by Zach Roberts, ed.

Introduction

Emergence Is Natural

When we discuss emergence, we are not dealing with a battle. The culture of the Western church has been engaged in ideological warfare for so long that it is hard to imagine that the emergent movement is not more of the same. Would it scare you if we said the emergent movement is an evolutionary necessity? Maybe the colloquialism that argues, “Where man puts a period, God puts a comma,” would go over better.

Christian emergence is the insatiable pursuit of transcendent mystery. We have not captured God with our concepts, theologies, and creeds. There will always be more of God to discover.

The emergent movement is not an ideological alternative to “church-as-it-has-always-been.” On the contrary, emergence is what happens within any living system. Emergence is an organic happenstance. If it tells us anything, it tells us that though some elements of the church may be dying, new life is also emerging in the present.

The term “emergent” as applied to the latest movement within Western Christianity is borrowed from biology, specifically fields relating to horticulture (plants) and arboriculture (trees). When scientists want to judge the health of a forest or “stand,” one of the tools they employ is a ground survey. Part of a ground survey involves getting on hands and knees and evaluating the emerging growth on the forest floor. The emerging growth helps convey the status of a forest ecosystem. It is a key indicator in a complex matrix of organic occurrences that helps scientists relate and respond to a given ecosystem.

The Christian conversation-turned-movement now labeled “emergent” tells the church something about the overall Christian ecosystem in Western culture. The emergent movement forces the church to see itself as an organic system rather than a machine. Within an ecosystem, change, evolution, and adaptation are normative and expected. This is a departure from how church has been imagined and practiced in the last century.

In the last century, the Western church, and Christianity in general, were marked largely by stasis and its corollary, decline or death. While some consider “emergence” as primarily a postmodern adaptation, it can be understood to be a resurrection reality amid a decaying past, a dynamic phenomenon first explicated by the gospel writers in a pre-scientific world. Many emergent types are inclined to believe that this recent postmodern movement is largely a revaluation of pre-modern wisdom that was lost in varying degrees along history’s march toward modernization.

Going back to the colloquialism above, “where the modern church put a period, the emergent movement has erased it and put a comma.” The story of the church was not finished during the modern era. Emergents argue that they all have pencil and paper and are eager to continue writing. This book is an exercise in continuing to write the story of the church, specifically for Baptists. Doing so involves the integration of the past with dreams about the future that begin wearing flesh in the present. In each story below, you will encounter a Baptist who is attempting just that.

Emergent Baptists

Emergent Baptists are those who believe there is more to God, Jesus, and God’s kingdom than modern Christianity and its denominational categories have been able to define. Emergent Baptists believe the story is still unfinished, and it is incumbent upon us to participate in, and write, the narrative for our time and place. We also recognize that much of the former narrative, written by those in the last century, does not interface well with this new century and present cultural milieu. Like generations before us, we hope to take what our forefathers and mothers gave us and fashion something from it that is our own. This book contains some of our first efforts at doing so.

I am confident that some of the stories here will cause readers a level of discomfort. As you read, you may find yourself saying, “That’s not Baptist!” This is a natural response since many of us have been formed in the divisive context of Baptist life where each faction believes it has defined what it means to be Baptist absolutely and with finality. This is certainly not a departure from what it means to be Baptist. After all, our tradition was forged in the fires of Separatism. Baptist identity was birthed through reform and critique of the status quo.

It is also important to keep in mind that the people who wrote the articles in this book do not believe there is a period at the end of the Baptist story. Nor do we believe that Baptist identity is ever finished. If Baptist identity is organic, it is always unfolding in process, and it will always have ample variance. In other words, an organic Baptist identity will always consist of plurality and diversity, two values that make sense to emergents.

We encourage you to read these stories of Baptist emergence with an open heart and an open mind. Contrary to what some Baptist leaders say about emergents, we are not mindless relativists with a careless, subversive agenda. We are your Baptist children and grandchildren, your Baptist brothers and sisters. We write out of a passion and a longing to cultivate something of our own from what we have been faithfully given. We may do so with a measure of prophetic edge, but we are confident that we stand in a long tradition of God’s faithful in doing so.

