Community, Conversion, & Culture

"It is only within the religious community, the ecclesia, that the conversion can be effectively maintained as Plausible. This is not to deny that conversion may antedate affiliation with the community - Saul of Tarsus sought out the Christian community after his "Damascus experience."  But this is not the point. To have a conversion experience is nothing much. The real thing is to be able to keep on taking it seriously: to retain a sense of its plausibility. This is where the religious community comes in. it provides the indispensable plausibility structure for the new reality."
Peter Berger, The Social Construction of Reality. Pg 158

A Plausibility structure is the belief system that legitimates or upholds the worldview of a community or social order.  While Berger notes that it is possible to have conversion without community. Maintaining a new worldview requires a community to reinforce the new worldview and create an alternate social reality. New-wine-in-new-wineskins if you will.

If our communities embrace an "out-dated" plausibility structure, they we will not adapt to the social change in our society. The old expression of faith will fall short and be seen as implausible. In our current cultural context the church faces this exact problem. Its explanations of the faith are beginning to lack plausibility with the emerging social mindset. As a result, we have many vagabonds who have "left the church" to find God in our new social context.

In the postmodern social context, the 'emerging church' is one of the communities that are currently working out the plausibility structure for living in our time of social transition and upheaval. This is not a short-term effort as social systems change rather slowly and often encounter much resistance.

Our shift is not the first in the history of the Church. We have emerged into many cultural realities throughout history. It is a messy, painful endeavor. Yet one that brings much joy as the Christian faith become plausible once again and we forget the effort and pain if its birth in a new cultural reality.

This is why I maintain that the Church has been emerging for over 2,000 years.