Jim Belcher is the founding and lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California. He is co-producer of the docudrama "From Earth to Heaven: The Life and Art of Vincent Van Gogh." He is also the cofounder of the Restoring Community Conference: Integrating Social Interaction, Sacred Space and Beauty in the 21st Century, an annual conference for city officials, planners, builders and architects.
Jim's new book, Deep Church is getting a lot of attention as he works to make sense of the conflict between the emerging and traditional ends of the church while offering a "third way." Read the interview and then jump into the comments below. Jim will be with us today and will interact with your questions.
What motivated you to write Deep Church?
I was motivated to help heal the divisions in the church. As someone who has a foot in both camps, I wanted to call for an end to the rhetorical shouting match between the emerging and traditional branches of the church. This cease fire is needed to create a space for dialogue that is not super charged with distrust. My desire then was to lay out the areas we agree on before we jump to our disagreements. I wanted to eliminate some of the fear that is present about the other side of the argument and start listening to each other and possibly learning from each other.
What does the title, Deep Church, mean?
The phrase comes from an interview C.S. Lewis gave in 1952 where he talked about both the deep church and mere Christianity as the same thing. So the deep church is the mere Christian church. It is based and rooted in the Great Tradition, going back to the 4th and 5th Century creeds and confession before all the divisions took place. Others like Tom Oden have called it the rebirth of orthodoxy.
Who is Deep Church written for?
Deep Church is written for primarily four groups. First, it is for those caught in between, those who like aspects of the emerging and traditional churches but sense that there is a third way. Second it is for those who have heard about the emerging church but don't know anything about it. This is a good introduction. Next, it is for seminary students and young church planters who are formulating their own philosophy of ministry. Deep Church is a handbook for them. Finally, it is for veteran pastors who are discouraged in their ministry and need a shot in the arm--something to inspire them, give them hope and provide a road map for renewal in their own lives and churches.
For those new to the dialogue, can you tell us what the emerging Church is?
The emerging church is a diverse movement. It can't be characterized by one or two thinkers. In the book, I use your description of the three camps that make up the emerging church--the relevants, reconstructionists and revisionists. The relevants have the most in common with the traditional church, sharing much of its theology but wanting to be more contextualized. The reconstructionists share similar theology but are really interested in ecclesiology and changing the church to more represent first century Christianity. The revisionist are the ones that have challenged the traditional church's theology the most. Thus they get the most pushback from the traditional church and recieve most of the attention in the media. But as controversial as they may be, they don't represent the entire movement. I think they would agree with that statement.
Why are they unhappy with the traditional church?
If one spends any amount of time reading the literature, the blogs, and talking with those in the emerging camp, it is clear they are not happy with the traditional church. As I researched the movement I found seven protests that were common in their critique. I lay out these seven protests in my book. They are the following: 1) captivity to Enlightenment rationalism, 2) a narrow view of salvation, 3) belief before belonging, 4) uncontexualized worship, 5) ineffective preaching, 6) weak ecclesiology and 7) tribalism.
How has the emerging church critique been received by the traditional church?
Not so good. The pushback has been swift and strong. The conversation over the past 5 years has been marked by more of a shouting match than a dialogue. Lots of fear and distrust.
Can you describe how Deep Church is a third way?
My goal in the book is to listen and learn from both sides because they both have something to teach us. The way I do this in the book is to devote one chapter to each of the seven protests. I first let the emerging church explain its protest and then I give the traditional church a chance to push back. After appreciating what we can learn from both sides, I then present a third way that can get us beyond the stalemate and bring unity to both sides. My goal is unity and mission; if we are divided than we can't move out together into mission, presenting a unified front to a watching world. I use my own narrative and stories from my travels and church to tie each chapter together.
What do you hope this book accomplishes?
I hope it accomplishes three things. I hope gives people a deep passion and love for the church. Not to give up on it even though it is divided and we don't know all the answers. Second, I hope it brings unity to the Body of Christ-because without it our witness to the watching world is compromised. Finally, I hope that it inspires people to move confidently into the future, with a road map in hand, to participation in all the exciting things God is doing in his world. And what I am hearing from people and pastors on all sides of the conversation is that these four things are happening. Deep Church is really resonating with people across the theological and church spectrum. For that I am deeply grateful.
Jim is with us today so bring your thoughts and questions into the conversation below in the comment section.
Posted on October 5, 2009 at 8:00 AM ~ 20 Comments
Tagged with: church, cooperation, emergent, emerging, traditional
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Jim,
The topic of the book is stirring for a young college student with his sights set on being a church planter.
