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Forget everything except...

"For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified." -St Paul, 1 Cor 2:2

 For me, the last few years of thinking, praying and preaching have largely been an exercise in coming to grips with this thought: forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.

Like many who started off in evangelicalism and especially in youth ministry, the trap of seeing preaching/teaching/pastoring as largely a matter of helping pretty good people become slightly better people is one I fell into face first. For me, it was about "How God Wants Us To Live." The Bible was the Handbook for living and my job was to help people understand what God wanted them to do. 

Oh, sure- there was something about Jesus in there. It's like He was the ticket in to the dance, but it was really all about how you moved and what you did once you were IN.

And I was constantly surprised when that moralistic do-better message failed to capture anyone's heart or move anyone to anything beyond incremental change. My efforts seemed to produce not a group of people so captured by an overwhelming love for a Savior who would lay down His all for them that they would lay down their all for Him, but rather groups of (interestingly enough) slightly guilty, slightly self-satisfied religious people who always berated themselves for not doing better and salved that guilt with the thought that at least they were doing better than those people. Who "those people" were changed over the years. First it was the Catholics, then "liberals" (anyone to the left of us), then finally as this all took on a slightly emergent sheen, "evangelicals" or "fundamentalists" (anyone to the right of us).

At the peak of my frustration with all of this, I was introduced to Tim Keller. As a recovering Calvinist, I was at first a bit leery of the Presbyterian pastor from New York. But in the same way that CS Lewis speaks so well to the secular skeptic, I think Keller speaks to those skeptical of Reformed theology- those who don't want to end up like so many of the bitter Calvinist trolls who seem to populate the corners of the internet. 

At any rate, his assertion that the Bible is not about YOU, but rather about Jesus, about the story of God's redemption and Redeemer was game changing for me. 

Suddenly, my role was not to tell people how to be like various Bible heroes (who really weren't all that heroic if we're going to be honest) and how to do better/more, but to do what Scripture actually did- point them to Jesus, always and only, let their hearts and minds be moved by the Good News of what God has done for them in Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to take that heart movement and alchemize it into Christ-likeness in their lives individually and communally. 

Practically speaking, this means I approach texts (even head-scratching ones from the OT) with the basic questions of "How does this point us to Jesus?" and how does the Gospel answer the questions that people will be asking around this text/issue? We always end up back where we need to be: At Jesus and what He's done for us, and though we often get to what we need to do as a response, the first thing we always need to do is see how His work on our behalf is enough- how Jesus Christ crucified is the answer that leads to all the other answers. 

So that means answering practical questions about things like self-image, success, money, sex with some variation of "Until you are freed from your need for success, a failure you will remain." That is, until we see that in Jesus and His righteous life and sacrificial death imputed to us we have what we need, we will always struggle. As long as we look to other things (in biblical language: idols) to save us and until we put our hope in the only One strong enough to bear it, we'll continue to live lives of either overt unhappiness or, even should we largely get what we are striving for, an undercurrent of "is this all there is"?  

And thus change happens, individually and communally, not when we try harder to do better, but when we are able to lay down the need to do for ourselves what God wants to do for us in Christ, all our little self-salvation projects, and lean more and more into and onto Jesus.

The challenge, on an individual level (and speaking personally, it IS a challenge) is to live this. And on a leadership level to creatively move to this through all my counseling, preaching, teaching. To find 100 different ways to say the same thing. Honestly, I think I've got maybe 5 (some who listen to me preach regularly might think that generous). I need more. 

But... I think I finally know what Paul meant when he said "I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified." My job isn't to help people understand what God wants them to do. My job is to help them see, understand and be moved by what God has already done. That's the difference between good advice and Good News. Out of that, as they follow the One who has captured their heart, God will speak and I can help them listen, process and respond appropriately- but it all flows first and foremost from the ground of how God is redeeming us and the world through the work of Jesus on our behalf. 

5 Things I've loved about the Emerging Church movement...

With everyone writing obituaries and whatnot for the emerging church movement, and with myself coming across more and more as a critic, I feel a personal push towards taking a time-out to recollect some positives and praise for a movement, that while mixed, and in many ways losing momentum and splintering, has been significant for me in my journey. 

1. My initial intro to the emerging church movement came in a seminar with (yes, believe it or not) Doug Pagitt and Mark Driscoll together. On a personal level, at a low point in my life and faith, feeling burnt out and burned, they talked about a postmodern (hey! Remember that word??) approach to faith that was more about Jesus than institution, and more about life in the way of Jesus that made a difference in the world and less about a focus on getting people over the goal-line of decision and their rears into heaven. All of that resonated with me deeply. Brian McLaren's books The Church on the Other Side and More Ready Than You Realize, Len Sweet's Postmodern Pilgrims, an Origins conference with Erwin McManus (and many of his books)... all of these kept my vision and heart for faith and church together even while I worked out on a personal level some things I needed to get sorted that threatened to shipwreck me. And even though now I find myself more often than not pushing back against BOTH Driscoll and Pagitt from my tiny speck of middle ground, I'm eternally grateful that at just the right time, God allowed our paths to cross. 

