In case you are wondering how the title relates to the content, it is referring to the sense that much of what was bubbling away in the early 2000’s has now dissipated and many if not all of those early ’emerging church’ plants and projects no longer exist, or if they do have taken on a more conventional form – like Red Church in Melbourne. Red was once part of South Melbourne Restoration Community led by Alan and Deb Hirsch, but was established when SMRC tried to decentralise and create a network. The network faltered but the group led by Mark Sayers re-formed into a more conventional church. Mark is an incredibly gifted and insightful man who was one of the early local voices speaking into the space. Our own missionary venture lasted around 6 years before we pulled stumps.

Perhaps one of the challenges of the early years was the regular accusations of heresy and departure from orthodoxy. Like any movement there were people who occupied different theological spaces and one of the things i really appreciated about Forge was it’s willingness to hear from those on the fringe exploring new ideas and trying new initiatives. We often used the language of being the R&D department of the church so it meant that not everything that was tested survived either theologically or practically.

But in Australia 99% of what was going down was from people who held a fairly stock conservative evangelical type of theology. Perhaps those words have less meaning these days (post-Trump) but essentially it meant that we were on the same page as others in our denomination theologically, but practically we were considering all sorts of different ways of expressing church and doing mission.

There came a point where the US ‘Emergent’ project took a theological tack away from where we were comfortable and seemed to focus more on re-calibrating theological positions rather than mission. in Australia the reason ’emerging churches’ began was to fulfill a missional agenda rather than to simply re-think existing theological paradigms. For that reason we ended up using ’emerging missional church’ as our descriptor. It distinguished us from Emergent and emphasised our point of focus.

So the question that was in front of us in Australia was ‘how do we connect with ordinary Australian people in the various geoghrapical and cultural locations?’

How do we connect with farmers in the rural areas?

How do we connect with suburbanites who don’t want a mainstream church experience?

How do we connect with surfers?

And so on…

One of my realisations (long after planting Upstream) was that I ‘didn’t get it’. While I had read the books and embibed the theory, I still had in the back of my mind a large gathering of people meeting once a week with me employed full time to give them oversight. I don’t know why I still had that vision in the forefront of my mind – probably because I just hadn’t ever seen a different expression of church work well. It meant that while I was operating on one frequency with mission my ecclesiology was still on an old frequency – probably one of the reasons I consider the Upstream project a failed venture. Oh we learned a lot and we actually did some great work, but in terms of genuinely reaching Australian people who were never going to attend a conventional church? Nah… much harder than I thought.

If you were to ask Danelle (my wife) about this time she will remember it as one of the best experiences of church she has ever had. She will speak of being present in the community in ways we had never done before – and she would be right. It just didn’t seem to amount to much at the end of the day. Because our church community was so different from mainstream we didn’t attract many Christians into the team to work with us. People ‘checked it out’ but most wanted the full suite of worship, kids and youth ministries and we didn’t deliver that. It’s always the tension for church planters. We need people to establish a mission team – but we need people who share the mission – not simply those who want a ready made Sunday experience that ticks all the boxes.

In that period of time I had many invitations to go and teach at different church planting and leadership conferences and I always told the truth. We were working hard – very hard to do mission, but it was tough and while there were conversations aplenty, conversions were thin on the ground – and this bothered me. I ended up having to concede that I actually had no power whatsoever over another person to make them change their position and follow Jesus. I could do the best missionary work possible and there may be no change… I know our friends overseas face these challenges – lots of time, language learning, culture learning and $$ spent and you really want to be able to tell ‘success stories’. It’s just part of our nature to want to see fruit for our labour. I usually ended up telling ‘struggle stories’ – which were surprisingly well received by people. Most of them were struggling too – so instead of becoming an expert I ended becoming another fellow missionary learning and struggling to do the work I felt called to.

These days I am comfortable with conversations – more than that – I love conversations wherever they lead. I am a bit more willing to rest in the knowledge that I am one part of the missio dei – the revelation of God in a person’s life – rather than being the guy who flicks the light switch in their brain.

Continued in Part 3