The Journey through Post-Evangelicalism
The Internet Monk is on my personal blogroll. I like to keep in touch a bit with where I came from, and somehow this man having given serious thought to Catholicism and turning away confounds me and keeps me curious. He believes that American Christianity has reached a point of “post-evangelicalism”, whatever he means by that. He’s defined it a few times(post 1 and post 2 on the subject). I think it bears some semblance to a phenomena that I observed being advertised in the Reader’s Digest.
Over the weekend, iMonk posted about the growing home church movement. Four years ago, we were in the midst of this movement. Having moved to a small community, which offered only a “seeker sensitive” church in the denomination to which I was accustomed, we returned home to raise and church our kids as we felt led at the time. Ironically, such a free-form style of faith and worship became the on-ramp to the journey to Catholicism.
Objectively, home-church Christianity appears to be the antithesis to high church Catholicism. No ministers, no sacraments, no building versus episcopal heirarchy, defined Sacraments, and architecture as an expression of worship (preferably). But while determining exactly what should define a house church, along with whom we should fellowship and what our corporate goals should be, I began contemplating the question of doctrine…specifically there was an already existing group of families worshiping home-church style, but which embraced some peculiar doctrines which we found unBiblical. On again, off again discussions with an sympathetic neighbor led me instead to search for a denomination which was more aligned with our current beliefs. I couldn’t sustain a home-church without fellowship with other Christians. It was just far too isolating.
This experience really prepared me to encounter the questions, “Where is Christ’s Church, and how shall I identify it?” Answering those questions led me directly to the embrace of the Catholic Church.
Just as iMonk articulates, our experiment with home-churching was precipitated by our experiences with seeker-sensitive and mega-church Christianity. These forms offer little substance to the maturing Christian, and are far too program oriented for our tastes. They seem to turn the church into a community center for activities rather than a collective of souls striving to grow in holiness by mirroring the example of Our Lord and His Saints. Recognizing what was lacking in our worship at the time, we learned the intrinsic markers of the Church, and the value of the gift God gave us when establishing the Church.
I’ve also enjoyed reading iMonk over the past couple of years. He’s honest and insightful, but in this case, I think he’s wrong in predicting a total loss of institution in “post-evangelical” Christianity. One of his commenters is right: these folks who are alienated by the megachurch, if they continue “seeking,” will eventually find their way into the Catholic or Orthodox Churches. As you said, once you free yourself from the institutional Evangelical church and try to strike it out on your own, the question inevitably arises: “how do we get our doctrines?” (provided you’re honest enough with yourself to see that Scripture doesn’t interpret itself).
I think the topic of his discussion about home churches, Brant Hansen, will almost definitely end up in an apostolic Church…
Edmund C. said this on December 28, 2006 at 4:06 pm
[...] 29 Dec 2006 Combatting Dissension Posted by Bekah under Catholicism , Apologetics Edmund C. has joined the discussion aboutthe future of the Evangelical church, sparked by the iMonk and Brant Hansen. I pointed out that I believe the key to tumbling down the defenses of protestantism is to illuminate the disaster of disunity. [...]
Combatting Dissension « The Road Well Traveled said this on December 29, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Hello everybody, my name is Damion, and I’m glad to join your conmunity,
and wish to assit as far as possible.
DamionKutaeff said this on March 22, 2008 at 3:22 pm