Here’s a thought for you to ponder while I am away in that wonderful city of Melbourne…
Is the Emerging Missional Church movement nothing more than the Jesus movement of the 60s and 70s revisited?
Its a question that has been tossed at me a few times lately and I’m just now doing some research on the answer to it.
I was born in 1964, and grew up in a fundamentalist Irish Baptist church so I didn’t have a lot of exposure to the whole scene, nor would I have made a lot of sense of it. A couple of older somewhat cynical pastors who were around then tell me we are just re-inventing the wheel and painting it a different colour. My gut says we aren’t, but I have nothing to base that feeling on.
I read this
short blogpost of the same question here and have also been reading here, here and here.
Here’s an interesting quote:
"By most accounts, the Jesus People Movement began in 1967 with the opening of a small storefront evangelical mission called the Living Room in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district."
Did you know that Darren?
I have been very inspired by Keith Green, Larry Norman (watch the vid intro – he looks olllldddd!) and other products of the movement, but my sense of it all from an uninformed distance is that while there was an emphasis on reaching the lost in contextual ways, the end result was to get em back into fairly stock standard organised churches. There was a mission focus but not neccessarily a missional ecclesiology.
Am I right on that or wrong?
If you are 50 or over you might have more insight than me into this question. Of course chances are if you are 50 or over you won’t be reading blogs 🙂
The Jesus movement did produce some interesting characters. Lonnie Frisbee (is that a real name ) is being remembered here and this bloke gave whole new meaning to Jesus call to take up your cross daily and follow me. He did, and he’s still doing it. He even gives instructions for making your own cross!
If I ever get round to doing my masters I reckon this could be an interesting project.
To finish a quote from one of my heroes:
"The only music minister to whom the Lord will say, "Well done, thy good and faithful servant," is the one whose life proves what their lyrics are saying, and to whom music is the least important part of their life. Glorifying the only worthy One has to be a minister’s most important goal!" – Keith Green