fishers, surfers and casters

Many posts and discussions in the blogs examined focus on corporate and personal faith practices. These include the presentation of liturgies and prayers written by bloggers, journaling of preparations for community worship services, private prayer regimens, and discussions on traditional and contemporary worship styles as practised in churches. Evident in these conversations is a desire to reclaim and renovate practices and symbolic environments that appear lost in recent Protestant history.

Bloggers reveal their interest in private devotional and meditational practices, including contemplative prayer and lectio divina. Some bloggers talk of their desire to inject into their daily lives a sense of the monastic, to engage in practices that bring the sacred into ordinary living. Some bloggers speak favourably of rituals borrowed from other faiths and new religious movements.

In conversations about corporate worship, bloggers show they do not enjoy the light and sound shows of many contemporary Sunday services. They tend to resist the directive styles of music lyrics and liturgies that either conform to strict theological principles or are filled with redundant words (especially “I just really want to…” type prayers). They enjoy the use of art and popular music to create audio-visual environments that gently guide people through an experience of the sacred. The poems, prayers and liturgies offered use themes and motifs borrowed from urban living to connect love, pain, joy and loss with God’s story of hope and renewal.

In the conversations about the purpose and nature of Christian worship, these emerging church bloggers want to dissolve the distinctions made between religious and secular text, and sacred and profane spaces. They do this by suggesting the use of popular images, music and other texts in otherwise traditional services, and through the use of art installations, promote the creation and mediation of experiences of the sacred in other public spaces. In their personal lives, they show a desire to break away from the “Sunday Christian” lifestyle by bringing the religious into everyday living.

In some cases, blogging itself is considered part of this spiritual regimen. Bloggers present posts for the sole purpose for encouraging others to contemplate and share stories, or to meditate on the words or pictures on screen and tell of their experience of doing so. Others treat the blogosphere as a confessional space, telling stories of their daily rights and wrongs and requesting absolution and support from their readers. Others ask readers to pray with them on private or public issues, and offer a prayer to be read by their audience, or a picture to meditate on.

Bloggers in the sample are generally unified in their stance on a number of social and moral issues they perceive in the world around them. The involvement of Australia and her allies in wars in the Middle East generate by far the most posts and comments. Followed closely are posts and comments on environmental issues, ranging from promotion of environmental actions to critique of the Australian government’s current environmental policies. Many discussions focus on the distribution of wealth, both nationally and globally. Reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous people, the government’s treatment of refugees, international human rights, the treatment of prisoners in detention and after release, race relations, and the sexualisation of young people in television are also popular topics. They believe Christians should not take a neutral stance on these issues, but respond to God’s call to seek out the poor and oppressed, treat all people as neighbours, and consider themselves as accountable to God in their stewardship of the planet’s resources.

Such issues as abortion and homosexuality barely receive a mention, and even then, outright opposition is questioned. Bloggers appear to reject or ignore the moral campaigns of the so-called religious right, to contend that global issues of justice, peace and care for the environment are greater and more urgent. For this reason emerging church bloggers may be labelled “Christian left” or “liberal”. While they may align the “family values” mentality of the government of the time (when the coalition of the Liberal and National Parties held power) to the term “religious right”, they are slow to accept the terms “left”or “liberal”.

Most blogs examined in this study are authored by members of churches in mainstream Protestant denominations. Some are clergy and others are lay members who are working professionally for synods, dioceses and congregations. Bloggers generally identify with their denominations, to the extent that, if the emerging church were in any way seen as a separate entity, they would not want to belong to it. For them, the emerging church conversation is a context for considering change in their own church’s life, rather than an alternative to their church.

Yet they see their churches “stuck in Christendom”. They claim the divisions that the institutional church creates between ordained and lay, and sacred and secular culture, are viewed as false by the world outside the church. The face of the church has been taken over by the “religious right”, whose fascination with “family values” not only serves to exclude many from participation, but denies God’s true call for the church.

As people with leadership roles in their local context, many have much to say about the nature of leadership within the church. They regret that clergy often are called to represent the entire ministry of their congregations, and as such have to live up to difficult expectations. They are suspicious of the books and conferences that are advertised in clergy circles, promoting answers to “successful” ministry. They refuse the notion that one’s ministry strategy will work for every pastor, and they are critical of the criteria on which such success is measured.

Most evident in posts and conversations in the study is a critique of the so-called mega-church model of Christian community. While bloggers take Evangelical theology with a grain of salt, they see the mega-church model of ministry as contrary to the Gospel. Under particular attack fall Hillsong in Sydney and Riverview Church in Perth (though a couple of bloggers defend some of Hillsong’s projects). These are not churches. They are businesses who promote spiritual goods and services for money, and treat their congregants as consumers rather than participants.

Bloggers consider the emerging church conversation a search for a “third option”, where traditional churches and mega-churches fail to connect Gospel with community and culture. In doing so, bloggers open their space as a refuge from these places, encouraging readers to share their stories of exclusion and promoting conversations of possible alternatives. From these conversations emerges a picture of the “ideal” organisation of Christians, where all members are active in decision-making and action in mission, according to their abilities, and where leaders are called to be “on the margins” of the community: equipping lay members in their own work, and exploring opportunities for new ministry projects and practices.

Matt and Stephen have offered some important and helpful critical observations on my last post. While I maintain that his reflections on the post are his personal views, and I’m trying to summarise the published thoughts of a wider range of bloggers, I think his comments warrant a review of my last post, even if it’s just tidying up the wording a bit. So, here goes…

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Blogs are a vehicle for participants in the sample to reflect on the practices of Christians in relation to those outside the church. It is also a place to retell personal experiences of meeting others in ministry, ask questions and share knowledge.

Generally these bloggers are suspicious of programs and activities that attempt to convert people to Christianity, or attract them to come to church. For a start, having everyone come to church will not necessarily make the world a better place. Also, the motives by which the programs are implemented are under scrutiny. Bloggers question the packaging of spiritual goods for consumption and edification (and profit) of the supplier. The “God-shaped hole” rationale, which treats everybody as “needing the Gospel”, is viewed by bloggers as arrogant and judgmental. Bloggers believe there is not much good in going to church that people haven’t found in other faith practices and religious sources. The converse is also true; history shows that church-goers have much to be held accountable for.

This is why a small number of bloggers have played with term “apologetics”. Bloggers accept that their faith is on trial by wider society, they seek to learn from others how to right previous wrongs, search for common objectives, and strive for reconciliation. In a few posts some bloggers have retold the experience of the Desert Fathers, recalling a historical period when, like this one, Christianity needed a defence. For these emerging church bloggers, the culture wars between Christendom and secularisation is over, and Christendom lost. Yet there is a beauty in the story of Christ and followers that deserves declaration, both within their experience and into their imaginings. The story offers a prophetic voice that bloggers receive in order to responsibly speak to their readers on their cultural experience.

For many, Christian witness is most authentically expressed in service. This may involve offering resources to communities in need, caring for individuals who are marginalised in these communities. They wish to see themselves not as missionaries to the lost, but fellow travellers, who carry the same questions, and are willing to find answers in others. Christian mission is as much a quest for self-transformation, and renewal of the present-day church, than it is a call to reform larger society.

These voices, then, do not use blogging to rally the troops, or convert people to their way of thinking, but as a confession that their experience of Christianity is not all they have wanted it to be, and that the world they know is not the same world their churches think it is. They call out for alternative methods of thinking and doing mission, and seek to engage non-Christians in the discussion. Perhaps there is another paradox to be noted, that in the use of new technologies these bloggers seek a return to older, even ancient, conversations.