2. On a theological level, whether they were ever really connected with the emerging church or not, people like Todd Hunter and Dallas Willard, Rob Bell and Ruth Haley Barton all became introduced to me through the EC. And they have all had profound impacts on my thinking about God and faith. Todd Hunter gave me an expanded view of the Gospel and the Kingdom that continues to shape me today- and he did it at various Emerging Churchy type things like the Emergent Convention (remember those??) and Off the Map. Rob Bell, while cool and all, and inability to boil down the Gospel to 140 characters aside (I kid, I kid), proved to be a game-changer for me, mainly by introducing me to William Webb and the redemptive hermeneutic, something that has been massively forming for me. His simple explanation of Webb's take on the redemptive arc in Scripture set in motion for me a internal movement that led me to a completely different view of women in leadership and has shaped Evergreen for the better.

3. On a pastoral/church level, the emerging church conversation broadened my ecclesiastical horizons and helped me to see God at work in all kinds of expressions of Church. But even more so, it gave me the freedom to think outside the boundary lines I had previously limited myself to in terms of what Church could and should be. It introduced me to ideas of a more organic approach, helped shape my thinking on flattened leadership structures and, in a sense, gave me "permission" to try something as crazy as church in a pub.

4. On a missional level, it's largely been through the emerging church that I've been turned on to voices in the missional stream of thinking, like Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, voices which continue to shape my way of thinking and orientation in the world and which continue to challenge, stretch and even confound and frustrate me- all good things and sorely needed. 

5. Finally, I credit the emerging church movement/impulse with a renewed emphasis in my own heart, in my city, and in the American church in general towards justice and the poor. If you think the emerging church has just been all talk, and no practical good in the world, you haven't had your eyes open for the last ten years. The amount of influence the emerging church has wielded in terms of getting the sleeping giant of the American church off its rear and into the game in terms of helping the poor both locally and globally has been WAY out of proportion to its size and influence in other areas (though it has had influence in other areas). While the biggest churches in America ten years ago were hosting conferences on how to grow your church even bigger, today they host conferences about, push people towards and resource (for example) the fight against AIDS in Africa, clean water around the world and more. Ten years ago much of evangelicalism in the West had its head in the sand in regards to global poverty and today the landscape looks very different. And while a concern for justice and the poor didn't originate with the emerging church, I think a renewed consciousness about and concern for the poor among  can largely be credited to the "prophetic" emerging voices of people like Shane Claiborne and feeling the pressure of all these small emerging communities (some of which have grown into big, city-impacting churches like Imago Dei) that were getting it done in ways that their more-established and better-resourced churches weren't. 

All in all, I'm grateful for the impact of the Emerging Church on my life- while I feel like we've grown apart in some ways (I just need to see other movements... really, it's not you, it's me. Okay, it is kind of you), and while I feel like there's some significant tares in amongst all the wheat there, for today, I'm choosing to see and be thankful for the good. 

10 Year Retrospective on the Emerging Church

Wow- Stephen Shields has posted an encyclopedic meditation/restrospective on where the emerging church has been and is now. It's fantastic and you should read it. 

Good thoughts from many others like Scot McKnight, Dan Kimball, the two Mr Jones (Tony and Andrew) and others as well. Nice work!

Scared and excited... what's next?

About this time last year, we were a community approaching 120 adults, knowing that before too long our space in NW Portland simply wouldn’t hold us all, particularly our kids. 

The problem? We were out of Pubs in which to meet. We had started in SW, moved to SE, and then to NW as we outgrew each space in turn. So we prayed, discussed, dreamed and planned... and started the Hawthorne gathering, back in the second pub in which we had met, dividing the community into two worship gatherings, each with a primary teaching elder, but having the whole elder team/teaching team rotate between both spaces. 

We had some concerns- how would it work? Would we really be able to be one community in two locations? Would people step up and help do the work of the community that needed to be done? 


Fast forward... 

Evergreen has experienced fantastic growth this year of around 60%. We’re seeing people meet Jesus through our community, we’re seeing people reconnect to Jesus and to church community, and we’re continuing that wonderful Evergreen tradition- having lots of babies!

