On the Eve of MLK week and the Obama Inauguration I want to offer some observations on why the emerging/missional church is so young and white.
I do this because it is an issue that keeps coming up. We had a missional learning commons two weeks ago. It was a gathering of people to talk missional church, encourage missional communities and pray for the neighborhoods. We had 89 people. Although many ethnicities were represented, the majority of attendees were white persons (of both genders) under the age of 35 (my guess). A white attender (Sam Hamstra) asked me why is the emerging/missional movement so white? The next day, at my own church, Angela (an African American women under age 35) asked me about the learning commons because she had hoped to go. And then she also asked “was there diversity there?” to which I had to answer “No.” She asked “why?” Then this morning I was meeting with a church planter rep. from the Christian Reformed Church active in missional church work between African American congregations and white suburban people moving into the city. We talked again about the same issue.
I think it is fairly well accepted that the emerging movement/ missional movement is populated largely with young white people of both genders. There are older white people like myself involved. And there is say 10 to 20% of the movement populated with various ethnicities. But by and large, the overwhelmingly large proportion of the missional and emerging movements is white and young (somewhere around 35 and under). To throw light on why this might be I offer two stories that I have experienced recently (I know I am taking a while to get to my point here but stay with me ?).
1st Story At the Learning Commons, Jon Berbaum was talking about one of the disciplines of the missional order. He called it the discipline of poverty. He then explained that the discipline of poverty is the discipline of living beneath our means. We in essence look around the neighborhood and see the standard of living and consciously seek to live beneath this standard so as to give more of our time and our excess wealth to the Mission of God in the neighborhood. He also talked about how his group had to choose a place of mission that was not “over their existing level of means, skills and ability to earn a living.” This meant often moving to lower income neighborhoods on purpose so as to not have to adjust working hours (hence less having less time to give) to live up into higher standards of living.
An African American (named Chris) stood up and said something (and I will try to recount this as best as I can) like we in the African American community find this suspect. For we view poverty as something God has called us out of. Indeed part of salvation is the deliverance from poverty. He asked “could we use another word to describe this discipline than poverty?” Indeed the whole practice (from what I heard) of living beneath your means would have a difficult time translating into the African American context. Poverty is indeed, as Jon and Chris both agreed, a contextual issue.
2nd Story I teach pastoral ethics at Northern Seminary, a seminary that has as high percentage of African American students. One question I pose during the latter stages of the course is as follows: a pastor ministers in a community where the average house costs 350,000 dollars (this is actually true in NW Suburbs of Chicago). The pastor buys a house worth 2.1 million. Is this a good decision or a bad decision for a leader of the flock? What considerations would you use as a pastor in making the decision to buy a house within your ministry context. In my most recent class, every African American (except one) applauded this pastor as being a model for the salvation of God, for being a good leader. They said that, for the average African church congregation in poverty, they need someone to both respect and to aspire to be. For the African American members of the class (except for one), it is unthinkable for a pastor not to model “prosperity.” There are many more nuances to this culturally which I don’t have the time to recount or the cultural familiarity to properly represent here. I’m just trying to offer some general observations. Invariably, in this same Pastoral Ethics class (I have had similar stuff happen no less than 10 times in my classes surrounding this same core issue) the younger white seminary students (I’ll call them emerging church types) protest that the pastor that would spend such outrageous sums of money on a house cannot lead his/her congregation missionally into the world.
All of this points to the reality that seems to me clearer and clearer as the days go by. The majority of African Americans as well as first and second generation ethnic groups (especially Hispanics but also Asian to some degree) of N America are arriving into modernity just as young whites are throwing their hands up at it. The sons and daughter of evangelicalism are fed up with modernity (individualism and rationalism apart from a way of life), capitulation to capitalism as an organizing principle in the church (money and poverty are private issues) and a Christianity separated from engagement of the wholistic gospel for the whole world. These people are largely white and young. Meanwhile, the African American church and Hspanic church have been in poverty, are enamored with the hope of capitalism and the American dream. They have been struggling for years with poverty and America and God offers the hope to finally escape and achieve comfort and financial stability. The prosperity gospel drives these contexts. Indeed many of these ethnicities have not yet gone through the loss of community that the stark society of excess affluence and modernity brings.
I see this as one issue that separates the missional/emerging church types from the other demographic groups. A core calling of missional life for me is the call to live beneath our means to thereby have more time and funnel more of our blessings (excess wealth) into the Mission of God. Perhaps this is what keeps the missional movement from diversity? I don’t necessarily know. But I sure would like to ask others what their observations are.