We are also confident that many of you who read this will breathe a long, deep sigh of relief, something like, “Finally! There are people out there who think and feel the way I do about the life of faith.” You may read the thoughts of your own heart and mind within the pages of this book. To you, we want to issue a hearty “Welcome home.” It is our intent with this book that you not only engage new voices in common with yours, but that you feel you have been given both permission and space to live from your location as a Baptist “abnormally born.” Call them emergent Baptists, third-way Baptists (not conservative and not liberal/moderate), or recovering Baptists, those who wrote these stories mean to encourage and give hope: encouragement for those struggling with the excitement and responsibility for writing a new narrative, and hope for those who have honored their commitment to the previous narrative but are befuddled by what is happening in the present.

Our stories are about new life that extends from the natural ending of things that cannot go on. Grief and hope should find a normal symbiosis as you interact with these writers. If we are the people of the resurrection that we claim to be, then we should have no fear of death—be it conceptual, ideological, or physical. Our collective work within these pages is a rolling of the stone away from the door, and we encourage Baptists to walk out into a new life in God’s future. Perhaps the tradition forged around the practice of baptism finds itself poised at the edge of the Jordan. Our stories are dispatches from the other bank of the river.

Chapter 1
The Time Is Now, the Place Is Near
George (Tripp) Fuller III

Space to Emerge

I began to emerge during Lent of my fifth grade year, but this beginning is important because my emergence as a Baptist has been full of theology and always on the left side. I had been a Christian for a while and was a nightly Bible reader, so this particular Lent I decided that in preparation for Easter, I would read the Passion Narratives from all four Gospels. Each week I focused on a different Gospel, reading a section each night and journaling about it afterward or spending time in meditation over it (my parents taught me lectio divina at an early age). I may have been taught my love for Scripture and in particular the Gospels, but it is foundational to my identity. I cannot remember a time when I could go to sleep without reading Scripture, at first with my parents and then by myself, so as Easter neared and it became more difficult to sleep afterward, I knew something was awry. During Holy Week, I began to read through the Gospel of John, and I remember the panic of the first night of reading. Instead of stopping at the planned point, I went on right through the end, but my disturbance was not lifted. The next night I borrowed a Bible from my father’s office and read through the end of all four Gospels again, but my panic continued to grow. The following night I charted out all four Gospels, and my fear reached a fevered pitch, so I called for my dad to come in my room. “Dad, my Bible is broken! The Gospels do not say the same thing, have the same people in the same places, or even have the same number of angels or people at the resurrection.”

As it turns out, my Bible was not broken, but my uncritical faith that preserved a certain naiveté was gone for good. Surprisingly, at least for some of my conservative friends, my newfound critical eye became the first step on a journey that has occupied me ever since. My love for the Scriptures has not changed; in fact, I still have trouble going to sleep without reading them. Not only that, but my desire to follow Jesus in my own life, to share the good news of God’s reconciling love with others, to participate in a local body of worshiping believers, and to sing a bit louder on Easter morning has not changed. The space Dad made for my question then and through school led me on a theological journey that is inseparable from my story of emergence. In fact, what emerged through the questions was a strong conviction about the gospel.

Asking Good Questions
Some want to keep a gospel so disembodied
that is doesn’t get involved at all
in the world it must save.
Christ is now in history.
Christ is in the womb of the people.
Christ is now bringing about
the new heavens and the new earth. —Oscar Romero1

There were 70,000 people in attendance, spread out over a large, gentle hill. All eyes focused forward to the bottom of the hill where the stage hosted a popular contemporary Christian band that decided in the middle of a set to enter a time of worship. Without a fuss or stager, the crowd knew what to do, and what was a rock and roll show without cursing and drugs became a time of intense worship. During the concert, the sky had grown dark, and twenty minutes into the worship set the audience was encouraged to get on their knees in prayer before God, to pray for the country and the world. This was the point when I finally arrived from my camp to the concert area. I walked up the hill, and as I looked out I saw 70,000 people on their knees in prayer. The sight moved me; the memory of all those people focused on one thing still moves me. I have long thought about that moment and asked why the world did not change after that dramatic experience. Surely a group that large with a unified vision could truly accomplish something beautiful and amazing. What were we waiting for? That was eleven years ago and counting.

