1.6 Holistic Spirituality

1.6 Holistic spirituality

At times it is difficult to discern what exactly makes the emerging church stand out from things like the home church movement, Gen-X churches and the seeker sensitive approach. According to Gibbs and Bolger these groups do not challenge the many dualisms of modernity. They see divisions in natural and supernatural, individual and community, mind and body, public and private, belief and action as such dualisms.

In contrast the clarion call of the emerging church is Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (NIV). (…) All can be given to God in worship. All modern dualisms can be overcome.’[1]

This is also what Frost and Hirsch refer to when they talk about a messianic spirituality. They observe that Christendom spirituality has been too much concerned with retreat and reflection. They believe that these should be embraced as part of a broader spirituality that values engagement and action.[2] In comparing Hebraic Spirit and Hellenistic Consciousness they observe that the Christendom church has been greatly influenced by the latter, which results in a fascination for speculative ideas and abstract notions about God and faith (as opposed to the concrete/practical stance of Hebraism) and an overstressing of the divinity of Jesus (a subtle form of docetism). What follows is a discourse of seven salient features of a Hebraic spirituality in which they make a particularly strong case for practical monotheism. The claim to serve one God (Deut. 6:4) ‘has direct and concrete implications: It is a call for the Israelites to live their lives under the Lordship of one God and not under the tyranny of the many gods. In other words, it is a practical call not to live one’s life as if there were a different god for every sphere of life. (…) The implications are far reaching, not as simple theology, but as practical missiology. (…) It frees us to perceive life as ministry, work as mission, play as worship.’[3] Gibbs and Ryan see three primary tools to dismantle the modern church: the gospel, sacralization, and the life of the community. In this chapter I have given a short overview of their ideas on sacralization, in chapter three on the theology of the Emerging Church I will take a closer look at their understanding of the gospel and in the last chapter I will describe their ideas on community.

[1] Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches, p.67
[2] M. Frost, A. Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come p.116
[3] M. Frost, A. Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come p.127