We've heard a lot, in the last couple of years about the "Emergent church," what many who are unhappy with the current state of the evangelical "free" church have proposed as an antidote to its ills. A friend of mine recently coined the term Submergent, for those folks who still (most of the time) adhere (more or less) to the Christian faith, but aren't particularly interested (not at all, in fact) in organizing it. (According to Christian pollster George Barna, that's one of the faster-growing groups.) But recently, I heard about another group, who see themselves as the Convergent church, as opposed to the divergent church (catholic, protestant, pentecostal) that dominated the 20th century.
Convergers are a collection of folks who once were exclusively committed to either evangelical, charismatic or liturgical forms of worship (some of them, to more than one, one at a time) who have, evidently, found they each need the other. The convergers' quarrel with church as it is, is this: The church's evangelical, liturgical and sacramental threads have become separated, and they need to be reunited, as they were in the Ist Century. Convergers say they're not opposed to the sense of mission that has enlivened evangelical faith and pratice, but they have subsumed the "saving of souls" under a larger concern for creating a "community of worship." As I understand it, they hope to bring together the best of what each brings to the party, and become the church that touches all the 20th Century bases, but doesn't get stuck at any of them. It remains to be seen if they've hit a homerun with that one (sorry, I got stuck in the baseball analogy and there was just no way out but through the middle.)
The Convergent idea has a lot of appeal. A few years ago, I went to an Episcopal Church in Ambridge, Pa. that lived out convergence, combining the liturgical worship from the Book of Common Prayer with contemporary worship music (we had a great band) and charismatic ministry. It was wonderful. But I don't recall ever hearing the word "Convergence." According to this, the Convergence "movement" isn't exactly new, either. I'm just living a pretty provincial existence, I guess.
Although Emergers have gravitated to convergent thought, too, it appears that capital "C"-type Convergers tend not to be young, enthusiastic and start-from-scratch types. Rather, those prominent in this group tend to be older, greyer and self-described "wounded warriors" most of whom are currently entrenched in well-established institutions. Recognizable names include:
Robert Webber, who wrote extensively about worship in the 1980s. His book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Way described and then helped encourage an exodus of protestant evangelicals to what is now the deeply divided U.S. Episcopal Church.
Thomas Howard (brother of Elizabeth Elliot, whose first husband was Jim Eliot, one of the five martyred missionaries whose story was recalled in the recent movie End of the Spear. Once an influential thinker and writer in evangelical circles, Howard's much publicized conversion to Roman Catholicism in the last century briefly stood the evangelical world on its ear.
Mike Warnke. Yes, he's the former Satanist (a disputed claim) turned charismatic Christian comedian, circa. 1970s. One of the more wounded of the warriors (most self-inflicted, according to this), Warnke became interested in Easterm Orthodoxy in the 1990s and actually started his own independent denomination, the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentucky.
Prominent among those at the meeting was Simon Chan, a professor of systematic theology at Trinity Theological College in Singapore. Don't be fooled by his Asian origins. Dr. Chan is thorough-goingly Western in his tendency to go to scripture and find in its complex web of song, law, history, prophecy, parable and epistle a systematic and, in fact, ontological argument for liturgical worship. For a taste of his argument, check out this interview on the Christianity Today Web site.
Convergers are — so far — an unofficial group, but I say "so far" because, unlike Emergers and, especially, Submergers, Convergers have a high view of apostolic authority. Their attempt to reunite the divergent strains of the faith is wrapped up in a larger desire to reunite the church not only as one faith, with one practice, but under one government. Convergers seem unashamedly hierarchical and simply assume that the church needs an institutional structure in order to accomplish its mission. So, while Emergers tend toward the catholic, with a small "c," Convergers show all the signs of a movement that would inevitably lead to something more Catholic, with a very large capital "C". Full circle, anyone?
To be fair, the investigation I've done so far (by no means thorough) indicates that their commitment to this concept is not necessarily to be confused with a commitment to such things as an all-male priesthood or a return to the deep division between clergy and laity that once kept the scriptures out of the hands of the laity — one of the many ills the protestant movement sought to remedy. But they've still got to ignore a lot of history. One of the reasons Eastern Orthodoxy has so much appeal to both Emergers and Convergers, I think, is that the Orthodox strains have a slightly less bloody history than does the Western liturgical strain, what with the latter's inquisitions, crusades and the other negative fallout from its political hegemony in Europe. If you're advocating a return to the idea of a single church institution, its best not to appeal to the Roman model.
I dunno. I suppose all of this is just part of the deal. We just keep searching for the One Right Way to "do church." I'd like to propose a new group (NOT a movement): The Avergent church. We are those who are simply averse to all this dissecting, theorizing, systematizing, codifying and pontificating about what the church is (or isn't), what it's supposed to do (or not do), and the endless writing and reading and discussing of books on the subject. It is this sort of endless discourse and the inevitable wrangling and nitpicking that attends it that first divided us. How is it, then, that we think it will, now, this late in the game — against the evidence of all this history — unite us?
Avergent churchers believe that if there was One Right Way to do church, there would be a book in the Bible entitled, "The One Right Way." There isn't. It's just not clear.
Jesus did say, "The world will know that you are my disciples if you love one another." Pretty clear.
We'd have to stop arguing with one another to do that. So in the meantime, we Avergers figure we do the best we can to do what is clear, and leave the wrangling to the academes.
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