The church is not running short on experiences. You can have one every day of the week in a variety of forms and places in any American city. If you have a radio or the Internet, endless resources can fill your experience quota while you drive or work when no one is watching. In spite of the effective marketing of experiences in the church, there remains a disconnect between the engaged citizen of heaven and the citizen of the earth. It may be time to ask what we are getting out of the time and energy we invest in creating our own experiences. Or better yet, what is God doing with them? The church has become a successful industry, but what are we selling? If we sell a million copies for less than they cost, we make no profit. We can do a good job at missing the point, so let us find the point. An honest assessment of the world should lead one to question the efficacy of the gospel or at least the church. If the shepherds’ angelic choir was right and the good news is really “good news of great joy for all the people,” then something is amiss. If the problem is not God’s, then we must look to ourselves. We need to ask with all seriousness, who are we? Where are we going? What should we be doing? To address the important questions, we turn to the source of our faith and its coming.

The Good News of Abba-Intimacy
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God . . . . In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mark 1:1, 9-13)

This passage introduces Mark’s Gospel and offers an important place to begin to search for a reservoir of ecclesial identity in our age of identity crisis and identity fabrication. In these few verses, we see how Mark identifies Jesus and the foundation for Jesus’ self-understanding. As the church of Jesus Christ, it is only logical that our identity search be informed by the identity given to Jesus by his first storyteller. Setting this opening to the book in its first-century context and in particular in its imperial context helps us identify Mark’s expansive outlook for the God movement present in Jesus.

Mark does not begin his Gospel as a traditional Hellenistic biography by noting the character with which the author is concerned, but instead claims that this story is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.2 This simple phrase is a loaded one, for it first claims that the text is simply the start and does not contain the complete good news. Better yet, the good news is more than a text to read and digest and more than a story to hear and remember; the good news of Jesus Christ is about more than one person’s life or a past happening, but something that has begun and is still present.3 The good news is not just an event or a singular happening; it is a life-determining reality that moves from this storied beginning to an end yet unknown.

“Good news” is not a benign term in Mark’s historical context. The good news was proclaimed after a military victory and expanded to mean “the good news of peace and prosperity” following such a victory.4 We also know that good news (also translated “good tidings” or “gospel”) was used in the emperor cult and was associated with the “empire’s benefits such as an emperor’s birth, military conquest, or ascension to power.”5 One famous example is the Priene inscription, which originated within a decade of Jesus’ birth. It declares the emperor Augustus to be the “savior” and “concludes with the line ‘the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning for the world of good tidings that came by reason of him.’”6 Seeing that Rome pronounced “divine sanction for its empire, claiming that the gods had chosen Rome to manifest the gods’ sovereignty, presence, agency, and blessings on earth,” Mark’s counter claim about the beginning of the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ is made quite radical.7 In this context, the following claims that Jesus is the “Christ,” the anointed king of Israel, and “Son of God” take on an even greater meaning.8 Rome had already anointed a king for Israel and already had a “son of God” in resident. Caesar, the Herods, and the structures they represent had a gospel, and Mark set the one beginning in Jesus over against it. Regardless of the other interpretive categories at work, Mark’s title for his narrative deliberately parodies the political propaganda of the reigning empire.9

If this is how Mark starts his Gospel, it is no wonder that it ends with Salome, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James fleeing the empty tomb after being seized by terror and amazement: “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”10 When read in a first-century context, this fear makes perfect sense because there was already a “good news” in circulation, an anointed one on the throne, and a son of God ruling the established order. If the empty tomb of the crucified but resurrected Jesus means the good news of Jesus Christ, kingdom-proclaimer, Son of God did not die on a cross, then this story is not over and is just beginning. If the expansive claim of Mark is true, one should be fearful because the good news of Jesus is not so good for those on the beneficial take from the current arrangement under the Roman domination system. One who benefits from the imperial power structure is much more inclined to protect the world as it is. The peace of Rome is kept on the backs of the poor and the blood of resisters. Cross-building coercion is scary even if the tomb of the cross-bearer is empty. For this reason, it is important to see the second reservoir of identity in this first section. This is the reservoir that empowered the person of Jesus and gave shape to his own self-understanding.