And so, here we are again- same time of year, same questions. About 190 adults and more kids (especially at Quimby) than we know what to do with. In addition, because of the hospitality and hard work of everyone at Hawthorne/the SE Gathering, not to mention its central location and smaller-than-the NW/Quimby meeting space, Hawthorne is filling up and is already at 80% capacity, that number at which things begin to get uncomfortable for folks. 

We gathered a few weeks ago to pray and listen, and to think specifically about the idea of a 3rd gathering. We’ve continued to pray and we’ve continued to listen, to God and to the other people in our community, and the elders are feeling as though, as another step on the road to preparing our community for sustainable church planting, we’re ready to move ahead with a third gathering. 

Can I be honest and say this scares me? 

The last time around, it was scary and exciting too- but maybe a little less on the scary side. We were packed out at Quimby, sending people just a few minutes away for a gathering at the same time, with Dustin, Chip and Tina heading over as elders and a bunch of really good people committed to making it work. 

This time (but I'm not going to go into ALL that I can see could go wrong here...), we'll be trying it without a dedicated teaching elder, but sharing the duties a bit more. We'll have to see who's on board to help us get it going, but right now, our Hawthorne gathering is the one that's fuller in terms of adults, and the Quimby gathering in terms of kids. I can see this new thing really working for parents with kids. My fear is not having enough Hawthorne people step up and make the switch, and still being packed out there... 

And yet- last time we did this, by everyone's estimation, it went smoother than any of us could have dreamed. People got behind it, were excited to help make something new and help make it their own... Aside from seeing that happen again, my dream is having another year of growth like this one, and getting to a place where we can start working with/training church planting apprentices with whom we can start launching out new communities all over Portland- wherever Evergreen people are living and loving their neighbors.  

We’re looking at and checking out a number of spaces, but so far, the church space we've met in for our prayer gatherings/Ash Wednesday gatherings and the occasional Christmas Eve is really appealing on a number of fronts, not least of which to the folks working with Children’s ministry who love the large, clean, dedicated space with multiple rooms as well as a large common area to work with, teach, and play with our kids. 

The opportunity to have a gathering in a different kind of space, at a time other than 10am Sunday morning is exciting- and scary. Once again, the same questions:  How will it work? Will we really be able to be one community in three locations? How will it change the dynamic of our community to have a worship gathering in a non-pub space? In (potentially) a CHURCH space??? Will people step up and help do the work of the community that needs to be done? 

We have an opportunity to “test drive” a Sunday evening gathering coming up. Every year, we get bumped from the Lab for the Worst Day and Best Day of the year rides. This year the Worst Day of the Year Ride is on Sunday, Feb 15th. Here’s what we’re thinking- we’ll cancel both Sunday morning gatherings (sleep in! Have breakfast with friends! Do a service project somewhere) and gather as one community that evening for a combined worship and baptism gathering. 

Lots to think about and lots to pray about. I had trouble sleeping last night. I have a feeling it won't be the last restless night for awhile...

Kimball's Missional Misgivings...

Dan Kimball, a fellow OutofUr contributer, has earned my respect in a number of ways. 

First, as the pastor of a successful "church within a church" he had the guts to admit that ultimately, it doesn't work. New wine in old wineskins never does. 

Second, I appreciate the balance he has brought to the emerging church conversation. Yeah- he's on the more conservative end of the spectrum, and let's be honest- it's a needed voice. (Who speaks prophetically to people more conservatively-minded? Liberals. And who speaks prophetically to people who are more liberally minded? Conservatives. See?)

And lastly, he always sends me comforting Facebook messages when I get myself into little brouhaha's, like over Tony Jones's recent comments on Beliefnet re gay marriage (a Facebook interaction that took place during my recent blog hiatus)

His recent post on Ur asks some good questions of the Missional Church movement. 

I'm all in favor of good questions. And furthermore, I think Dan is asking the right ones (e.g. are people meeting Jesus in "missional" churches).

A couple of thoughts in response, though. 

Dan writes:

"We all agree with the theory of being a community of God that defines and organizes itself around the purpose of being an agent of God's mission in the world. But the missional conversation often goes a step further by dismissing the "attractional" model of church as ineffective. Some say that creating better programs, preaching, and worship services so people "come to us" isn't going to cut it anymore. But here's my dilemma—I see no evidence to verify this claim."

I both agree and disagree with Dan here. 

When I was in the middle of conversations and thinking that eventually led to me leaving a megachurch and beginning this pub church experiment, I said (and still believe) this wonderful piece of obviousness: the megachurch is great at reaching the people it's reaching. And it's awful at reaching the people it's not. 

Deep, huh?

To me the question isn't "Is the megachurch done?" Clearly, it's not. 