Brian McLaren has used a slide in many of his talks over the past 10 years which shows how Latin America, and what used to be called the third world, are just entering modernity. Here the gospel is doing well. Ironically much of this church movement is charismatic and driven by prosperity gospel (Peter Berger outlines this in an article in Books and Culture - I hope to respond to this article vigorously as time allows in the next few months). McLaren says meanwhile post-modernity/post Christendom has begun in vast parts of Western Europe, Canada and the West, post modernity has begun. Here the gospel is failing miserably as the church shrinks to nothing.
All of the above recounts our dilemma and perhaps why the emerging church and missional church continue to be stubbornly young and white. Missional church represents the sons and daughter (largely) of evangelicals who are fed up with modernity, its programmed church, its dualistic rationalistic version of salvation, its capitulation to monetary success and the way it has distanced itself from the poor. This group has passed through modernity, free market capitalism as a social doctrine (tied to the fall), and seen its effects upon the church. They do not aspire to the goods inherent here because they have walked through the desolation of it all. Meanwhile sits the others who for various contextual reasons do not see modernity and capitalism, the accumulation of wealth as a bad thing.
I wish to make no judgemnts of who is right on the issue of “living beneath your means.” Indeed, as Chris said at the Missional Commons, this is a contextual thing. I agree that there are many contextual elements here to which I have no way to speak to. But I suggest this may be an issue contributing to the young whiteness and the lack of diversity of the missional/emerging church. What do you think? Is there a growing divide between those who are children of the American prosperity of the past thirty years and those who have been pursuing the American dream and have yet to reach it.
davidfitch on January 16th 2009
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Fascinating. Nice post.
I’m inclined to agree that with the statement that “context is everything” when attempting to understand the relative homogeneity of the emerging/missional movement, yet I’d be less eager chalk that homogeneity up to “one group is emerging out of modernity and for another, modernity is just descending” as I would be to state simply that the gospel is indeed a liberating word for human beings, whatever their context. What establishment power needs to be liberated from is far different from what those on the margins of power or privilege need to be liberated from, and this to me has less to do with distinctions between modernity and postmodernity as it does with the question of what side of power and privilege do you come from.
To that extent, I ran across a marvelous article in Time Magazine online this week entitled, “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece), where the author states:
“Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders … Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.”
I resonated when I read that even as I thought, “But that is such a different kind of liberation than the liberation that I, as a second-generation white evangelical socialized into an ethos of individualism and personal prosperity need, and it will produce a very different kind of church. Both churches will be living out the liberating word of the gospel, albeit in different ways, for they are very different contexts.”
So anyway, I’d be inclined to argue more from a “social context” vantage point in explaining the homogeneity of the emerging/missional church.
In my recent study of St. Francis of Assisi, this issue has been very, very relevant. Francis embodied the voluntary poverty of the mendicants as a way to identify and live alongside the poor. While this can seem noble to those of us who have grown up with relative privilege (especially us white males), I have begun to see some of the dangers in what Francis modeled.
First, we need to acknowledge that his poverty was, indeed, voluntary. He had the choice to keep his wealth, a choice not available to most of the poor. It is still a noble choice, but one that is still born of privilege, a fact that should be kept centrally in mind when considering following his example.
Second, when Francis embrace the mendicant lifestyle, he did so out of holy devotion. While he faced initial rejection, eventually people saw him as a holy man. Though he did deny himself (to an abusive degree at times) ultimately he rarely was truly without (even if that was simply never being without the option of) food or shelter. The poor did not have the benefit of choice.
Third, by associating poverty with a holy calling, it helped the ruling class set poverty into a mystical context. This allowed many people to ignore the systemic injustices of their society (from which they greatly benefited) by romanticizing the poverty around them.
Of course, this is not an argument against what you are suggesting here, David. In fact, I strongly agree with you. However, what I have learned in living & serving in an inner city community for these past years is that the poor around us must be liberated & empowered to choose for themselves how they will live. We must recognize that it is easier to sacrifice an freedom already enjoyed than to be asked to sacrifice what you have never had the freedom to possess.
I look forward to the conversation here.
Peace,
Jamie
Jamie … right on … awesome insight … and especially well illustrated through St Francis!!! I think the later medieval place of poverty within society as practiced our of chosen vocation had a similar role as you are describing in the church … and it teaches us to be wary of romanticizing poverty … and being insensitive to those who have been victums of poverty as a systemic evil …
Thanks Andrew … also … for adding to the discussion… showing how it’s more the context of history/non history of privilege than mo-pomo .. although I think the development of pomo is definitely intertwined with that history.
