Evangelicalism And The Emerging Church A Congregational Study Of A Vineyard Church

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 33 (2011) 109-169

Cory E. Labanow, Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church: A Congregational Study of a Vineyard Church (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009). vii + 148 pp. $99.95 hardback.

Cory Labanow is a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of Aberdeen in its Practical Teology program. In addition to serving as a volunteer for various church networks, he is currently a special education teacher in New York City. Labanow was reared in the Assem- blies of God and educated in part at the Christian university of the same fellowship. Evan- gelicalism and the Emerging Church is a product of the author’s doctoral dissertation in practical theology. Te structure and content of the manuscript varies little from the style of a dissertation and may serve as a model for doctoral students in this discipline.

During Labanow’s spiritual and academic journey he began to “question the eﬀectiveness of evangelical Christian churches” which have experienced church closures, declining atten- dance, and rigid institutional structures causing many to “wonder what is next for Christi- anity in the west” (1). While Labanow hoped to some day plant and pastor a church, he “felt uneasy about simply replicating the forms of church” in which he was accustomed. It was his own desire to “create or participate in a church community which seeks to move beyond the shortcomings of evangelicalism” that led him to search for alternatives and eventually encounter the emerging church network of leaders who were also emerging from “unfulﬁlled and dissatisfying church experiences” (42-43).

It was through the author’s research that he came into contact Matt Lawton — a pseud- onym intended to protect the anonymity of speciﬁc participants — who was the UK chap- ter founder of Emergent Church Village and the pioneer senior pastor of a 400-member Vineyard congregation located in a London suburb. Te Vineyard is an evangelical fellow- ship developed under the leadership of John Wimber in the early 1980’s in southern Cali- fornia. Today Vineyard International reports 900 churches worldwide. Labanow chose Lawton’s Jacobsﬁeld Vineyard (JV) congregation (another pseudonym) as a model to study emerging church ideas in a local setting because its self-identity was that of being a research and development project for the emerging church. Te emerging church movement is an attempt to discover new ways for the evangelical Christian church to be more relevant in the pluralistic culture of the twenty-ﬁrst century. A member of the JV congregation deﬁned the emerging church by saying, “Basically, what’s happened is that the church has discov- ered that it’s ten years behind everybody else and now it’s trying to play catch-up in every- thing, including life skills” (1).

Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church consists of ﬁve chapters. Te ﬁrst chapter opens with an introduction to the discipline of practical theology and the JV church under inves- tigation, lays out potential models for the research, identiﬁes the model of choice for the discipline of practical theology, and presents the terminology and methodology employed in his study. Te second chapter provides the background history of the JV church prior to Labanow’s arrival in May 2003 and continues through his 15 months of investigation end- ing in July 2004. Here he explains his methods of data collection; how he entered and assimilated into the life of the congregation and observed congregational meetings includ- ing greeting methods, social components, sermons, congregational music and worship; and the demographic proﬁle of the JV congregation. In chapters three and four, the author

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 33 (2011) 109-169

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provides an overview of the interviews conducted during his research and the major themes that emerged from these discussions. Tere were aspects of JV that could be directly traced to their Vineyard/Wimber roots such as the priority placed on intimate worship, praying for people at the close of church services, the decision to be “naturally supernatural” while avoiding “loads of Christian jargon,” and the desire to correct the extremes of Pentecostal- ism (63). Aside from these important identity markers with the Vineyard, it also became apparent that the majority of the congregants had little recognition of their Vineyard roots. Labanow investigates how individuals and groups within JV dealt with the desire to com- municate the message of Christianity with contemporary culture while at the same time rejecting what they perceived as the distasteful hard sell evangelism techniques of evangeli- calism. In addition, the author reveals JV’s attempts to come to terms with such themes as creating safe places for spiritual growth and development, exploring new styles of worship, expressing theological doubts and concerns, re-organizing authority structures, understand- ing the nature of the Christian message, boundaries and sexual ethics, the role of the Bible in the congregational setting, and identifying with denominational roots, church tradi- tions, and religious parentage. Te author also analyzes the questions surrounding the con- gregation’s quest for relevance as that relates to being Christians, being a church, and serving in pastoral ministry. In the ﬁfth and ﬁnal chapter, the author takes the information gleaned from this congregational study and considers their possible applications for other settings. In conclusion, Evangelicalism and the Emerging Church would be of interest as a project model for doctoral students in the discipline of practical theology. Second, for both aca- demic and practical ministers interested in the emerging church phenomenon, Labanow’s work oﬀers ﬁrst hand insights into an emerging church in the western world seeking rele- vance in a contemporary culture. Tis is a pioneer research of a Vineyard church in the United Kingdom and is worthy of the attention of those interested in an ethnographic study of the emerging evangelical church.

Reviewed by Connie Dawson

Ph.D. Candidate

Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia [email protected]

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