Passion & Reason

Emergent faith in SE Asia

At the SEANET conference in Chiang Mai about a month ago, I had a great opportunity to network, connect, and share conversations and stories with a variety of missionaries, leaders, and thinkers. I was pretty excited that much of the issues I have been blogging about (“emerging” Christian spirituality) is connecting with much of what’s going on in the mission field, both theoretically (relating to ecclesiology and missiology) and practically (in terms of experiences, stories, etc.)
However, this “emerging church” stuff is rooted largely in a white suburban North American context. Many of my Asian-Canadian friends and acquaintainces don’t really “get it”, simply because some of the emerging concepts and experiences aren’t really theirs. Sure, Chinese-Canadian churches have moved towards Gen-X/Y/whatever expressions of worship (some churches have drums, others have done alternative worship services, and there’s the John 4:24 worship collective, in which I am involved), but it is not that close to our hearts.
I do not imply, at all, that Chinese-Canadian churches are “bad” or inferior to the mainly-white churches that are embracing these forms and expressions of worship as they strive to be authentic and relevant. It’s just that our context is different – enough. I know Ray has mentioned it before; in our respective ministries, we both realize that there is good stuff for our Asian-Christian communities coming from the emerging conversation, however, contextualizing it is a challenging task.
About a month ago, DJ Chuang asked me about the experiences I have with receptivity to the themes, concepts, and spirituality of the “emerging conversations/church” in SE Asia. With some frustration, I realize that the context is radically different from which this movement has sprung, even though my faith community consists largely of expats. The status quo still rules, and my first two months here was a struggle not to be critical and nit-picky of what I see as examples of unhealthy and regressive Christian spirituality (aka churchianity).
The challenge for those on the cutting edge (and for those following immediately behind) is how to contextualize this so that it is Christ-centered in all. How do we cast off religious and cultural baggage that hinders growth that God wants us to have? And then how do journey towards a holistic faith? Contextualizing faith is a great challenge, a process to embark on with much prayer and love. A new-found creativity is one of the marks of the “emerging conversation”, also pushing the envelope in many ways. While some of it is radical (and dangerous without the guidance when it is detached from the larger body of believers, as witnessed when some people dropped off the deep end when the Ontario Navigators campus chapters in Ontario was deep in GenX and post-modern themes) I heard this which encourages me greatly: Are evangelicals (or other Christian groups, for that matter) too willing to squander our creativity, our God-given intellectual and intuitive talents? Will we be like the servant who buried his talent in the ground to keep his status quo? Or will we, in faith, use our intellectual and creative capacity towards building up his church?
I hope we can quickly move on to asking “how”.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2004 at 11:37 pm. It is filed under Asia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.