Mondays with McLaren

In several places, I see opposite things going on simultaneously in the church that is emerging. Many people in emergent come from communities that have always valued tradition – fixed-hour prayer, stations of the cross, the church year, and so on. Some are just discovering these practice-based approaches to faith for the first time – often the through the work of Tony Jones, Robert Webber, Mark Pierson, Scott McKnight, or Sally Morgenthaler. But at the same time, other people and groups are moving away from traditional approaches to public worship and spiritual formation.
Those who are moving farther away from tradition and historic practices are rightly rejecting traditionalism and ritualism – the inflexible tyranny of “the way we’ve always done it before.” Along these lines, I like the definition of a ritual as “using an action of your body to bond to meaning.” Ritualism and traditionalism happen when we keep doing certain actions but have no idea what the meaning is.
Conversely, those who are discovering or preserving tradition and historic practices are rightly rejecting a knowledge-fixated approach to spiritual formation – the idea that more Bible facts or more theological information will make one a better follower of Christ.
I think there is plenty of room for both trends in the emergent conversation, but both groups should be careful to preserve the freedom to celebrate both/and: both the value of ritual and tradition, always connected to the meanings they help us bond to – and the freedom to adapt or drop traditions that aren’t effective or sensible for their community. It would be a shame to throw out the bathwater of traditionalism and lose the baby of tradition too, just as it would be a shame to take on extra baggage that a community doesn’t need – just because “everybody’s doing fixed-hour prayer,” or whatever.