dissertation

86
More importantly, speaking in terms of paradigms can lead us – provided our defenses
are lowered – to question our own systemic assumptions, among others those about the
church, 125 leadership, 126 and theological education. 127 In turn, this may encourage constructive
conversations and creative thinking about how to shake free from riged patterns
and create a climate conducive to innovation and mission. In so far as paradigm
language helps to achieve all this, it is – to our mind – helpful.
As we discussed above, however, in discourse that tends to overemphasize contrasts,
stirring up a sense of immediate need, ideological overtones easily gain entry. Terms
like ‘revolution’, ‘crisis’, and – indeed – ‘paradigm’ are often used by ideologists 128 , as
well as a general “rhetoric of change.” 129 This kind of language may hamper the kind of
open, non-judgemental conversation that many EMC participants claim to support. It
tends to favour entrepreneurial visionaries of the ‘new’ paradigm over conventional adherents
of the ‘old’ one. Moreover, paradigm discourse is not conducive to finding ways
to integrate the best features of the old paradigm (e.g. that of Christendom) with those
of the new paradigm (e.g. that of post-Christendom), because the latest one is already
assumed to be the best. In other words, because the term ‘paradigm shift’ tends to be
used as an ‘all or nothing proposition’, “it has the unfortunate tendency to reject both
the truly useful and important features of the disfavoured paradigm together with its
objectionable features: it throws the baby out with the bathwater.” 130 In this way genuine
reform may actually be hindered instead of facilitated.
The message of the EMC, voiced in language that sometimes sounds (or actually is)
ideological, 131 is clear: a fundamental, all-encompassing change in our thinking and pracwere
different but not knowing how to make it different.” John Piper, as quoted in Jim Belcher, Deep
Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 11.
124
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 185.
125
Cf. “Missional Church – ein Paradigmenwechsel” [Missional Church – a paradigm switch], in Martin
Reppenhagen, Auf dem Weg zu einer missionalen Kirche: Die Diskussion um eine ‘Missional Church’ in den USA
(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgeselsschaft, 2011), 155-283.
126
“What needs to happen,” communication scholar G.L. Forward suggests, “is a fundamental reformulation
of assumptions [emphasis added] concerning pastor-congregation expectations that transcends hierarchy, paternalism,
and individualism.” He continues saying that a new paradigm [emphasis added] is necessary, one
“that views the pastor as companion, enabler, and spiritual friend who sometimes leads and is sometimes
led but is always engaged in a mutual recursive relationship.” G.L. Forward, “Servant or CEO? A Metaphor
Analysis of Leadership in a Nonprofit Context,” The New Jersey Journal of Communication 9, no. 2 (Fall 2001),
164. Chapter 7 will show that Forward’s leadership vision overlaps with EMC views.
127
The Austrian theological educator Bernhard Ott, for example, pleads for a ‘paradigm shift’ towards a
more inductive model of learning. He fears however that “Many traditionally trained theologians and college
teachers do not even have the imagination to view the contours of such a paradigm shift.” Bernhard Ott,
Beyond Fragmentation: Integrating Mission and Theological Education. A Critical Assessment of Some Recent Developments
in Evangelical Theological Education (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2001), 267.
128
Cf. Sally E. Thorne, Sheryl Reimer Kirkham, and Angela Henderson, “Ideological Implications of Paradigm
Discourse,” Nursing Inquiry 6 (1999), 129.
129
Minogue, Alien Powers, 84.
130
London, “Paradigms Lost: Repairing the Harm of Paradigm Discourse in Restorative Justice,” 402.
131
Cf. the critique of D.A. Carson: “the rhetoric of these discussions is almost always over the top: the
church must adapt to the postmodern world or it will die....unless we get on board...we are probably out-