Conversing with “The New Conspirators”: The Four Streams

Last time I briefly mentioned that in the book Tom Sine divides “the new conspirators” into four major streams: emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic.¹  I’m interested to see what you think of his divisions and descriptions. I understand the need for identification, but personally I think there is more overlap with the different groups depending about locality and context.

The Emerging Stream

According to Sine — who cites several other notables including Gibbs & Bolger, Jonny Baker, Brian McLaren, and Andrew Jones just to name a few — the emerging stream is especially attuned to postmodern culture and is “actively seeking searching for the sacred in the profane.”²  Thus, emergents are more relational, experiential and are likely to be especially involved in or show a great appreciation to the arts and various forms of new media which are consequently integrated into their worship.

The emergent stream is much more interested in narrative theology as opposed to the systematics of the past as a result of Enlightenment project.  Emergents tend to more “tribal and local”³ and place a great emphasis on othro-praxy as a means of participation within the biblical narrative.

Sine lists eight characteristics that help define the emerging stream⁴.  Here are a few that I thought were especially important.

• Rather than constructing global meta-strategies with the intent of uniform replication, emergents are wholly committed to seeking out innovative and experimental strategies for engaging persons in a specific cultural context.
• Emergents communities are relational, organic, and communal.  They are naturally resistance to the traditional bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of the institutional church and seek more decentralized nodes of leadership.
• Emergents approach faith in general as a holistic, embodied, and authentic way of living rather just than a simply set of beliefs.
• As a result of this whole-life ethos emergents tend to be social and political activists for the causes of social justice, reconciliation, and care for the environment.

Sine also notes — and rightly so — the general hegemony of the term(s) “emergent” and “emerging” by the North American movement in addition to the overall disagreement in definition.

A final note.  Sine makes sure to add that the emerging stream — and I might add the movement at large, including all four streams — is not necessarily a reaction to traditional denominationalism as some have posited.  Indeed, some sub groups are actively seeking to strike a balance between their respective traditions and the emerging expressions.

The Missional Stream

“Whereas the emerging church movement was birthed by practitioners reinventing church for a postmodern context, the missional church movement was birthed out of the academy.”⁵  It seem that is Sine’s major differentiation between the two.  More specifically, he describes its inception as a shift in missiological thinking due mainly part to mature scholars such a Lesslie Newbigin.

As such, from Sine’s point of view, the missional movement and it’s figures provides an important theological foundation for local practitioners.  These leaders “tend to look like their emergent counterparts except they are often seminary trained and more multiculturally focused.”⁶  Their theological emphasis is to reclaim and reformulate past how the church views mission and evangelism.  Many opt to discard evangelism altogether, replacing it with a new word: missional.  Quoting Tim Conder, Sine defines missional as “a corrective to or an outright rejection of commodified and cultural Christianity, steeped in institutionalism, individualism, and sentimentality where programming and finances are directed outwardly.”⁷

Thus, the theology of the missional stream of these new conspirators provides a sound backing for the local, contextual praxis of the others.  Personally, I see Sine’s characterization here more as an overall ethos of the entire new conspiracy rather than a stream within the conspriracy itself.

The Mosaic Stream

With the shift from modernity to postmodernity come not only the epistemological questions — that the emerging church has far too long been fixated with in my opinion — or the questions of justice, but also the questions of culture, specifically the questioning of European monocultural imperialism.

For Sine, the mosaic stream is particularly interesting in addressing these questions of culture.  Up to now I had never seen nor heard of anyone characterizing this sort of approach as a movement itself under the larger umbrella of the emerging church.  Given the most recent critiques levied against emergents — that they are homogeneous group of white men for publish and endorse books for one another — perhaps Sine’s approach is much needed.

This stream finds its home in urban, multiculturally diverse areas.  It’s adherents are insistent on opening up an honest conversation about the hegemony of “whiteness”, race, and the nature of power itself.⁸  This involves not only the cultural questions previously mentioned, but also the questions of justice that call into question white power and privilege.  Indeed, such questions demand adequate attention if new conspirators are serious in collaboration for reconciliation and restoration.  This approach can be seen in the work of Phil Jackson and Efrem Smith.

The Monastic Stream

Lastly, is the monastic stream also known as “new monasticism” in some circles.  This group differentiates itself more definitely than the others.  Monastics “have no interest in church planting,” and their communities are “much more multigenerational, multicultural, and multinational than the emerging and missional streams.”⁹  According to Sine, these persons raise more questions about what it means to be disciples of Jesus, to be the church, and to do mission in the world than the other streams as its members tend to come from more evangelical backgrounds than its counterparts.

A major spiritual and social focus of monastics involves living with the poor and advocating for economic justice; in fact, many choose to live at the socio-economic level of those around them as a means of solidarity.  Much like the traditional monastics and prophets of earlier centuries these conspirators choose to live and proclaim from the the fringes of society, radically living out a deeply incarnational faith and staunchly critquing the values of the dominant culture.  This approach can been seen in the work of Shane Claiborne and other members of movements such as the Simple Way.

So those are the four streams that comprise the new conspirators.  What do you think about Sine’s grouping? As I said before I tend to see the emerging stream as a larger umbrella group and the missional stream — as Sine describes it — as the theological backing for the emerging stream at large.

Next week: Coming Home to a Post-9/11 Global Neighborhood

1. Tom Sine, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 31-55. [↩]
2. Sine, 34. [↩]
3. Sine, 35. [↩]
4. Sine, 39 [↩]
5. Sine, 41. [↩]
6. Sine, 42. [↩]
7. Sine, 43.  The quotation from Conder is can be found here. [↩]
8. Sine, 46 [↩]
9. Sine, 49 [↩]