Jamie,
Just a question, do you have anything from your studies you could share? I think Kelly Johnson’s Fear of Beggars s a great reflection on some of the issues you raise. I’d like to read what you’ve come up with on St Francis. let me know eh? fitchest@gmail.com
Good discussion, I need to learn from this. We are fairly new to the context of poverty, and while our community is urban and poor, it is also 95% white with a smattering of native folk. While I have experienced poverty, it only lasted a couple years. I do identify with the core of the experience as “lack of choices.”
Hi Dave – I think it would be helpful to mention the historical context that African-Americans live in when you speak of our “just now coming into modernity”. If you do not, you run the risk of sounding slightly condescending in your assessment.
Iam thinking of he fact that my generation (I am 36) is the first generation in many Black families to even have an opportunity to go to college. The Civil Rights Movement of which Martin Luther King is an icon only happened about 40 years ago. Blacks have not been afforded the chance to engage in the “American Dream” for the vast majority of our country’s history. It is because of these (as well as other) factors that Black churches in general (though not all) are more susceptible to the prosperity gospel (which is personally disheartening to me, but that’s another conversation). When having these types of discussions, this history must be taken into account because it informs our understanding of ourselves and our history. By ignoring this history and the fact that we live in the residue of it, you could effectively cut yourself off from any meaningful engagement that could potentially make some uncomfortable in this type of conversation.
On the flip side of this (and you and I have had this conversation before), I am of the opinion that Blacks must enter this conversation with the same level of humility we ask of you. I cannot walk into these conversations with a chip on my shoulder, but acknowledging that I am now a member of a new family that transcends our ethnic or racial identities by virtue of my new identity in Christ.
In the spirit of time (I could write about this all day), let me just say this: I fully believe that you have to “do life” with people in order to fully understand the points of commonalities and differences that exist and why they are there…that this cannot be fully grasped in an academic, philosophical context. It must be fleshed out in the dailly grind of building relationship, history and stories with others. It is in this context that understanding can be had.
(By the way…this is Michelle that used to go to LOV…hi!
) )
Michelle .. thanks for clarifying. Your second paragraph is a description for me of exactly what I was intending by the words “just now coming into modernity.”
As for the second part of what you said, I’ve often recounted the same sentiments in agreement with you. I offer these thoughts as observations. See my post here (http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/epilogue-on-egalitarianism-what-i-learned-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/) where I was actually chastised for taking this position in relation to the women’s ministry issue. I also think it can be a too-quick conversation stopper.
interesting note, David.
a couple years ago I posted this thought from Pastor Soong-Chan Rah in Cambridge, MA on this issue…
http://sheffield.typepad.com/dansheffield/2006/05/emergent_and_di.html
in the early 90s I did a course with Al Roxburgh at Mac on Social Context of Ministry, then went to South Africa to plant an urban multicultural congregation. I don’t remember Al talking about poverty as a particularly missional value, but “how does the gospel speak to the issues of the neighbourhood in which you live your life?” (back to context). I’ve been sparring with a friend who started participating in an east-end missional kind of church so she could identify more with “the poor.” I asked her, “but what about your affluent lesbian neighbours in the west-end where you live? How do you be missional there?”
Dan
(met you at one of Pernell’s learning parties in the Hammer)
[...] a recent post, David Fitch tackles head-on the issue of why the Missional and Emerging Church movements are so [...]
Hi David!
I appreciated this post and my comment got too long to post here in this format. Thanks for initiating this discussion.
I meant to say that I responded on my blog for any who are interested
Erika, thanks! Your post is a superb furthering of this conversation. I recommend it strongly to any who interested in probing this further. The link is http://erika.haub.net/simply-complex/01/.
Blessings! Hop to meet someday (I’ve worked a bit with your husband when he wa at Fuller’s D.Min).
[...] post is a response to something I read from Erika Haub. She alludes to other thoughts by David Fitch and by Eugene Cho (copied in Erika’s post) on the disproportion of white privilege in the [...]
Thanks for adding the link, David. I’m afraid I was a little distracted when I was trying to leave my original comment and so it took three tries to actually put together a coherent one
I imagine that our paths could cross someday! I was always a bit jealous of Doug’s many friendships that came out of his work at Fuller. I think I remember reading somewhere that Dick Staub was your pastor or youth pastor at one point? He and Kathy are my daughter’s godparents. We are thrilled to be closer to them since our move.
Just wanted to say “Thanks” for these posts. Our church is middle class, mostly white suburban, but we are engaged with the poor in a nearby community and in the country of Haiti. I have intuitively “sensed” the disconnect between the way we sons and daughters of evangelicalism see prosperity and the way our poor brothers and sisters (who have no choices at this point) see it. This has been insightful. It seems that my desire to live beneath my means as a spiritually healthy practice and so that I may bless those with less is GOOD, but I need to be mindful always of the fact that they are still dreaming of even having enough… only then would the choices I have even open to them.
