Accidental Pastor

From the USA Today:
"This fall, episodes of many series, including the biggest hits and newest shows, are available online for free as networks try to hold on to audiences while finding new business in new technologies.
"We need to think of ourselves not just as a broadcast network, but a network or platform where ABC connects its viewers to its shows across any technology. It could be through online, cellphone, portable media player or television," says Albert Cheng, who oversees digital media for Disney-ABC Television Group."
There is something here we need to listen to, I think?

Live music, later hours and chill settings are guiding a “missing generation” back to church.
This article from the St. Petersburg Times says that the emerging church is a "cool" tweak to tradition. Really?

There are many folks attempting to define and describe the "emerging" church. For a laugh you should take a look at the wikipedia definition. Unbelievably imprecise. How postmodern is that? There are not many who have been observing and writing about the emerging church for as long as I have. When I started Next-Wave I didn't know that it would become a "journal of the emerging church." I was born in 1949, early in the baby boomer generation. I was one of those raised in the 50s and 60s, who didn't trust anyone over 30 and who wasn't particularly appalled by sex, drugs and rock and roll. I raised all of my children as Christians. However in the mid-90s my oldest son was quite adamant that he did not believe in God. When he was 15 this did not seem like too big a deal. However, when he was a senior in college I was more concerned.I did everything in my power to "get him saved." I took him to evangelistic churches. I preached to him. I witnessed to him. I gave him books. It was upsetting that years of Sunday School and Christian education had failed to bring him "into the fold." I tell you all of that so that you will understand my motivation. I became very interested in evangelizing what I thought of as generation X. In 1995 I accidentally became a pastor and by 1998 I had closed a church and was waiting on further orders from God. It was around that time that I asked my friend, Rogier Bos, to design and start Next-Wave. I thought it was going to be about reaching Gen-X. Instead, it was all about postmodernism, post evangelicalism, terms I had never heard of, but that Rogier was very familiar with because of his thesis work and his exposure to Leadership Network.I started Next-Wave because I was discouraged. In my opinion, the Builder generation did a poor job of evangelizing the Boomer generation. I was seeing the Boomers make the same mistakes our parents had made. Putting down music, clothing, hairstyles and other cultural accouterments that have absolutely nothing to do with the life of the spirit or with being a Christ-follower. I didn't see much happening in the group I was associated with at the time and in Christianity at large to reach young people.However, it wasn't long after starting Next-Wave that I became aware that I had no reason to be discouraged. I saw that God was raising up young leaders around the world who wanted to reach their peers. They were experimenting, risking, sacrificing and struggling to do what God was calling them to do. In other words, I saw the next generation's church "emerging." One thing that was very clear is that this was not an organized effort or "movement." But that God was doing something from a grassroots level, all over the world. Even today when you Google "emerging church" in the News section you get some pretty odd responses. Of course, it is now time to relabel this thing that God is inspiring, this thing that God is doing through those he has called to minister to their younger non-baby boomer peers. It is no longer "emerging" because it has "emerged." We can see it now, for sure. Why in some ways, it has become copyrighted, trademarked and branded! Critics are making a living from criticizing it. Publishers are making money by publishing about it.Do you see the progression I am talking about here: Gen-X to Postmodern to Emerging to _________ ?Here's my question, what will we call this thing in the next few years, for having once emerged, a thing can no longer be emerging.

In the summer of 1998 I discovered the Internet as a means of communication. No, I didn’t "invent" the internet like Al Gore. Prior to that summer, I knew there was something called Compuserve and America Online, but I didn’t know how it worked, or that it could be used as a means of communication. What I did know is that I wanted to do something to encourage and support ministry to what I thought of as "Generation X."

I was raised in a denominational church. This particular group had a legalistic bent. When my first marriage failed, I began a spiritual journey that lead me to the pastorate of a Vineyard church. Along the way I became interested in church growth theory and church planting. A father of four teenagers, I also became concerned that the church was doing little to avoid the mistakes it had made with my generation.

By and large, the church missed the baby boomer generation. Permissive parenting styles, situational ethics and increased experimentation with recreational drugs created an atmosphere where no religious practice was more common than nominalism. The "don’t trust anyone over 30" generation certainly didn’t trust the church to solve their spiritual "issues." New age religion abounded in the "age of Aquarius."

When this environment was coupled with authoritarian leadership styles, traditional church liturgies, and an unwillingness to listen to the real concerns of my generation, the result, in most cases, was a massive exodus from mainline denominations and Catholicism, particularly in North America. Europe was already post-Christian. While the third-world was experiencing a pentacostal-led awakening, there were few bright spots on the North American church scene.

