dissertation

74
Next, the author(s) prescribe a paradigm shift for Christians in the western world. Thus,
according to Robert Webber, “younger evangelicals know that they must minister in a
new paradigm of thought.” 44 Brian McLaren favours a “new paradigm for doing theology.”
45 Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger plead in their book for “a huge paradigm shift,”
from a church focus to a kingdom focus. 46 Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch suggest that a
“paradigm-buster imagination” is needed for the emergence of the missional church of
the twenty-first century in the West. 47 Others advocate a shift from a “Christendom
mode” of church to a “missional church.” 48
It is important to note that in this kind of discourse change in the church and its paradigms
(including leadership paradigms) is deemed imperative. 49 In many EMC publications,
page after page cries for “major change, qualitative change, revolution, rebirth,
reinvention.” 50 Simultaneously, the traditional church is criticized for having become
“the last bastion of protection against change; the reminder of what the world looked
like before it changed; the preserver of tradition and ritual, rather than the catalyst and
advancer of the kingdom of God.” 51 In EMC literature, change, innovation and novelty
are seen as positive, whereas custom and tradition carry negative associations. This core
message of the EMC is the same as that in all kinds of disciplines – varying from anthropology
to sociology – that refer to Kuhn’s book with its conceptual framework.
EMC authors are far from unique in combining the term ‘paradigm’ with words like
‘shift’, ‘new’, ‘change’, ‘revolutionary’, or ‘emerging’. Nor are they original in stating
that paradigms change or should be changed. Phrases such as “time for a paradigm
shift,” “changing the paradigm,” “supporting the paradigm shift,” and so on can be
44
Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Books, 2004), 48. The ‘younger evangelicals’ Webber wrote about can be seen as constituting a significant
demographic of the Emerging-Missional milieu.
45
Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2000), 67.
46
Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 62.
47
Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, 7.
48
See, for example, Guder, Missional Church, or Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways. Cf. Reggie McNeal, “The entire
book has been about shifting paradigms [emphasis added] from a church culture to a missional movement.”
Reggie McNeal, Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass,
2009), 159.
49
A typical example provides William Easum, who starts his book on church leadership with the following
questions: “What does leadership mean when:
* we live in a time when the old rules are disappearing and new ones have not yet emerged?
* time, place, and form no longer matter?
* everything is deconstructing and decentralizing?
* the way people receive and process knowledge is changing?
* everything about the world into which we were born is giving way to a totally new order?”
Easum, Leadership on the Other Side, 13-14.
50
McLaren, Church on the Other Side, 19.
51
Erwin Raphael McManus, An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church GOD had in Mind (Loveland,
CO: Group Publishing, 2001), 81. Later on in his book, McManus cautions: “we must be careful. The truth
is that not all innovation is good, and being relevant to culture loses its meaning if you have nothing to
relate.” Ibid., 188.