“Missional church represents the sons and daughter (largely) of evangelicals who are fed up with modernity, its programmed church, its dualistic rationalistic version of salvation, its capitulation to monetary success and the way it has distanced itself from the poor.”
postmodern, postchristen, post-megachurch. Emergers seem to have significant experience/exposure to megachurch or churches that embrace seeker-friendly, high-quality/production, sweater+khaki paradigms. And they have changed more than their clothes. Few minorities had that same experience. Is emerging church going to make the list of “stuff white people like”? (see #2, #14, #18, #62, #73) It takes years and tons of effort to break the Homogeneous Unit barrier, and I know that I’m not even close.
On the other hand, I think that the typical urban church with it’s traditional worship can be quite missional as acts as a community to stand firm and encroach on the enemies territory with job training, AA, teen groups, and single mother support. So maybe brothers and sisters are out there, but we haven’t connected yet.
I was reading Shane Clairborne talk about how a similar critque had been levelled at the new-monastic movement from the ethnic minorities they have been in dialog with.
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I think that terms like living simply, sacrificially, generously or responceably could be used more than poverty.
-
There’s been allot of great conversation around the new-monastic community latley regarding the issue of diversity http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/08/reconciliations-challenge-for.html
theres been allot good said. I do think we need to be carefull of the attitude that say’s we just figured out this new great thing why don’t the black’s all come and follow us or join with us. Instead maybe we should be looking for those from minorities that we can follow in these steps. As a church as a whole we have a alot still to do in being one body not divided by race or culture
just got back from a peace and justice gathering (peacegathering2009.org) where alexie torres-fleming (ympj.org) shared about her life in the south-bronx.
she dealt with the issue of poverty in her talk and specifically said our mission wasn’t to lift people into the middle class. she grew up in the south bronx, and people within and without her community wanted her to make it, to move away, to be prosperous and famous. but instead, she moved back to the south bronx, started a ministry, is engaged in community, and is raising a family there.
an exceptional anecdote? maybe, but she understood that there is more out there.
i would also add that within the quaker communities, there seems to be a strong pull to things emergent. still white, but most are hardly evangelical.
David,
This post has been very helpful for me. I’m from malaysia, the east part of malaysia that is and a part of a tribal group of people of whom have lived in the context of poverty. A lot of the things that you addressed here are real in which you explain that “Meanwhile sits the others who for various contextual reasons do not see modernity and capitalism, the accumulation of wealth as a bad thing.” Here we are adapting with modernity and Christianity now is just adopting (or is progressing there) the ideology of what the emerging church is protesting against.
I’m someone who has been interested in what the missional and the emerging church is for. But right at this moment this ‘ideology’ (missional and emerging) is not really ascribed or agreed to. It seems to me that those in these context of just “arriving into modernity” have to experience what you all in the western context have experienced to realize the ‘validity’ of the missional/emerging stance of understanding. Well this is just a thought.
Anyway, this post had got me thinking. After I have worked through some stuff I will probably do a post in reflection of you post here with regard to the context I am in. I keep wondering will the emerging/missional work in a third world context?
[...] Posted January 23, 2009 Filed under: Brian’s Blogs | Tags: missional, Pastoral Ministry | A recent blog by missional thinker David Fitch asks “should pastors live beneath their means?” This [...]
David,
I’ve mulled over the observations on your post here and while these are certainly valid reasons you mention for the missional/emerging church’s peculiar demographics, I think this notion that African Americans and other minorities are “coming into modernity” is rather loaded and misleading.
From my vantage point in the Afr Amer community, we have been dealing with modern(ist) issues for roughly as long as the white majority has in the American story. We have developed language for describing and interpreting the split between the poor, middle class and wealthy in our community that has existed for quite awhile. Words like “uncle tom” or “sellout” while misused and abused do indicate that growing wealth and status has not always been looked upon favorably and has certainly not been treated uniformly within our community. “Prosperity” is just the latest manifestation of this ongoing struggle, and has much to do with recent economic trends (such as the burgeoning middle class) and cultural trends (music, sports, etc.) Even in theology, black conservatives and liberals have had to join forces and cooperate in ways that their white counterparts have not. We have indeed been contending with the modern(ist) culture and its discontent.
So its true that poverty is seen differently in our community as a whole. In many ways poverty is a forced burden which needs to be overcome. Poverty not just affecting the pocketbook, but one’s heart, one’s mind, one’s heart, and one’s confidence.
