Ed Stetzer's Emerging Church Categories
Ed Stetzer's article on the emerging church caused some ripples a few months ago when it was first released. If you haven't read it, the main thrust of the article is an attempt to categorize emerging churches and practitioners into three categories, which he terms Relevants, Reconstructionists, and Revisionists. At the time, I thought it was an interesting, if somewhat narrowly defined, attempt to both commend and critique different facets of the emerging church. I think there's something to be said for his approach, and I think he correctly identifies the diversity present among those who would self-identify as being emerging, but I was unhappy with his definition of categories then, and I'm becoming less so as his framework begins to become adopted by the critics of the emerging church in what seems to me a weak attempt at fending off objections that the critics are painting with too broad a brush.
Stetzer's categories are as follows:
- Relevants are those who are "just trying to make their worship, music and outreach more contextual to emerging culture."
- Reconstructionists "think that the current form of church is frequently irrelevant and the structure is unhelpful." He seems to use this category to refer to churches that don't follow the standard institutional pattern, such as house churches.
- Revisionists are the third category. Stetzer writes, "They are not [evangelical] -- at least according to our evangelical understanding of Scripture. We significantly differ from them regarding what the Bible is, what it teaches and how we should live it in our churches."
But Stetzer goes beyond this to state the following:
Revisionists are questioning (and in some cases denying) issues like the nature of the substitutionary atonement, the reality of hell, the complementarian nature of gender, and the nature of the Gospel itself. This is not new -- some mainline theologians quietly abandoned these doctrines a generation ago. The revisionist emerging church leaders should be treated, appreciated and read as we read mainline theologians -- they often have good descriptions, but their prescriptions fail to take into account the full teaching of the Word of God...Every group that left these basics has ended up walking away from the faith and then, in a great twist of irony, is soon seen as irrelevant to the world they tried to reach.My next post is going to be a full engagement with Stetzer's categories. First, though, I'm interested in getting some feedback. What do you folks think? Do Stetzer's categories clarify the discussion or do they fall short?
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ed's a friend of mine and i read the article when it first came out. i understand his position and i think it could be helpful to some people. but i also see where those looking for ammunition or neat little categories of the lowest common denominators will and have used the article as a critical attack on all things "emerging", whatever that word means anymore.
and although i don't think he ever intended the article to be exhaustive, i do think the 3 labels, are somewhat simplistic of a complicated situation. i know i personally can find myself in all 3 of the categories on any given "issue" or point.
i just got a copy of his new book, breaking the missional code, and i'm finding it very helpful in understanding his perspective and provides a much larger framework for understanding a relatively small article. he's a lot closer to the conversation and understanding what's going on than most "emerging" guys will give him credit for.
so in a nutshell, i see the pluses and minuses.
i'm also writing a review of his new book, you may want to check out as well, http://www.iamjoshbrown.com/blog/?p=722. Looking forward to your next thoughts.
Posted by josh on May 3, 2006 02:36 PMI don't like categories - it's too easy to write people off, "Ah, you're one of those Revisionist types." There's such a broadness in his painting of Revisionists, it makes you afraid to fart crosswise - not to be ungracious, I'm just saying.
The first category, Relevants, I would be readier to apply to churches like North Point or Willow Creek than the EC. The second category, Reconstructionists, does seem to fit the conservative end of the EC.
But, hey, the good news is that at least you are still being considered by some as possibly being evangelical (i.e., rapture fodder). These guys don't even like talking to me anymore. : )
Sorry for the mini-rant. The kids were rough today.
Posted by Scott Lyons on May 3, 2006 09:28 PMJosh - I hear what you're saying. I know he's a missional thinker; I actually have his book on church planting. I think that's actually part of the reason I found the article somewhat disappointing - I was expecting more nuance.
Scott - how does one fart crosswise, exactly? ;) Yeah - I know exactly what you're saying. And that's definitely how I'm seeing it used, whether or not it was his intent.
Oh, and at my house, we call those days "weekdays". j/k. ;)
Posted by ScottB on May 3, 2006 11:44 PMgood question
i like ed and have read the book on the missional code
but his categories dont sit with me and i cannot seem to place myself inside them . .. nor do i want to. . .
helpful for some . . i guess . . . but not for me
Hi Andrew - thanks for dropping by! I actually received a really nice email from Ed after my second post on this - I invited him to offer any additional thoughts but I didn't receive a response. Understandable, as I'm sure he's far busier than I, but I would have liked to see him develop these a bit more. I read the Missional Code book as well - I thought it was a good basic intro to the subject but unfortunately still a lot of stuff that I wanted to see him develop more fully. I can't really say that there was a lot of new material there - the content was all stuff that I've seen elsewhere before. Thanks again for your thoughts!
Posted by ScottB on July 25, 2006 12:24 AM