I have not read the book yet (though it is in my amazon shopping cart now), so forgive me if this is covered in the book, but what advice would you offer to a young church-planter-to-be? How would you recommend someone prepare for planting a deep church?
Hi Jim...proud of you. This is a great book, I preordered my copy and got it a few weeks ago. You ARE smart, just like I expected:)
Question: How would you like to see unity in the church played out in a local context? Is it your hope that churches of a particular city would band together to impact their city and if so, what does that look like at Redeemer?
Daniel,
The most important thing is mentoring. I would recommend doing an internship with another church planter or network of churches. This will help you see it modeled. Church planting is one of the hardest things in the world. So many of them fail for lack of training and money. But at the same time it is amazingly thrilling and dynamic. We need many, many new churches to reach the population of the US and the world. So mentoring and training are key. I hope Deep Church inspires and informs you! Shalom!
I look forward to reading your book. I find it interesting there can be such controversy over a topic that should be a passion for all believers. Boiled down, both sides of the issue should agree. We need to be the church to the world such that the lost will find Jesus among us. Is the key difficulty among non-missional minded folks, the problem of getting dirty in the world as they form relationship with the lost?
Janet,
Great to hear from you! Michelle (my wife and your cousin for those reading this) says hello. We are right in the middle of getting our kids through breakfast and off to school (it is 7:30am here in CA) so I will have to be brief! I would love to see local churches band together on the local level to reach the city. We are just in the process of learning how to do this and have a long way to go. We are learning to move from theory to practice in this area. But the churches in Portland have done a great job working together to seek the peace of the city.
Do you have any examples about churches doing this well?
Jim
Archie,
Good question! One of the things that inspired guys like Dan Kimball (and still does) in the early days of the emerging conversation was evangelism and the unwillingness of the traditional church to ask the hard questions of contextualization in a post-Christian world. The emerging church felt like the traditional church was tribal, too afraid of being contaminated by the post-modern world. So at the heart of the disagreement was a different way of looking at the world and the culture around us. The emerging church wants to reach postmoderns and feels like the traditional church only wants to stay pure. The traditional church pushes back and claims the emerging church has become too much like the world and thus has compromised. Who is right? After all, we are called to be both "salt and light." We have to maintain our saltiness (not become like the world) and at the same time be a light (not be tribal) to a dark world. This is a hard question. How do we avoid both errors? How do we live in the world but not be of the world? My chapter called Deep Culture is my attempt to find this balance and to find a "third way" that both the emerging and traditional camps can get behind, together, and thus move into mission to a world that desperately needs the Gospel.
Thanks for writing this book. This is what we were trying to do when we planted in Colorado Springs seven years ago. Although, after 5 years we had a congregation of about 250, and many, if not half, were made up of people who had given up on church, but were still looking for God (many 12 steppers). Unfortunately, it was not a sustainable model.
What we learned is that the deeply unchurched, take time to come to a point of active discipleship - and even longer to be contributing members of the congregation. We thought the unchurched would come running to this type of unchurch - and we thought the denomination would throw resources our way when they saw the people we were reaching. Neither happened. In fact, we found the prejudice towards organized religion runs deep in much of the population and the lack of unconditional love runs deep in the church.
In your third-way, what have been your outreach/evangelisms results? Are you reaching the deeply secular population? If you are, do they show rapid gains in their discipleship? And finally, how do you maintain the integrity of "the church" in the face of great worldly influence?
Thanks! G
I have two questions. For those who have read Deep Church, what have you found most helpful? Has it inspired you do think or do things differently? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Jim
What do you mean by "a narrow view of salvation"??
Jeff,
Good question. The emerging protest, as I call it in the book, is that the traditional church is too focused on the individual and his/her salvation alone. Salvation has become a kind of fire insurance that gets us into Heaven but does not make much of a difference in this world. Also, according to the emerging protest, in this case I focus on Brian McLaren's analysis in my book, there is too much emphasis on certain parts of the atonement, i.e. penal atonement on the cross, and not enough emphasis on what Jesus calls the Gospel--the Kingdom of God. If we spent more time in the Gospels, the argument goes, then we would have a better balance between the individual and the community, people and God's creation, salvation and justice, etc. Does this make sense? Of course, the traditional church pushes back and says the emerging church has swung too far in the other direction and has often reduced the gospel to social action. In Deep Church I try to look at the strengths of both sides and the way they have "reduced" the gospel and forge a third way.
Jim
Hi Gary,
Thanks for the question. You raise some great points. I am so sad that your denomination was not more supportive. Did you ever ask them why?
