The Emerging Church and the Stone-Campbell Movement: Some Striking Similarities (Part 2)

By William R. Baker

In part one, three surprising similarities between the Stone-Campbell and emerging church movements were observed, discussed under these headings: “Beyond Denominationalism,” “Vintage Christianity,” and “Biblical Christianity””Acts.” This week, four more similarities will be investigated.

Local Church

Emerging churches emphasize developing ministry and principles based on the community where they are located. This goes with their “missional” emphasis. They are “externally focused” on incarnating the gospel to the people in their community in creative and fresh ways.1

But in doing so, they also embrace an approach that mobilizes and equips every member of the believing body to take the lead in some capacity. This “open-source” approach to local church leadership bucks denominational leadership, for sure, but also dismantles the top-down leadership style that characterizes most megachurches.2 Doug Pagitt questions whether he can even describe his theological ideas in isolation from his local church, saying, “I am the pastor of a community of faith, and so my theology is embedded in that community.”3

These ideas would ring true to Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, who advocated the authority of Christ residing in the local churches rather than in denominational headquarters. Other than the biblically structured, local authority of a plurality of elders, they advocated strongly the priesthood of all believers. Distrusting denominationally trained clergy, they also supported the ability of regular folks to understand the Bible and to develop the ability to preach and teach.

Against Creeds and Confessions

Emerging churches shudder at Christian “belief” being confined to creeds and confessions. Subscribing to a list of statements based on old, modernist battles over doctrine misses the heart of Christianity, which is personally knowing Jesus. Christians don”t simply believe a list of things, they live out their faith in Jesus in their everyday lives.4

This is not a rejection of the truths embedded in creeds, but a fierce determination that there has to be more, something more real, more authentic about being a Christian. Ray Anderson counsels, “Emerging churches should continue to recite the creed, but their life depends on a personal knowledge of Christ, not just having an orthodox Christology. . . . I fear that one can recite the creed without ever answering the question, “˜Who do you say that I am?””5

Like emerging churches, the Campbells and Stone also had an aversion to creeds and confessions. They viewed them as the human instruments that divide that church. Creeds inscribed theological principle based on human reason and debate rather than on pragmatic examination of what the Bible actually says.

Reciting creeds, in so much as they are based on the truth of the Bible, is acceptable, but Christians must not substitute them for the Bible itself. Similar to the emphasis on Christ among emerging churches, Campbell and Stone advocated the slogan, “No creed by Christ.”

Eucharist

Emerging churches place the Lord”s Supper, Eucharist as they prefer to call it, at the center of their worship as a gathered community. Bucking the historic trend in most Protestant denominations to observe Eucharist monthly or quarterly, emerging churches celebrate Eucharist weekly.

This is one of the most recognizable nods to the early church and Catholicism, but it is also recognized that the weekly practice of Communion goes back to the earliest house churches of the New Testament. Theologically, Eucharist not only embodies the sacrifice of Christ, it is the ultimate incarnation of the believing community into his life each week.6 Andy Crouch explains, “The sacraments answer the postmodern hunger for a true story after modernity”s impoverished recital of facts and figures. Week after week, they allow us to revisit the story of the Christian gospel””another”s death for the sake of our life.”7

Congregations affiliated with Christian churches and churches of Christ have set themselves apart from nearly all Protestant churches since the days of Campbell and Stone in our weekly observance of the Eucharist. What we have been trying to convince Protestants and other evangelicals for almost 200 years, emerging churches have fully embraced. In fact, emerging churches may add thoughtful twists to observance of the Lord”s Supper: allowing generous portions of time, inviting people forward to partake, offering large amounts of bread and wine (more like a feast), and multiple self-service tables around the auditorium.8

What may have become routine in Christian churches and churches of Christ is being enthusiastically rediscovered in emerging churches and may offer valuable ways to invigorate this essential practice for our worshiping communities.

Baptism

Emerging churches have discovered the value of baptism for adults. Similar to Eucharist, the place of baptism in the New Testament, but also in the early church, is recognized. Baptisms are essential celebrations in the communal life of congregations.9 Andy Crouch, one of the strongest emerging church advocates for baptism, views baptism as the ideal response to the individualism “taking us beyond both modernity and postmodernity.”

