Signs of Emergence
Signs of Emergence, by Kester Brewin:
Every once in a while an author emerges from the ranks of Christianity with a gift for not only capturing and articulating the issues of the age, but also in presenting a clear path for successfully negotiating those issues. Brewin accomplishes this masterfully.
This book re-imagines ‘church’ in the light of the gospel – the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He discovers in this old, old story both the foundation and process for spiritually healthy communities of faith – the ‘how to’s’ of needed transformation. Rather than a singular focus on transforming individuals, Brewin points out the necessity for change in corporate church practice. He convincingly notes that many churches are paralyzed at a local maximum, Fowlerian stage 3 (synthetic-conventional), where people serve the structure of church rather than the reverse.
What if church went into ‘exile’, into a reflective time to mourn our loss of the living God – a ‘dark night of the soul’ (stage 4)? What if we stopped what we are doing and waited on God?
What if we discarded the conventional ways for effecting change – revolution – and even changed the way we change, being courageously re-born into an evolutionally, incarnational model – organic change from the bottom up?
What if we did study the ant, as suggested in scripture, and discovered the functionality of a spiritual community that was interdependent, rather than hierarchical? What if we placed value on open-source change arising from the edge of chaos – that creative zone somewhere between paralyzing rigidity and destructive anarchy?
All this, and so much more, insists that all Christians read this book – at least twice.
