The Sky is Falling?!?I just started reading The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey. I mentioned that book about a year ago just before it came out and am finally getting around to reading it. And I gotta say, it’s giving me some great ideas for the soon-to-come redesign of Northminster’s website.

But before I get into that I wanted to share some thoughts on The Sky is Falling!?! by Alan Roxburgh, which I just finished reading a few days ago. There are two things I really liked about this book: 1) his emphasis on the need for “Emergents” and “Liminals” to come together to discover God’s future for the church and 2) his proposed leadership typology for the transition that our culture is in.

I’ll talk about the first one in this post and the second in a soon-to-come post.

One of Roxburgh’s primary emphases in The Sky is Falling!?! focuses on the need for what he calls different tribes of Christians to come together. He argues that there are basically two kinds of Christian leaders today who are trying to cope with the massive changes that our culture is undergoing.

The first tribe is what he calls the “Emergents.” Emergents tend to be younger (Generation X and Millenial) and are comfortable with change because they’ve grown up in a world of change. Their response to the culture is to throw off all forms of what church has been and do something completely new. They may lead house churches, organic gatherings that meet at coffee shops and pubs, focus their Christian life around living in intentional community, and so forth.

The second tribe is known as the “Liminals” (for an anthropological explanation of this word, click here; Roxburgh suggests that the church is in a liminal phase at this time). Liminals are those who work and serve in traditional churches (by traditional, I mean any church that revolves around meeting in a building on Sunday morning—they could be traditional or contemporary in style; they could be 100 members or 10,000 members). They have had success in reaching the culture in the past, but are beginning to realize that the world is changing and their form of church is no longer effective in today’s society. They are struggling to discern how to be a church in this time of discontinuous change.

Typically, these two groups tend to be at odds with one another to some extent. Emergents look at Liminals and don’t know why they continue to try to do ministry that is, in their eyes, so ineffective. Liminals look at Emergents and see a bunch of reactive radicals who are turning their backs on historic Christianity.

These are, of course, generalizations. And the way they see one another is filled with misperception.

But Roxburgh’s hope is for these two tribes to come together and work together to discover God’s future for the church. All of us, Liminals and Emergents, have something to contribute to this discovery. And only together can we truly follow God’s lead in this time of change.

I LOVE THAT!!

That’s what I want to be a part of. And I feel like I have been a part of that. While I lived in Cincinnati, I met with a group of young pastors, a mix of Liminals and Emergents. We were in leadership in traditional Presbyterian and Methodist churches, small independent church plants, emerging church communities, and organic gatherings.

And what a blessing it was to be able to share our hopes and our frustrations together. What we learned is that we’re all simply trying to lead the people of God through a time of cultural change. And the best part is that we liked each other!! Meeting with them was almost always the best part of my week!

My hope is that as I begin my life in San Diego, I’ll be able to become a part of a communitas (as Roxburgh calls it) of Liminals and Emergents seeking to follow God together.

Any takers out there?