Disclaimer: This is a series on Postmodern/Emergent theology. These are just ways in which my theology has shifted or expanded as I’ve been engaged in the postmodern missional community that is ThPM. This is not an attempt to write a comprehensive emergent theology because:

1) you can’t have a systematic theology in the postmodern world (it’s antithetical to the term)
2) stuff is still forming and reforming so you couldn’t get it all together right now anyway,
3) in emergent life things are very context driven and theologies will probably be different in different contexts.
4) I’m not that smart with the theology (that’s more Paul’s gig.)

So, please, nobody send me emails about how I can’t possible be speaking for the entire emergent movement because I said this-or-that. (Or debating if there even is a movement, or if there even are any postmodern churches–I’m not into that debate.) This is just me, thinking about my theology, and noticing that my theology feels funny – and that other people around me are saying the same thing.
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The single biggest theological shift that I have undergone since I have begun this postmodern/emergent church thing is that my understanding of the gospel has been dramatically altered. Os Guinness once said to Brian McClaren, “Most evangelicals don’t have the foggiest idea what the gospel is all about….What do you think the gospel is all about?”

……..

About a year ago, my friend Israel Button wrote this very cool song called Rollercoaster. It’s a driving dance beat, a rave song. The chorus is “the kingdom is a colorful party come on in. Find you place now, find your place now, find your place find your place now.” We sang it last year at our Sunday morning Easter service — one of the last services I would facilitate at “the big church.” A few weeks later it was my turn to preach on Sunday morning. I got up there, all 5 foot 3 of me and reminded our congregation of nearly 300 that the kingdom was a party and that is was very very big. I reminded them when you look at the metaphor of a kingdom; the majority of the people do not live in the castle. Only a select few live behind the stone walls and moat. Everyone else lives outside the four walls. And everyone out there, they are the ones that are producing all the good stuff; they are the shepherds and the weavers and the farmers and the blacksmiths. They are the majority members of the kingdom. I urged the congregation to start seeing God’s people not as those who gather within the four walls of the church, but as the people living out there in the kingdom. I tried with all my energy and arm gesturing and wishful-ness to get this collection of good hearted, hard worshipping, energetic Jesus lovers to begin to comprehend that the kingdom is not made up of “believers” but of creation. I tried to get them to see that if we stayed privileged and secure in the castle we would miss out on all that the other members of the kingdom had to offer. I tried to crack open something I was barely beginning to understand.

Then I left. …..

Well, more accurately, I branched off. Under our multi-congregation model of being together but being varied (it’s a food court metaphor, I’ll tell you about it later), I planted a little house church with a merry band of 8. We re-organized the way we lived our gathering-to-worship life so that is less labor intensive. We started asking ourselves. How can we spend less time in the castle and more time in the kingdom?

About nine months later, I heard the story about Os Guinness from Brian McClaren. I heard how Brian had answered Os with the standard evangelical answer: the good news gospel message is that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again for our salvation. I heard Os’ response, “Yes. That’s what most evangelicals would say.” And I swallowed hard–because even though I knew Brian’s answer (which was my own rote response) wasn’t adequate, I also knew I didn’t have another option on my tongue.

……

Last week I had lunch with my friend MeRa. She and her husband Brian have a merry band of 8 who gather in their home for a group they call “No Answers.” They aren’t sure what they are doing. They don’t realize this yet, but they are scratching their noses. Over our Chinese chicken salads MeRa said to me, “The thing is Rachelle, Brian said the other day ‘Why do we always just talk about the cross? Jesus didn’t talk about it much the whole three years he was here.’” I smiled wryly at her and said, “What do you think he talked about MeRa?” She replied, “I think he talked about the kingdom.” I cracked up. Without knowing a thing about postmodern this or emerging that, MeRa and Brian had stumbled up the answer so many of us are finding. It’s the same answer my crew is giving to me. It’s the same answer Todd Hunter is compelled by. It’s the same answer Os gave Brian. “You know Brian, what Jesus preached was ‘the kingdom of God is at hand.’ That’s what the gospel message is. That’s what the gospel is all about.”

Everything I had been doing and labeling “postmodern” or “emergent” had to do with the fact that my soul had found this truth before my tongue could proclaim it. The good news is the kingdom of heaven is at hand! I don’t want to just believe it, I want to live it. I don’t just want to preach it, to entomb it in a creed of 100 words or less, to sign off on it in a membership class, to repeat it ad nauseam in the words of a song. I want to embody it –to recognize it everywhere I go, to offer it where I see its lack. It’s no longer about making sure people know, “Jesus died on the cross for you. Hurry up and believe it so you don’t go to hell.” It’s about watching the “now” of the kingdom expand ever further into the “not yet.”

God! Does any of that make any sense?

That’s all I can write now. My kids are home and its church tonight. But it’s a start, it’s a start.