Reflections on Resource emerging church weekend

Amidst the snow and ice covering parts of London in January I found the Resource weekend – an opportunity to experience first-hand the two most well-known emerging church centres: Moot and Grace. I had a great time and found it really helpful to actually be there and see what their services are like. Unfortunately, that (the service) only gives you such a small part of the picture, as each community meets in small groups too.

Whilst not criticising, the main thing I noted was that in both cases the community seemed to be mainly centred on disaffected churchgoers (perhaps more so with Grace than Moot). Speaking to someone from Grace, they acknowledged that they don’t seem to attract non-believers; they had thought that if they got the worship right, then unchurched people would come, but this isn’t the case. To me, Grace seemed very much more ‘alt.worship’ and less missional, whereas Moot did seem more outward focussed in that it did seek to have activities specifically designed for stressed City-types and the underprivileged in their area. I wish I’d made more time to chat with the leaders of both churches about this.

However, one of the things that confused me the most was the lack of actual teaching/preaching during the services. Again, speaking to one of the ‘leaders’ or senior members of Grace to ask about how they would address an issue on one of the thought-provoking cards they were using without having a sermon, the response was very much ‘you have to earn the right to be able to speak to me on a one-to-one basis; you can’t preach down to me from on high’.

If emerging church fails to attract unchurched people, then how is it any better than traditional church? Or is my question an indication of the fact that I still think in terms of ‘attraction’ rather than ‘going out’? And if my question is wrongly based on ‘attraction’ v ‘going’ when it should be based on influencing the unchurched where they are, then doesn’t it make it all the more important that the life we live as individuals needs to be massively counter-cultural for there to be any obvious difference between we Christians in our everyday world and those who don’t know Christ? And does anyone really care about such counter-cultural differences in a postmodern society?

My confusion seems to come in two (and probably more) parts: (i) my need to see new people being won for Christ (a throwback from my denominational background) and (ii) an inability to picture church as something other than what happens on Sunday in a meeting based on didactic Scripture-teaching.

HELP!!!