This is Part 2 of 3 of a post entitled "Becoming Convergent. The first appeared yesterday, August 9th. Click here to read it. On Friday, August 12th, the full post will be released in .pdf form.
Becoming Convergent
by Brian McLaren
Meanwhile, Grace and I opened our home for a Bible study which consisted of a mix of Christians and nonChristians. What I said I’d never do again (plant another church) started happening. The group grew to twenty, forty, seventy … and soon a house church had been born, a joint venture with our good friends Shobha and Bill Duncan. (Bill had been active in Church of the Savior in Washington, DC – a church which anticipated and exemplifies many good qualities now associated with “the emerging church.”) Our little church had two distinguishing characteristics. First, it was concerned about evangelism – about reaching and discipling unchurched people. My experience in higher education – an inhospitable place for faith in those days – reinforced my belief that it would take new kinds of churches to connect with highly educated unchurched people. Second, we were trying to bring a wide diversity of Christians together – notably, both noncharismatics and charismatics. Some people will remember how bitterly divided the church was in those days over “the charismatic issue.”
Around this time (1985), I had heard Rick Warren speak. He wasn’t as famous back then – but his message was the same solid message it has always been. What inspired me most was the simple realization that leading a church could be a good way of reaching and discipling unchurched people. Shortly thereafter, I heard Bill Hybels speak, and again, I sensed that church-based ministry and evangelism could be synergistic. (The fact that this synergy now seems obvious is a testament to how successful Rick and Bill have been, and how the church has been blessed by their ministries. Although some people have tried to pit me against them, I have always had the highest gratitude and respect for these men and their churches, because I never would have left teaching to become a pastor if it weren’t for their example.)
I completed my masters degree and began working as a teacher at several local colleges. I was spending ten to twenty hours a week doing church-related work as a layperson. Several nights a week, Grace and I would have people over – often seekers, sometimes new believers, leading Bible studies, answering questions, dealing with struggles, seeking to help them in their spiritual growth. As well, I’d be up early one or two mornings a week to meet with people for breakfast before work hours. Grace pointed out to me that now I was a husband, a father as well, a full-time college teacher, and a volunteer staff member at the church. I could do any three out of those four well, she wisely said, but not all four. So, when our leadership team offered to match my teacher’s salary if I would become the church’s pastor – first part-time, then full-time – it seemed like the right thing to do.
A few years later, our church leaders became frustrated because we were committed to evangelism, but were seeing too little evangelistic fruit. We went through a radical rethinking of our church – becoming even more deeply influenced by Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and others, while also trying to contextualize to our own unique setting: East Coast, demographically diverse, highly educated, liberal politically, etc. The rethinking resulted in a lot of new folk coming to the church – most of them unchurched, and they all came with questions and frustrations with standard, conservative-Evangelical-religious-right Christianity.
In 1990, I realized that the questions they were asking were resonant with those issues I had confronted in graduate school relating to epistemology and hermeneutics. I realized that my best answers didn’t answer their questions because they were asking questions on a deeper level: they weren’t just asking, “What’s the answer to my question?” They were asking, “How can you be sure any question can receive a definitive answer?” I had been an avid reader all my life, and I was as familiar with the writings of C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer as anyone I knew. But as much as their lines of thought had helped me, they didn’t always help my seeking friends. I was seeing what Walker Percy had called a certain quality of the postmodern consciousness in these sincere spiritual seekers who sat across the desk from my in my office.
So I faced a choice. I either rejected these friends and turned their questions away, or I sought to better understand them so that I could better help them in their search for God, faith, freedom, forgiveness, hope, and meaning in life. What I did was what any missionary would do in a new or unreached or unresponsive people group. That search set the course for the last fifteen years of my life.
Since then, I have continued to lead Cedar Ridge Community Church as a place where people can “be and make disciples in authentic community for the good of the world.” I have preached hundreds of Biblically-based sermons and done all the other things a pastor does – day in, day out, for over twenty years. In addition, I have invested large amounts of time meeting with young church planters and other young leaders, and many would call me one of their mentors. I have served on several boards, including the board of a wonderful, innovative global mission agency (as board chair), a seminary, and an evangelistic organization. As well, I’ve been able to participate in and serve the relational network known as emergent (emergentvillage.com) – which for the last few years has been bringing together church planters and youth workers and others involved in missional ministry for friendship and conversation about ministry and mission.
I continue to walk with Christ, practicing spiritual disciplines, reaching out to others with the good news, and staying rooted in Scripture. At heart, I am today what I’ve always been: a guy who loves Jesus and believes Jesus is the Savior of the world and absolutely right about everything, and who wants to help everyone I can follow him, experiencing and spreading transformation through the Holy Spirit in the context of authentic Christian community. (I’ve also always been a guy whose sentences are too long and who overuses parentheses.) In recent years, the church has released me part-time so I can devote more time to writing and speaking, and soon, we hope to bring in a new senior pastor so I can serve in the church as a volunteer again.
