Did Tony Jones Kill The Vineyard?
Tony Jones has stirred up a bit of fire in recent days on a variety of issues, but today I want to ignore most of them and focus on one topic in his recent spat with Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi).
In a year-end post the TSK observed that 2009 saw the core issues and practices of the Emerging Church movement (of which both Tony and Andrew are prominent figures) become enfolded into the halls of traditional denominations worldwide, rendering the EC essentially non-radical and non-offensive (and therefore, in a sense, no longer “emerging”). Tony took that to be a pronouncement of death on EC and his rather interesting response basically boils down to:
- Nobody uses the word radical correctly except a few in the academe – like me – who understand Karl Marx, and I can assure you the EC is still radical.
- I can also assure you that we in the EC are working hard to be more offensive than ever, and
- If you think we’re dying you should see those poor Vineyard and Calvary Chapel saps. Someone even made a movie about how lame they are.
The whole thing is pretty odd really (TSK latest response). I don’t know these guys and it seems like they’re friends, so I’m sure they’ll work it out, but what really interests me, especially as an ordained Vineyard minister, is the point Tony makes about the routinization of movements (a very important point) and the decline of the Vineyard, in particular. This provoked some interesting responses from Vineyard folk in the comments. Vineyard pastor Frank Emmanuel pushed back in a subtle, but positive way, saying, basically, “Hey, some of us are emerging too”:
As a Vineyard pastor I’ve seen far too much of [movements becoming fads] from charismatics coming to see if we were the next “it”. By God’s grace most of those folk haven’t stuck with us and we’ve been able to do something that we feel is innovative for both our denomination and for our context – and we’ve been able to think through new means of measuring what success looks like.
Another Vineyard pastor named Justin took much stronger exception to Tony’s observation:
I kind of think you took some cheap shots at Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard. As a pastor in the Vineyard (an association of churches), I can also say that your generalization of both is equally as cheap.
But I think long-time Vineyard pastor Charlie Wear stepped into the discussion with the most direct and even-handed comments:
Your Lonnie Frisbee analysis, based on the film, is misplaced. Unfortunately the film has become the story of what happened with Lonnie and the “movements” he helped birth.
However, if you want to examine the birth and then decline of a movement, the Vineyard is a great example. A little over 25 years in and it is clearly in decline. And the decline absolutely began when the leadership was passed to the next generation of leaders.
So, who’s right? Is the Vineyard dying, or in decline? I think it depends on your perspective.
Tony’s rather brief depiction of routinization is too linear: He basically says movements start out dynamic and then ossify when leadership tries to capitalize on the enthusiasm. I wholeheartedly agree with this as a universal organizational caveat, but it is highly one-dimensional. I have real concerns about the Vineyard (and the Western Church in general), but Tony’s dismissal seems rather simplistic given that thousands of churches in these two networks who each have their own quality of “life.”
Ichak Adizes has a more dynamic concept of an organization’s “lifecycle,” with stages of birth, infancy, adolescence, bureaucracy, death, etc. This follows essentially the same directional course as Tony’s simple path, but is filled with nuance. Organizations can – and often do – disrupt the cycle back and forth into different life stages. Loss of vitality has to do with more subtle issues than merely allowing professional leadership into the equation. For example, poor emotional intelligence among volunteer leaders can kill a grassroots movement far faster than institutionalization.
In this sense of the “life cycle” I tend to see organizations as a tree, going through a variety of stages depending on a variety of factors. In fact, seasons tend to affect the outward appearance of a tree more drastically and more frequently than anything else. If you didn’t know better, you’d think a tree was dead in Wintertime. Yet, it’s merely dormant. Harsh external conditions require a period of withdrawal, during which weaker branches may die necessarily. In the spring, leaps from the branches. Perhaps the Vineyard is wintering as a movement.
At the risk of breaking the metaphor, I actually see the Vineyard not as the tree, but as a branch. Christianity thrives in a myriad of forms across the scope of history and culture, and movements are merely one small part of that great, ancient, gnarly oak. Maybe the Vineyard branch is wintering, maybe it’s being pruned – or maybe it is, indeed, dying. It doesn’t really matter – the tree will continue. We will live on in it.
If you’re in the Vineyard, or an observer, what are your thoughts? Is the Vineyard in decline? What are the signs that concern you and what gives you hope?
One last note: For me there’s a kind of sad irony to Tony’s post. Overall his tone strikes me as rather sectarian and even a touch triumphalist. He seems to be implying that the EC is still winning the game against less-progressive Christian movements – as if being progressive (i.e. radical and offensive) was the point. One of the things that attracted me to the EC conversation years ago was that, despite it’s protests, it demonstrated a decidedly non-sectarian, ecumenical spirit. Back then the EC seemed like the spokesperson for that great tree of Christianity I described, where every branch/tradition was valued rather than belittled. I miss that.
UPDATE: Obituary For the Emerging Church. Clever.
