Cohort

Missional Baptist Cohort

Because of my interest in the Emergent Church movement, I have wondered how SBU students would respond to such a “conversation” that may be called the “the missional baptist cohort.” I have toyed with the idea of developing some kind of cohort based off principles within the emergent church, but that are not soo sketchy or dare I say, “liberal” that such an idea may be associated with such a movement that is seen as dangerous, but simply alternative. Within the emergent movement, it is essential to say that the movement itself is not readily defined or oriented in one direction. While there are some like Brian McLaren who may aire on the side of evangelical liberalism, there are others like Mark Driscoll who embodies evangelical doctrine, but may practice it in other forms. Driscoll has been able to build a church in Seattle (Mars Hill) of 5,000 while not giving any theological accomodation on the main issues. I would not even call Driscoll conservative as much as I would call him merely “Biblical.” Let’s go beyond “liberal or conservative”. Within my journeys and insights of evangelicalism, I see the moan and groan from a newer generation for new methods and forms of evanglicalism that does not compromise itself for cultural relativity. As my friend Kristen Shuffield here at Focus has said, “there is a difference between being relavant versus being relative in our theology.” How right is she. I believe people are hungry for truth, because, at large people spend their time creating their own truth.
I would like a place for SBU students that is not solely focused on habitual praise and worship, but focuses on other methods of worship that have been barred from evangelical protestant churches because of a somewhat “catholic” or “monastic” undertones. Perhaps in our purposeful distancing from Catholic theology (which is fine by me), we have left behind some inherenly good practices that have been practiced by the monastics. Three principles that would be essential for a missional baptist cohort: missional living (orienting ourselves toward the outside more than the inside), authenticity (which, by and large, is not being fostered in the church), narrative theology (who are you and where are you going in God’s large story?), and Christ-likeness (where we put aside the stuffy and wordy theological terms, though not abandoning them, and instead focus on living as Christ instructs us (1 John. 2:6)), alternative worship (going beyond praise and worship but practicing the disciplines as layed out by numerous Richard Foster books). I know these are not novel ideas, but I myself am wanting more than what the typical baptist church has to offer, but yet not at the expense of abandoning the baptist denomination. I would like a place where conviction rules over self-righteousness, and open conversation takes place on issues that the church has neither the direction or gumption to tackle. I do not intend to engage in evangelical revisionism, but just shaping a different elasticity to our herirage that biblically fits the needs of a younger generation.