There is a church in our presbytery down in San Diego where half its members have been converted through their church. In order to sustain such a "young" church they have relied on the other sites in their multi-site church to subsidize them, which they do willingly. I think that is a good model. In fact there are a number of sites in this multi-site church that have been stronger at reaching non-Christians and they often need more support early on before they become self-funding.
But you are right about a church of new believers taking much longer to disciple them and mature them to the point where they are giving both financially and with their time.
I have known other churches that have run into the problem you have. It is frustrating.
In our church, we have seen lots of conversions (not nearly as many as I would love to see) but we have had enough mature believers to sustain the church. This balance is needed, as you found out, or support must come from without--either from the denomination or another site in the multi-site church.
I think a lot of smaller emerging churches that are reaching the lost are going to continue to struggle financially unless a better model is worked out.
What have you learned that could be a help to other church planters?
Blessings on your ministry and your passion for evangelism.
Shalom,
Jim
Jim --
With all the great discussions you've been having the last 3 weeks, I'm afraid that I'm not going to have much left to say on Wednesday we we open up teamPyro's readers to your book.
Congrats on the exposure, and on this book. It's an important book even if someone doesn;t agree with every point you have made.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the great reply. Yeah, I had some stressful conversations as to the "why." It all had to do with funding, politics, and tradition. To be fair, we did receive outside funding for the first five years - but even though we were bringing in more than enough to pay staff salaries and expenses, we weren't bringing in the required amount to upload to the denomination and fund their infrastructure too (schools, camps, headquarters, etc). Sigh.
We learned much - three keys things:
1. Don't plant without solid support from a "mother" church (we didn't have this).
2. Don't solely target the unchurched - there is a need for mature disciples too.
3. Then, this text, which we constantly repeated, we realized we didn't fully implement:
It's been over a year since I've written on this, but here is a blog I wrote post-mortem:
http://churchfromscratch.wordpress.com/
Thanks Again! G
Hi Frank,
Oh don't worry. I am sure there is still plenty to be said, especially on Wednesday, when you start blogging on Deep Church! :) Looking forward to the interaction. That is how we all learn.
Shalom!
Jim
Gary,
Wow, I just read your post from the link you provided above. As a church planter from scratch do I feel your pain. I so appreciate your honesty and willingness to admit your mistakes and how hard the whole thing was, in spite of the growth you saw. And I am sure there were failings on your leaders side as well. But good for you not to dwell on the them or blame them. That takes humility. Planting from scratch is every bit as hard as you have described. I hope lots of potential church planters learn from your experience. I hit the same wall that you describe in our fourth year and we all most did not survive. It was the hardest year of our ministry and life. It took a huge tool on our family. By God's grace we survived, and have made and continue to make changes so that our church is healthy. We are going through a type of refocus right now at our church. I think all churches need to refocus every couple of years and be reminded of their missional calling and responsibility. My staff and I are also reassessing our job descriptions to make sure we are healthy and whole, so that we and are families can thrive in the midst of what God is doing.
Thanks again for sharing. I am sure you just saved the life of some future church planter somewhere!
Shalom!
Jim
What are your thoughts on:
1.) Should a church spend more "In house" or on true missions & Outreach?
2.) Today's church in North America is going crazy it seems... One takes a seat on King James translation, one takes a seat on speaking in tongues, another on Eternal security in salvation...
What are your thoughts on this and what are your thoughts on getting around/over it.
What I'm getting at is that I would love to see more hands going across the aisle, so to speak. Denominations working together, etc.
I am a Preacher and just a child of the Living God, yet I am a conservative Southern Baptist as well. But I see many things in the Emerging church which could easily be adapted to by traditional southern Baptists.
Hey Jeff,
Good questions. I think the ideal would be to have a balance between internal discipleship and missional outreach. But most churches become in-grown.
My third chapter on unity around mere Christianity is my attempt to help the church move beyond so many of the second tier differences that keep up separated, divided, and not able to present a common front to a watching world.
I hope that helps.
shalom,
Jim
Hey Ed,
Thanks for the interview and the chance to interact with your friends! I really enjoyed the exchange today. I hope all your readers get a chance to read Deep Church and interact with the ideas in it. If the book inspires or challenges them I would love to hear from them.
God bless everyone and may God bless his church.
Shalom,
Jim Belcher
Thanks, Jim, for coming by.
I am sorry I was in meetings all day and could not interact, but I am thankful you had some good conversation here at the blog.
I enjoyed your book and appreciate you!
God bless,
Ed
Just posted a new interview with Jim re: Deep Church @ http://nppnblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/innerview-75-jim-belcher-author-of-deep.html