Mark’s narrative about Jesus begins with Jesus having gone to find John the baptizer at the Jordan. We do not know what caused Jesus to seek John, but something about the renewal movement of John attracted Jesus as it did many others in the Judean countryside. Baptism in the Jordan was a symbol of renewal. It echoes the exodus story in which God brought Israel out from the Egyptian domination system—a liberation symbol. John’s own homiletical reference to Isaiah 40, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” is an echo of the return of Israel to Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile—a reunion symbol.11 These symbols are then tied to the practice of baptism, which, contrary to its traditional function in first-century Judaism, is here used for the remission of sin and not simply the cleansing of ritual purity.12 In the ministry of John, you have the interplay of three metaphors of God’s redemptive activity: liberation, reunion, and forgiveness of sin. Here these are mutually supporting and interpreting metaphors of a single divine reality that Jesus will identify as the kingdom of God or the God movement. No one metaphor can grasp what John offered those who came to him at the Jordan, but in his encounter with John, Jesus had a revelatory moment with the God he sought.13

The renewing and redemptive God presented by John is one for whom we are to wait. Mark notes that “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, confessing their sin,” and it can be assumed that they went back to their homes, families, and lives anticipating the in-breaking of God’s renewal.14 The nature of God’s imminent renewal in the preaching of John was that of judgment, and in preparation for it one repented and was baptized.15 How Jesus ended up being baptized is not discussed in Mark, but his baptism’s meaning is given before and after the event. Before the baptism, John speaks of one who is to come, an apocalyptic figure from God who will bring the Holy Spirit in a more powerful way. Presumably this was Jesus. After John baptized Jesus into the renewal movement, his experience was surely not that of forgiveness of sins, but the anointing of the Spirit. After the baptism when Jesus came out of the water, he saw the heavens tear apart, a violent theophonic image like much of the apocalyptic eschatology associated with John’s preaching, but then the Spirit descends on him like a dove.16 In this experience, which only Jesus and the reader witness, a voice comes from heaven and says, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”17 In this moment Jesus realizes his identity before God and is forever shaped by it. At this moment as never before, Jesus receives the anointing and filling of the Spirit, like others in the “Spirit-filled stream of Judaism” before him.18 From this moment to the cross, Jesus no longer expects God to come with apocalyptic divine fury like John, but instead knows God in a more intimate and relational way; he knows God as Abba. The dramatic contrasts in the ministries of Jesus and John are based here, in this moment where God breaks open the heavens to draw near to Jesus.19 The imminent one whose kingdom he will announce is first the loving Abba, not a wrathful judge, who knows the names of all God’s children. The level of intimacy between God and Jesus, who now is self-consciously given the identity of Son and Beloved of God, causes a dramatic shift in the conceptual vision of God between John and Jesus. Jesus did not keep this a secret; instead, God as Abba forever shaped the ministry and life of Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus was to be committed in life and in prayer to God, sharing in the abba-intimacy of the Son.

The church of Jesus needs to take these two markers of identity seriously. If the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God, was a challenge to the character, method, message, and reign of the ruling powers of the first century, then those who wish to follow Jesus today should not be surprised or shocked to find that the gospel remains a story of revolution. The domestication of the Christian faith is clearly an activity in which the church invests a good deal of time, but to what end? At what point will we have made the gospel so palatable to the power wielders that it is no longer the gospel of Jesus Christ, but mammon? Though a gross understatement, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not empire compatible and domination friendly. The reason this is true is much more than a historical argument about the intention of Mark; it is an argument about the character of God. If God is as loving as Jesus said he was, desiring intimate relationships of healing empowerment with all, and if God was definitively revealed in the person and work of Jesus, then God does not rule like Caesar nor even as a slightly more benevolent Caesar, but as a loving parent.20 For God to seek out and initiate abba-intimacy with humanity is to reshape the notion of power in contrast to the one holding sway over the world. This world-holding sway occurs and thrives in dehumanized coercive relationships. To follow Jesus is to seek out and announce to the dehumanized their favor and friendship with God.