But, I think these differences in outlook are more symptoms of the things that keep missional/emerging churches demographically homogeneous, not the actual causes themselves. There are cultural particularities of many such churches, in their music, their styles of conversation and deliberation, their metaphors and artistic endeavors. But also perhaps a fear of new styles and ways that may be disruptive to their own. I’m of the mind that African Americans and other minorities have alot to say and teach to our white majority counterparts about how to dance around the pitfalls of modern(ist) culture. We have alot to say about the difference between modesty, poverty and creativity. But we need to be approached and engaged.
I was reading Shane Clairborne talk about how a similar critque had been levelled at the new-monastic movement from the ethnic minorities they have been in dialog with.
-
I think that terms like living simply, sacrificially, generously or responceably could be used more than poverty.
-
There’s been allot of great conversation around the new-monastic community latley regarding the issue of diversity http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/08/reconciliations-challenge-for.html
theres been allot good said. I do think we need to be carefull of the attitude that say’s we just figured out this new great thing why don’t the black’s all come and follow us or join with us. Instead maybe we should be looking for those from minorities that we can follow in these steps. As a church as a whole we have a alot still to do in being one body not divided by race or culture
David, et. al.,
Steve Taylor pointed me in your direction, so I just want to give a thanks to him for that. And, hello Jamie; I liked your words very much.
As a white guy who was raised in an upper class setting by white parents, who grew up in the Southern (deep south) United States and is now married to a First Nations woman and living in Canada, I have now been asking this question (and had this question asked of me) for quite some time. My family, my community, is a mixed one – my in-laws, as well as my uncles and aunties are primarily, if not all, First Nations, American Indian, Australian Aboriginal, and New Zealand Maori followers of Jesus. I am nephew to various Indigenous church leaders, some of whom you may know or may have heard of; therefore, I represent more persons than just myself (though I don’t want to speak FOR them). I want to speak, and question, as an observer of my own people, my own white, Western cultural context.
Now, why the long introduction? As example, primarily, because in the cultures of my family, I have learned that one does not introduce one’s self based on one’s accomplishments (what I do, where I work, etc.). Instead, one introduces one’s self based upon their “relations.” Their “whanau,” or family, as it’s called by the Maori. So, I’m learning how to do just that. Now, what does that have to do with anything?
I think it has to do with the entire situation, though not to be reductionistic in the least bit. Correct me if my observation is incorrect here, but I find it very interesting that a matter such as the missional/emergent deal and the question of its young whiteness so quickly boils down to an economic issue. Granted, that’s part of it, but to a large degree, I think that we are dancing around a very huge bush – and that bush is called worldview. David, you mentioned in your second story, in relation to African American community, that there was no time to comment on culture nor that you had enough familiarity to do so. I think that this is, actually, what we need to see more of, though from representatives of those various cultures. My father-in-law, Terry LeBlanc, recently spoke at Brian McLaren’s “Everything Must Change” venue in Toronto (or Montreal, I don’t remember which), and he posed this argument, “unless worldview changes, then nothing will change.” Changed to what? I’m no pro at this, but I imagine for those of us in the West, either a change to a holistic worldview or to a dualistic worldview irrevocably influenced biblically, the only difficulty there being that Scripture wasn’t exactly written from a dualistic worldview (another conversation for another time). However, in North America at least, the church is primarily run from a Western, dualistic worldview. In this respect, there is a very desperate need for corrective balance.
DaveR – in regard to not having connected yet with folks – I think this is an amazingly astute observation. And an important one, which helps me to ask this question:
Instead of sharing money as “resource,” how can we share the names of those who can better help us understand our own culture and the way the Gospel gets spread by way of that? For example, my Uncle Richard Twiss quite often encourages leading speaker-friends of his in the emergent/missional conversation to share his name and the names of others like him when they are having conferences, speaking engagements, etc. How can we, seriously, begin to do the same thing? Not as token, but as normal rhythm?
And just some questions of my own: What is the motive behind the white missional/emergent conversations? What is our thinking in regard to going into “poor neighborhoods?” Do we believe that the gospel is already there and that we are coming alongside those already engaged? Or are we “living below our means” because we think the gospel needs to get there for the first time?
This is already too long, and I want to post another comment by way of email from Richard Twiss. Forgive me for the lengthiness of this. But thank you for the opportunity. Peace.