The Jesus People movement that spawned the Calvary Chapels and the Vineyards, while heartening, did not truly penetrate the heart of my generation. As one of those who had left the church and then returned in my late 30’s I did not see a lot being done to strategically target and communicate the gospel in a meaningful way to the next generations.

In the fall of 1998, With these thoughts in mind, I approached a friend of mine, Rogier Bos, and asked him to edit a web magazine to deal with these issues. When I first talked with Rogier, the term postmodern was not on my radar. I had seen John Wimber lecture on the cycles of a movement. As he drew 20-yr. waves on a whiteboard, it struck me that with every generation God was calling another wave of emerging leaders to reach the world with his message. I told Rogier we would call the web magazine, Next-Wave, and he took it from there. The inaugural issue of Next-Wave was published January, 1999.

I had become acquainted with Rogier Bos while he interned at a nearby church. Rogier is a native of the Netherlands. He was also a fledgling web designer and a student of the postmodern cultural shift that had already affected Europe and was beginning to be an important topic of conversation in the North American church. Rogier’s calling was to participate in God’s plans for church planting in Europe. He set the course that Next-Wave has followed for the last five years.

As he wrote in the inaugural issue: "Next-Wave is a web magazine for leaders about ministry and church in the 21st century, or postmodern era. Our goal is to connect pioneers, and to become a place to exchange insights, stories, pieces of wisdom, questions, models, experiences and strategies."

With a background in publishing a local weekly newspaper in the early 70s, I was unprepared for Next-Wave’s eventual reach. It cost me hundreds of dollars to print 3000 newspapers and deliver them to the local community on a weekly basis. Next-Wave was available to millions of readers on every continent for a cost of less than $100 per month.

Rogier received a small stipend during the months that he created and edited Next-Wave. When he and Sophie returned with their family to the Netherlands to begin their ministry with Christian Associates International, the press of family life, the move, starting a new ministry position and a new business made it impossible for him to continue editing Next-Wave. After a stint as communications director of CAI, Rogier is currently pastoring and planting a church in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Next-Wave has been created by the participation of its contributors. The first contributing editor, David Hopkins, became its most prolific author and the second editor of Next-Wave. His first article was entitled: Superman is dead: No more "hero-for-hire" clergy. David began writing for Next-Wave while he was still a student at Texas A&M. In his early 20s, David carried his responsibilities with Next-Wave while he held his first high school English teaching job, wrote his first play, became engaged and then married to his wife, Melissa. Since then David has become a famous comic book author and the proud father of Kennedy.

I became acquainted with Next-Wave’s next editor, Jason Evans, when I received his article, the Church at Matthew’s House. Jason is one of the emerging practitioners of the "simple" church movement. With his first issue in September, 2003, He created an extensive editorial team, and led Next-Wave to a new collaborative editing software environment. Today he continues to be as passionate as I am about seeing new churches planted to reach the emerging generations.

In between the editorial tenures of these three young men, I have fulfilled the publishing and editorial roles with Next-Wave. While our design has always been pretty funky, that is, until Malcolm Hawker became our web designer in June of 2005, our content has always been interesting. Searching the archives of Next-Wave is like a video clip of where what we now call the "emerging church" has been.

Now, with the October 2006 issue, I have once again stepped down from my "interim" editorial duties to Bob Hyatt. Bob’s writing first appeared in Next-Wave in August 2003 with his article, Profoundly Disturbed on the Fourth of July. That article had consequences in Bob’s life which are best explained in his own words:

"…[The] article was first published in the summer of 2003. Shortly thereafter, my church employer and I…uh…parted company. It was God’s way of getting me off my rear and into the church plant that I am now leading, but at the time it was a little scary. To their credit, the church, in letting me go took good care of my family and did their best to put a positive spin on things (both of which I am very grateful for)…"

Those who read Bob’s blog know that he is an engaging and passionate writer. He has contributed a number of articles to Next-Wave since that first one three years ago. This summer I was praying about the next era of Next-Wave and had one of those God-inspired moments that come occasionally. The inspiration? Ask Bob Hyatt to become the editor of Next-Wave.

Bob is a practitioner who is struggling with what it means to be a church planter and a pastor in today’s culture. He has dreams of a church planting network. His first issue has generated plenty of discussion already, so that is an excellent sign. It only took an hour or so before he was being labeled a heretic by emerging church critics, also a good sign.