Alt.Worship and emerging church

emergingchurch.info > reflection > andrew hamilton:
From Andrew Hamilton on the emerging church site: pretty helpful and succint account of how we got here. Altworship is seen as a more multi-senory approach and emerging paradigm is the radical step beyond ...
"The key difference between this arrangement and its predecessors is that IFCs seek to understand the culture first, then do mission and from there create worshiping communities. It is a go to them approach rather than a come to us - a fundamental reconfiguration of the DNA."

I think that there is a lot in it. And I've been preaching about this for some time -usually on the basis of Lk.10. Problem is that we are so into the 'come' paradigm that the 'go' one tends to slip from our grasp unnoticed. We go into a commuity and become part of it [or we are already] but before you know it, we have starting inviting people to join in our stuff. I think that I would say that we need to get into our heads that the important thing is to give up hosting things and start learning to be guests: to give up serving on our territory, times and terms and start being served on 'their' terms, times and territory. Or rather to allow ourselves to be served as the guest and to serve in return in ways that are appropriate by sharing the richness of what we have.

I think Andrew is saying this and I guess my concern is to have been involved somewhat in churches where this kind of approach has been the theory but the practice somehow gets distorted and we somehow end up with trendier or more rootsy 'hosting' mission again. Which suggests to me that the problem is more deeply seated than we have allowed for. I suspect that the culprit in this is a combination of:
lack of role modelling of 'guesting' mission;
laziness -it's easier to get people to come to us;
security -if we are hosts then we have a degreee of control that we don't otherwise;
sanitization: if we throw in our lot with non-Christians [taking Raymond Fung's "The Isaiah Vision: Ecumenical Strategy..."> as a good example of 'guesting' mission], then who knows what we could end up doing or being associated with? [-maybe prostitutes or tax collectors!].

But it is vital that we move to guesting mission.