David, and everyone else, I posed this question you’re asking to Richard Twiss about three weeks ago. His reply to me is as follows.
i spoke at “Off the Map” conference, a very missional gig, last year and raised the same question to brian m. jim henderson, todd hunter and numerous “emergent types during my public sessions – this gig typically does well at including women, but not persons of color – when i spoke there were several ladies, including an African-american gal and a bro from argentina – for the most part white, middle-aged – for two years i spoke at the zondervan national pastors conference which has a heavy emergent component – so i’ve hung out over beers with dan kimball, brian, tony jones, spencer burke, doug pagett etc. and have reflected back to them that it is still essentially a conversation controlled by new power brokers from a philospohical power base – though they are still breaking free from the control and margins of conservative evangelicalism, that it still, in a measure leaves out non-western thought in the language of deconstruction and emergence, thus oppressing those still in the margins by default – however, the longer they choose not to make room for us it moves it closer to a kind of intentionality or cultural blindness and thus control -
my challenge and encouragement to all of them is to use the favor they have received to make room for us and others – brian has been awesome in this regard – sharing and lending your friends is the phrase used – terry and i attended a gathering of “red letter christians” in december with bart and tony campolo and numerous other emergent/social justice types including shane clairborne, ron sider and many others which was very encouraging – one problem is we are so new on the scene of those conversations and groups we are easily marginalized by the exoticness of our indigenaety – “how does that relate to us” – our pitiful first nations atttempts at intruding upon and including ourselves in those circles speaks of the process us vangaurd types are roaming around in – we are busy making the introductions, opening doors, making the first impressions, speaking at the big gigs, getting published etc so you grasshoppers will have a legacy to follow up with – the next ten years are full of hope and promise – in ten years i’ll be 64 and i dont know if kath will still need me and still feed me when i’m 64 -
yes, there are two rails in the tracks – they always join together in the horizon – pray for grace and kindness to permeate our efforts – pray for favor that comes from God just cause he wants to share it – pray that we find the time to get published so our stuff begins to infiltrate the academic world as textbooks and “credible sources” for professors and even popular reading that will begin to influence the wider conversations at home and internationally – along with praying you guys need to assume an advocacy role and writing the letters to the powers that be and suggesting/requesting that they meet with us in some capacity – read our books, have a phone call or email or a face to face – i am speaking at cornerston music festival this year and beleive that will open many doors to other large events where next generation leaders hang out – push naiits to everyone you know – push our websites and check our travel scheduless and encourage people to come hear us – for western/literacy types, books lend credibility and creates value for them in the way they entertain new ideas and movements – lastly, it will never be a truly missional conversation until the voices from the margins help shape the way the values are understood and embraced at the core – which is where your voices will enter the fray – so, now pluck this stone from my hand – missed! you are learning much so keep being alive and absorbing the goodness and wisdom of God in others – you are all amazing human beings and people I am glad and proud to call nieces and nephews (and sons)! much love to you all
Hey Dan,
whoah .. that’s a lot eh?… Say I can use the quotes from your Uncle Richard, and put it on a post all its own to ask the question about power-broking? publishing et al. ? For I truly think there are layers of issues and problems being revealed here… some of which are as frustrating to me as to your uncle. And they may not be exclusive to Native North American community … I think this cultural segregation has much to do with capitalism and media … and this can only be overcome through certain practices (which we probably could best learn from First nations) that you simply will not find at the kinds of conferences we do around publishing here in N America
Blessings and please give my best to your father-in law Terry Lablanc
DF
David,
This is one of the most important and well written blog posts I have read in a while. You raise a very important theological and contextual issue. I will no doubt use these thoughts to stimulate discussion in a class I may be teaching.
Perhaps a book of essays wrestling with both of these contexts needs to be put into the works? I really think you have hit spot on why emerging/missional tends to be white and young. A lot of white and young people that grew up in boomer evangelical churches have had all their categories blown up or reconfigured by traveling into some of the most poverty stricken areas around the globe and they have seen on a global scale the bankruptcy of global capitalism.
David,
Yes, I apologize for the verbosity. I agree that the issues aren’t exclusive to the Native North American community, though, like other voices on the margins, they don’t appear to be at the table nor a part of the missional & emergent conversations; although, they are asking extremely similar questions regarding community and the gospel.
In regards to Richard’s quotes, I’ll ask him his permission. I’ll let you know when he replies.
Peace.
Dan
My experience in multi-racial/cross-cultural settings are VERY limited. So take this observation with however many grains of salt you want:
I have seed that some of the causes of entrenched poverty are exactly the same things that result in an isolated, empty “prosperity.” I have seen people with limited means spend on cell phones, large televisions, and new car accessories, often with absurdly costly credit-schemes. The desire is the same that keeps the suburban family anesthetized to real life and isolated from one another: it is the desire to attain happiness through property, wealth, status. The result may be different: the wealthy suburban family lives in an empty, isolated, meaningless stupor while the poor family falls deeper into poverty. But the spiritual problem is the same.
