There are four ways to seek truth, says Aristotle: Religion, Science, Philosophy, and Art. A local pastor at an "emergent" church argues that because folks today aren't in churches, don't do research, and can't read Kant, the search for truth ends up in a movie theater.

The room that heard him say that laughed and nodded approvingly. He was talking about his church’s approach that includes - or you could say is defined by - dramatic productions and other visual stimuli. I really can’t believe what I’m hearing.

Movies are entertainment. The number of people who view them as art has got to be equivalent to the number working in research labs or those intelligently discussing Kant. And it must be a fraction of the people who are active in some type of religious community. Even Oscar winning pictures have little to do with artistic expression nor a search for truth. When you look at art you see what the artist puts before you, and if that’s truth, I say it’s a coincidence.

This is the day of the Emergent Church at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. A series of events during the day where folks who personify the emergent movement come to share what they are doing, what it means, and why it’s important. They are offering a theology and attempting to define this thing that has for years existed simply as the thing that isn’t defined.

It’s missional, it is incarnational. Spell check may not like those words, but I trust you can gather what they mean. Emergent, as it is simply called, is based upon theology that is missional and incarnational. That means they go out and exist in communities serving the needs of the indigent and they take on the form of those they serve. One of the panelists from this afternoon’s discussion was on the staff of The Pittsburgh Project with me 4 years ago. He’s married now and he is a member of Three Nails.

Three Nails is a “church,” defined by what it is not. There is no pastor, no session, no pews, and no liturgy of any kind. The group (sorry, to over-define them there) is nothing more than a collaboration of “cells” that meet in private homes. This is the result of the relevancy movement in American churches, now the small group is the church.

I don’t know if I’ve heard this somewhere or if it just came to me while I was sitting there baffled at the witness occurring in the room. “Don’t put the cart before the horse” is something we sometimes say, but here, Henry Ford has put a motor in the cart and it has run over the horse and crippled it. An analogy too far?

We have been building temples, alters, oracles, cathedrals, synagogues, chapels, and churches for about 5000 years and here in the 21st century folks have had enough. The people which we are called to minister to are just on fire for God but they don’t like to wake up on Sunday. They don’t like to wear ties. They don’t like to feel judged and talked down to. And the pastor says, well OK, lets do it your way. Lets empty the church, sell all the pews and the decorations, fire the staff, and give everyone the keys to their own salvation right in the comfort of their own living room. Lets just hope that this movement with no infrastructure and no institutes lives on for more than a few weeks.

While my fool speech may betray a few positive aspects of the concept, the movement must be understood to be generally absurd. How can a concept of Christian witness exist this way? What is diametrically opposite to Catholicism is not Satanism, it’s this stuff, this idea of church that is so devoid of structure and hierarchy that it is formless. Who is to say what kind of faith will arise from this? We let the lax attitude of the non-practicing Christian thrust his lazy will upon us so that we become perfectly relevant to his world and his time in his ways. Where is the responsibility there? Where are the ethics? Where are the norms? How can so many duties of the church be dismissed and be called irrelevant all at once?

The Christ, the Cross, Justification, the Bible. All of these have been available at your local church all your life. The one that Emergents bring to you is no different; it’s just a little easier because it allows you to establish yourself as whatever you want to be and only once you’re comfortable does it join your life. You may not notice it at first, it looks exactly like you, but it’s there waiting for the moment when you least expect it to whisk you off to Florida to build a Habitat house.

*These thoughts are pretty ragged and disjointed, but I wanted to get something down before my class this evening. Someday I’ll look into one of these books on pluralism and try to find more to object to.

As always, your attention is appreciated.

<><