The church can begin to take the contrasting notions of power seriously by first taking the full humanity of all into account. If our life together is transformed as Jesus’ was after his baptism by the abba-intimacy of God, then our understanding of power and people would be shaped by the vision of God that Jesus revealed. Relationships of dehumanization exist when one destroys the otherness of the Other, the dehumanized one refuses to give the Other the space and possibility of differentiation without violence, and the Other is judged, given value, and named by the dehumanizer. This was the pattern of Rome; it organized and justified relentless exploitation of humans by treating them as anything but. Think of the rhetoric of the Hutu radio during the ethnic genocide in Rwanda, “we must kill the Tutsi cockroaches.” Dehumanization can transcend the socio-political sphere into any relational network, with domestic violence being an example of its darkest form. When dehumanization occurs, one has claimed the position of final arbiter of reality and interpreter of identity, turning what should be a mutually informing and enriching relationship between peoples into a hemorrhaging cycle of violence. In the relational nexus of a dehumanizing reality, both parties are impoverished. The violated individuals are withheld their own personhood, which is abused, and violators seek to establish themselves on their own accord. Violators, like those they violate, are dehumanized because a person’s humanity is only found in going out of the self in relationship with others. Violators have turned recklessly inward. They have sought to say what “no one can ever say . . . , for no one is God.” They have said, “I am who I am.”21

The first step to finding our identity as the church in the pattern of Jesus is opening ourselves to others, including God. If this story is true, then opening ourselves to a relationship with God will not reveal a dehumanizing God. Many live in fear that God does not value the otherness of God’s own creation and that God demands conformity and possession over the gift of respect and affection. Many fear because they have a false concept of God in which God has not chosen relationship with creation but uses God’s infinite otherness to annihilate the possibility of freedom necessary for a true relationship of love. This first step of the church is to reject this concept of God as an idol. When the heavens are torn apart and God comes near, we do not hear the march of God’s apocalyptic army, but the voice of one who first invites us into an identity as the beloved of God. Through our friendship “in Christ,” we come to know God first as Abba. The first step is to find our identity “in Christ” and make our foundational claim: we are the beloved of God.

The second step is based on the observation that with a humanizing God and a church of God-belovedness, our relational nexus of identity giving and receiving has to be expanded. Because God is the creator of all, by being in relationship to God, our relational network has become infinitely open to the entire diversity of God’s creation. The life of the church must struggle to preserve this openness and the freedom of a relationship established by and in Abba. It is precisely this concept of God, established in the Abba-intimacy and belovedness of creation, that gives rise to the expansion of the ministry of Jesus to the marginalized and eventually turns a Jewish sect into a global community. The radial openness and freedom God gives God’s beloved is foundational for the movement of God in the world. God is love, and “true love nurtures wholeness, granting to the beloved the authenticity and independence of his existence. Creative love does not ask the beloved for his dependency but for his personhood,” and so “the eyes of love perceive yet unrealized possibilities.”22 When God is first known as Abba, the relational stance of God must be re-imaged, especially when omnipotent coercive compliance with the divine will is the inherited image. The love of Abba changes the way identity is formed because “love, on the one hand, envisions in the beloved the destiny of his life and the promise of life’s fulfillment. Love views the beloved with the eyes of God. Yet love too respects the beloved. He anticipates that the potential will be realized through the other person’s own decision and effort. Love can support, but it does not seek to control, the struggle towards realization.”23 When Jesus came to a realization of his own identity in God, he was tempted but did not waver because even in the desert of confrontation, Abba was near. With an openness to God established and an identity as the beloved claimed and expanded to all in the relational nexus of Abba, having been tempted to forsake this vision that challenges all dehumanizing powers, Jesus speaks his first words. These words come out of the experience of baptism, temptation, and an identity found in abba-intimacy.