This says nothing about the systems of oppression that keep people in poverty and exclude them from opportunity. Certainly, misio Dei should propel us to set the captives free, to bring opportunity and dignity to the poor and oppressed.
But the call must still extend to those at the margins: The desire for personal fulfillment in wealth, status, or possesions is futile. Desire freedom, that you may in turn join the liberating mission of God.
Hey Nate,
Even though you may have limited cross-cultural experience, your sentiments ring true. The emptyness and vanity of our consuming search for wealth, status or possession is universal, even though its not universally accepted or understood. It may present itself differently among different cultural and geographic groups but the symptoms are similar.
Its my hope though, that the missional/emerging church banks on the fact that there already exists modes of resistance within ethnic minority communities and focus its efforts on linking up with those pockets of resistance, learning and embracing some of their ways and inviting them into their worship and mission.
I am concerned that the ideas presented in this post run the danger of ethnocentrism.
1. While the average level of economic success may be a contributing factor in a disparity of interest in the emergent community between whites and people of color, I think an economic motivation for this disparity is a grave oversimplification. There are many cultural reasons, economic ones aside.
2. Each of our ethnic Christian communities must face the failings of our respective cultures, and you are correct that there are some immaturities in various ethnic Christian communities. However, it is tragic that you fail to realize any immaturity in your own community, more specifically that you seem to see the white church’s immaturities as less immature. (White individualism, lack of respect for ancestors, and refusal to give power to people of color, anyone?)
3. The historic church is fundamentally inter-generational and multi-ethnic. When any population purposefully removes itself from that dialogue, the danger of ethnocentric theology is great. An example of ethnocentric theology would be “we get it because we’ve been through that cultural phase, but you’re behind, so you don’t get it yet. our theology is more advanced. let’s dialogue so we can teach you things.”
4. It is often observed in emerging church dialogue that God is present with “the poor.” That’s true. Have you ever thought that maybe the poor are intelligent enough to come up with a coherent theology of money, and that maybe you could try to learn from what they are doing, rather than assuming that they don’t know what they are talking about? Maybe God is with the poor more than in a comforting presence but also in a powerful blessing? It is objectifying to use the “poor” lifestyle as a means of spiritual growth for ourselves without considering the outlook and culture produced by that lifestyle as at least a viable option.
5. You ignore the fact that church populations are exploding in the two-thirds world. Maybe you should rethink distinctive Western theology (for example, postmodern theology) if the church in the West is dying and churches in these places supposedly “aspiring to modernity” are growing explosively. It can’t hurt to look into it. Also, I don’t think it is true that many people are “enamored with the American dream.” I’m sure a lot of people don’t want to live in crippling poverty, but I doubt that most people in the world want to trade in their own cultural heritage for middle-class white (post)modernity.
I know a lot of people who would consider some of your points passively racist. You should reconsider your wording at least, and I would suggest, some of your ideas as well.
Rachel,
on your comment “However, it is tragic that you fail to realize any immaturity in your own community, more specifically that you seem to see the white church’s immaturities as less immature. (White individualism, lack of respect for ancestors, and refusal to give power to people of color, anyone?” … did you see my response above to Dan Lowe?
on your coment “it is tragic that you fail to realize any immaturity in your own community, more specifically that you seem to see the white church’s immaturities as less immature. (White individualism, lack of respect for ancestors, and refusal to give power to people of color, anyone?) have you read anything I’ve ever written on this subject? Whoah … what about what I said in this post as well ..”I wish to make no judgemnts of who is right on the issue of “living beneath your means.” Indeed, as Chris said at the Missional Commons, this is a contextual thing. I agree that there are many contextual elements here to which I have no way to speak to. But I suggest this may be an issue contributing to the young whiteness” …
On your comment ..”You ignore the fact that church populations are exploding in the two-thirds world. Maybe you should rethink distinctive Western theology (for example, postmodern theology) if the church in the West is dying and churches in these places supposedly “aspiring to modernity” are growing explosively. It can’t hurt to look into it.”…
Did you see what I wrote in the post talking about McLaren’s assessment of the third world … I said ” Here the gospel is doing well. Ironically much of this church movement is charismatic and driven by prosperity gospel (Peter Berger outlines this in an article in Books and Culture …) “…
Rachel .. did you even read my piece? sorry, but I think dialogue could be improved by more careful interactions …
Hmmm, I think we might be missing each other a bit. You are right, I’m sure dialogue could be improved by more careful interactions.
