible. Instead, the Sunday morning service is a skit or
a series of stories. The Bible seems to have become the
forbidden book. While there are pastors who do still teach
the Bible, they are becoming the exception rather than the
rule.

Emergent leaders often say the message remains the same, but
our methods must change if we are going to be relevant to
our generation. The measure of success for many pastors
today is how many are coming, rather than how many are
listening and obeying what God has said in His Word. Let’s
consider how Doug Pagitt uses the Bible in his own church.
He states:

“At Solomon’s
Porch, sermons are not primarily about my extracting
truth from the Bible to apply to people’s lives. In many
ways the sermon is less a lecture or motivational speech
than it is an act of poetry — of putting words
around people’s experiences to allow them to find deeper
connection in their lives… So our sermons are not
lessons that precisely define belief so much as they are
stories that welcome our hopes and ideas and
participation.”7

What Pagitt is
describing is a contextual theology; that is, don’t use
the Bible as a means of theology or measuring rod of
truth and standards by which to live; and rather than
have the Bible mold the Christian’s life, let the
Christian’s life mold the Bible. That’s what Pagitt
calls “putting words around people’s experiences.” As this
idea is developed, emerging proponents have to move away
from Bible teachings and draw into a dialectic approach.
That way, instead of just one person preaching truth or
teaching biblical doctrine, everyone can have a say and thus
come to a consensus of what the Bible might be saying.
Pagitt explains:

“To move beyond
this passive approach to faith, we’ve tried to create a
community that’s more like a potluck: people eat and
they also bring something for others. Our belief is
built when all of us engage our hopes, dreams, ideas and
understandings with the story of God as it unfolds
through history and through us.”8

(This is from chapter
3,

Faith Undone. To read the entire chapter, including a
section on contextualizing the Gospel, click
here.

Notes:
1. Doug Pagitt, Church Re-Imagined (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2005), pp. 17, 19.
2. Ibid., p. 41.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 27, 29.
5. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2004).
6. Pagitt, Church Re-Imagined, op. cit., pp. 17, 19.
7. Ibid., p. 166.
8. Doug Pagitt, Church ReImagined, op. cit., p. 167.




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