The Embracing Abba and the God Movement

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:14-15)

Every Gospel has a powerful sermon at the beginning. Luke has Jesus reading the scroll of Isaiah that says, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”24 After reading this, he proclaimed the Scripture fulfilled in their hearing. In Matthew, the first discourse of Jesus is the legendary Sermon on the Mount, a kind of manifesto for the followers of Jesus. Here in Mark, Jesus gives a one-line zinger of a sermon that contains the mystery of the mission of Jesus. There is no challenge to the notion that the kingdom of God was the central symbol that determined Jesus’ preaching and interpreted Jesus’ deeds.25 It is important to remember that the kingdom of God finds its “concrete content” as it “emerges from his ministry and activity as a whole,” which requires one to interpret no pericope alone.26 To grasp its meaning or at least its mystery contextually, the brief yet telling narrative structure matters.27

John has been arrested in this Scripture, and so Jesus starts to preach. John was not arrested by just anyone; he was arrested by Herod, a Roman-appointed anointed one of Israel, for challenging Herod’s way of ruling in his preaching. The connection is easily made when one recalls the power-packed beginning of the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ is going to continue the challenge of the domination system’s power established in John. The resistance will end, as did John’s life, in a hostile confrontation, arrest, and death. The contrast between the two comes in the middle of verse 14: Jesus took the prophetic mantle of John to the people. Empowered by the spirit of Abba and the universal horizon of love for a God who is loving parent, Jesus ceases to preach a gospel at a riverbank on the margins of society, but instead takes God’s message to the margins. This distinction is supremely important for understanding the meaning of Jesus’ sermon. It must be heard differently when the God it comes from is known as Abba and not apocalyptic judge. Even though God still has the same roles, here king and judge, Abba as king and Abba as judge mean something completely different. This difference is acted upon when Jesus takes the message of the kin-dom of God to the beloved of God—the captive, blind, poor, and oppressed.28 Knowing God as Abba makes the nature of the loving parent foundational for understanding the nature of God. A God who desires abba-intimacy does not stay on the margins with a message of coming judgment, but goes into and seeks the margins of the world and announces good news of jubilee.

For followers of Christ, this distinction is not only theological but also practical. If we are to follow Jesus, we cannot be a people of the margins and live as aliens to our Abba’s world. When John left the scene and Jesus stood up, Jesus did not take up residence in John’s post on the outskirt of society but shifted the focus of the mission from margin living to margin embracing. Jesus did not continue to operate with the rigid sacred secular divide he inherited, but engaged all of creation as the beloved of Abba. When the coming reign is Abba’s, it is not a reign of fear and terror but of hope and reconciliation. These central categories, hope and reconciliation, must shape our life together. When a community is no longer founded on fear of God’s coming terror, it is less likely to define itself in the negative and separate from the world. Instead, a community that hopes in God’s reconciliation defines itself in the positive, by announcing in word and way the center of the community. Inherently, hope in reconciliation gives birth to a people of hospitality because every movement of openness is a movement toward the horizon of hope, namely the realization of Abba’s reconciling reign. The church as an institution has often failed to be on the margins where the kin-dom is found. It is easy for each new generation of leaders to decide that what the last generation said and where the last generation lived is the only appropriate way. Against this prevailing reality Jesus invites us to follow him into the margins and refuse to be marginal. Refusing marginal living does not presume we would not be marginalized; after all, the movement of God led Jesus to Jerusalem, where his marginalization took the shape of a cross. Embracing the margins of society means keeping the focus outside ourselves. Like the church, Jesus was tempted to stay where God first became intimately vivid, take up the ministry of John by simply stepping into his shoes, and tame down the message to appease John’s executioners, but Jesus did none of these. Empowered by the Spirit, we too are called to share in the mission of God for the world, which leaves no one where he or she started. The mission of God is the coming of God’s kingdom in the world, and this is the substance of Jesus’ own mission—one the church shares.29 Simply put, the concern here is that the church not confuse itself with the kingdom of God. The two are not synon