Let me start out by saying that I appreciate that you are looking into this topic, and I think it’s an important one. I am very grateful it is on your heart to look into the relationship between the emerging church and ethnicity.
I have read your blog and the comments (a couple of times), and I didn’t think they addressed what I was getting at. I hope the directness of my comments didn’t make you feel blindsided. My writing has a tendency to sound more severe than I am in person.
Let me take a step back and say what I understood from your post, and then maybe you can correct what I got wrong. It was the second paragraph after “2nd story” that most alarmed me. I understood you argument to be the following: many whites have gone through modernity and have realized its deficits and abandoned it, and the white church’s response to this has been to “emerge.” African-American and Latino church goers, on the other hand, have been mostly poor and aspire to modernity-related success, have not realized the deficits of modernity, and thus do not see the incentive to “emerge.”
I think that this might sound condescending to some people (perhaps especially people of color from those traditions?). If this is your argument, it sounds like you are putting progress on a line with white people at the head in postmodernity and poor Latinos and African Americans lagging economically and culturally in the modernity phase.
When I talk about the two-thirds world, I am not talking about minority ethnic group churches in the US, I am talking about what might be called “premodern” contexts. I am pointing out that in a linear model of progress of modern to postmodern, you have left out a large population of people, and arguably the spiritual center of Christendom at the moment.
With regard to the “prosperity gospel”: I’m not a fan. But I am saying that there is a very real cultural context for that message, and there are a variety of forms of it, and one should probably look into those things before deciding whether it is an unfortunate blemish on the progress of the two-thirds world church (you use the word “ironically”), or whether it is something interesting and worth looking into. (“Why is it so popular?”) But I probably share your hesitancy about that “gospel.”
Lastly, I would say that it is important for people in the two-thirds world and people of color in the United States to share some about why they don’t go for emerging before emerging folks decide why they aren’t going for emerging. Like you observed, there are other contextual elements, so I am hesitant when one of these elements is named in the absence of other elements. It makes the discussed element sound more important.
Now, I could be wrong in how I am interpreting you, and if so, then I apologize. Again, I really appreciate your thoughts and willingness to share. Thanks for the dialogue!
[...] that not only commented on it, but also tried to explain it. David Fitch of Chicago, USA, in his Reclaiming the mission blog, notes: I think it is fairly well accepted that the emerging movement/ missional movement is [...]
I found this quite interesting, and wrote about it and linked to it on my blog.
Certainly here in South Africa, from what I have seen, most of the emerging/missional movement is white, and I think possibly for some of the reasons that you have listed, and an additional one is that that people in this movement seem to network largely through the blogosphere, and the proportion of black to white bloggers in South Africa is way out of proportion to the ratio in the population.
That suggests to me that the emerging/missional movement, as propagated in the blogosphere, is rather tied to a particular technology. In Africa, African independent churchs have been missional for years, but they have different networks and different means of networking. Many of those tend to be pre-modern, or at least were in earlier periods, but they seem to have adopted different technology, the cell phone rather than the blog or Twitter, for example.
Hi,
A little late to be posting, but if you see this, thanks for your time if you read it.
I am a recovering Catholic who recently stumbled on the network of emerging church and leaders in the US. While I have to acknowledge your observations about the emerging church being young, white and somewhere in the middle class, I don’t believe you when you write that you are not standing in judgement of “living below the poverty line”.
You say the movement remains “stubbornly” middle class. Perhaps, have you considered, that this is because the US economic system remains “Stubbornly” divided as well?
Is it better not to engage with people who are living in poverty simply because one isn’t poor themselves?
How would you suggest fixing the “observations” you raise? It is to “not criticize” but there are some movement that truly engage with people of all diverse works of life in a true spiritual equality.
Should people in a certain class only worship and minister with those of the same classes?
Do people born in higher classes reject the gospel message so as not to offend the poor??
I’m sorry, but I finished reading your article feeling a bit like eating sour grapes.
[...] 2.) Why is the Emerging/Missional Church so White? It is a subject that keeps coming up! This is a post from last January and we’re stiull dealing with it given SoongChan Rah’s book and the Missional Learnings Commons coming up Jan 8. Recounting this episode from last years’ Commons got me started on rethinking the whole issue. [...]
I greatlyenjoyed reading your post! I get excited by anythings antiques, but in preferentially engagement rings.
I am a fanaticof antique jewelry and I would not swap in the thrill of the hunt for that rarepiece in my collection for anything.
Some people collect antiques for any challenge. They get a buzz out exploring what is located at any given thrift store, garage sale or house sale. They test themselves in being able to find the best bargains and that rarest items. Both which are key elements to achieving your goal in the antiques operate.