How can the EMC and the Established church co-exist?
This question of the relationship between the existing and new continues to be critical. Here are a few thoughts from Andrew Hamilton, a church planter in Oz.
How can the EMC and the Established church co-exist?
Actually a prelim question actually relates to what we see the EMC as being. There is so much divergence on this one issue that to answer the original question might be tricky.
Anyway here are my thoughts as to how we can work together:
* Recognise we are all kicking the ball the same direction - we are actually on the same team... this is critical if we are to see any kind of synergy.
* Accept that everyone will not see the world way we do and that does not make them an 'inferior' being or someone who lacks an understanding of scripture. This cuts both ways. Emergent folk can be pretty harsh on est church people and est church people can be very dismissive of EMCers. Lets not judge each other simply because we have different opinions of scripture. Who’s to say my/your opinion is the right one?...
* There has to be more open dialogue. In a sense the EMC are those without power ie. they lack resources, numbers, identity etc. However EMC folks actually hold an incredibly powerful position in this whole scenario because they are the new 'cool' (whether they like it or not) and in our world ‘cool’ always trumps ‘established’... Unless we talk and keep good lines of communication I can see us in danger of wielding our respective powers to smack each other around a bit. That'd be very sad.
* I believe the Est church needs to seek to resource the EMC and set leaders free to experiment with new projects. This will mean $$$ and risk. But investing in the R&D folks will send a very strong message that there is some level of belief in both the project and them. In return the EMCers will need to adjust unneccessarily adversarial rhetoric, not to compromise their own beliefs, but to accept that there is a place for some of the est church.
Andrew blogs about life and church planting here.