Brian McLaren also writes extensively about the essential place of baptism in the life of the church. Though he prefers adult immersion, he is most interested in believers understanding the theological implications of their baptism, what he calls its “symbolic” value, particularly as a firm commitment to a new way of life.10 He declares, “I”m less interested in how and when you were baptized than I am in why and whether you live the meaning of your baptism, whenever it happened and however much water was used to do it.”11

As with Eucharist, Christian churches and churches of Christ have emphasized the importance of baptism from the earliest days of the Campbells and Stone to replicate the practice of the church from its very beginning in Acts 2:38. Rejecting infant baptism as institutionalizing salvation without personal expression of individual faith, congregations that follow the Campbells and Stone have made personal salvation dependent on adult baptism.

Oddly, Andy Crouch is amazingly unaware of the place baptism holds in Christian churches, saying, “In almost no church that I know of are baptism and communion regularly the source for whole sermons, sermon illustrations on other topics, or Christian education””even though the New Testament would fall apart if you removed all the allusions to these two foundational practices in the life of the early church.”12

McLaren, on the other hand, is only too aware of our emphasis on adult baptism, even spotting””and distancing himself from””the easy tendency to overemphasize baptism to the neglect of other essential aspects of salvation.13

Regardless, the renewed focus on baptism among emerging churches is refreshing and ought to encourage those who come from the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement to continue to honor the place of baptism in our congregations.

Seven Traits

This study has identified seven traits of emerging churches that overlap with the historic concerns of Christian churches and churches of Christ, congregations connected to the movement that has grown from the ministries of the Campbells and Stone. To be sure, these two movements are not identical and should not be identified as the same. But the significant areas of overlap make it not at all surprising that some American congregations identify with both the historic Stone-Campbell Movement and the contemporary emerging church movement. It should be expected that this number will continue to increase, or at least that congregations will share some characteristics of both as they try to cope with the reality of bringing the Christian message authentically into a postmodern, post-Protestant environment.

As both are viewed with suspicion by the evangelical and Protestant communities, emerging churches should see Christian churches and churches of Christ as comrades in arms on many fronts. Opportunities for dialogue between congregations from these two orientations should abound and be explored enthusiastically.

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1Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson, The Externally Focused Church (Loveland: Group, 2004), entire; Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 116.

2Leonard Sweet, Brian McLaren, and Jerry Haselmayer, A is for Abductive: The Language of the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 90-92.

 3 Doug Pagitt, “The Emerging Church and Embodied Theology,” 119-43, in Robert Webber, ed., Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 120.

4Will Samson, “The End of Reinvention: Mission Beyond Market Adoption Cycles,” 154-61, in Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, eds., An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 158, 159; Dan Kimball, “Humble Theology: Re-Exploring Doctrine While Holding on to the Truth,” 214-24, in Pagitt and Jones, Manifesto, 222; Sweet, McLaren, Haselmayer, Abductive, 116, 231; Roxburgh and Romanuk, Missional Leader, 121.

5Ray Anderson, An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006), 43, 44; Michael Horton, “Better Homes & Gardens,” 105-38 in Leonard Sweet, ed., The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 123.

6Karen Ward, “Emerging Churches and Communal Theology,” in Webber, Listening, 170; Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 229.

7Andy Crouch, “Life After Postmodernity,” in Sweet, Five Perspectives, 85.

8Ibid., 164.

9Ward, “Communal Theology,” 174; Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 24.

10Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 223-38.

11Ibid., 228.

12Andy Crouch, “Life after Postmodernity,” in Sweet, Five Perspectives, 90.

13McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 226, 228.

William R. Baker ([email protected]) is editor of Stone-Campbell Journal and a professor of New Testament at Cincinnati Bible Seminary””Graduate Division of Cincinnati Christian University. This article is adapted from his presentation at the Pepperdine Lectures, Malibu, California, on May 2, 2008.