To me, the question has always been, is something else needed to reach those the megachurch isn't (and can't), those the traditional, smaller evangelical church (like 1st Baptist or 2nd Methodist) can't?

And the answer for me then and now is an emphatic yes. 

I pastor a growing church (something like 60% this year) of people for whom the attractional, large-scale production church was a dead end. Many of them even attempted to be part of a large-scale missional church here in town (that rhymes with Montego Bay) and found that though they appreciated the missional emphasis (as do I- I think we have a lot to learn from them), the size and difficulty of getting "in" precluded their participation. 

Many of our folks are either coming back to Christianity, just starting out (yes, we have people meeting Jesus @ Evergreen), or are, not to put too fine a point on it, half-way out the door giving it one last shot with us. I've heard from people in ALL of those places on the continuum that the attractional, program driven church, or even large church in general just wasn't attractive to them.

And that's the key to this whole discussion. 

There's a group of people for whom the megachurch works just fine. I LOVE that there are churches where those folks can find community and find Jesus. But let's be honest, there are people for whom those communities don't make sense, and an alternative is needed. 

Here's my contention (and no, I can't prove it- we'll just have to wait and see)- The numbers of people for whom the megachurch "works" is probably going to shrink over the next couple of decades. Mega Churches will continue to grow and be used by God, but those who intentionally make themselves smaller through strategies like multi-site will grow the most. More and more people will seek out medium sized communities (bigger than the house church or small (≤40) church but not as large as big (≥400) or mega-churches), recognizing that what they long for is community and it's just easier (though never easy) to create in smaller churches. I think when they want to hear Driscoll or (shudder) Ed Young Jr, or others they'll just hit the pod/vodcast. When they want production, they'll throw on a Hillsong or Crowder CD. For worship, a couple of guitars and vocals will suffice. 

But not just smaller communities, these people will seek out communities that point to and hold up Jesus, that encourage, prepare and launch people out into missional living (so no, I'm not predicting the renaissance of the millions of corner churches that can't seem to crack that particular code). They'll want communities that run lean (so not many building programs), take care of the poor, and focus on relationship and relational health. 

So while I appreciate Dan's pushback, I think it's a bit more complicated than what he's both depicted as the "missional" mindset and the way he's answering it. 

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe Osteen and Young Jr are on to something. 

But I doubt it :)

Okay- your turn- what do you think? 

Bro Maynard on big changes at Emergent Village...

"Big changes at EV, and I heard it first on Twitter, wouldn’t ya know it? “MINNEAPOLIS, November 1, 2008—Emergent Village today announced a major change in structure that will position it less like a traditional non-profit organization and more like a social networking organization.” (from the press release). The Letter from the Board to Friends of Emergent Village has more information, including the results from their survey last year..."

Read the rest here

Interaction with Doug Pagitt...

Dustin Bagby, one of our elders at Evergreen, has posted an interaction with Doug's A Christianity Worth Believing, particularly with Doug's view of sin and separation. Worth a read!

Doug on Emerging vs Emergent

Look who's done with words like "Emergent"...

Since at least 2005, I was advocating for Emergent (technically Emergent Village) to change their name. Already, at that time, there was confusion between the emerging church, a loose movement of those interested in exploring methodological, philosophical and theological movement and change and Emergent Village, a specific organization commonly associated with personalities like Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren. 

In my mind, though I would consider those guys friends, the confusion between what they thought/wrote/said and what the emerging church as a whole was about was too great. I believed (and others agreed) a way that Emergent could serve the emerging church as a whole was to change the name, thus stating clearly that while Emergent was a part of the emerging church movement, it wasn't the sum total of it (something they never claimed to be, by the way) and they didn't speak for everyone who considered themselves a part of the EC. 

Well, you know... the name remained. Too much had gone into building the brand, and the confusion not only remained, it solidified. In fact, people began to speak of the "Emergent Church" and far from looking to the churches that made up the movement, folks, critics in particular, began more and more to look at Mssrs. McLaren, Jones and Pagitt (as well as some others). 

Of course, at that point, many who had broad sympathies with the emerging church began to tire of constantly being asked to defend the theology of others as though it was their own. Speaking for myself- I like and love those guys, but I don't want to... I can't own everything they write or say. 

I thought for a long time that in the way all movements tend towards having a left and a right, so too the emerging church would eventually end up with a left of Emergent and Friends and a right of the "missional" church movement. And if the trends continued, eventually, I thought those who identified with the "missional" aspect of the emerging church would distance themselves from the words "emergent" and "emerging."

Well, I was right. Andrew Jones, a co-signer of Emergent's "Answer to Critics" has now stated that though he will stay relationally connected, the confusion between the emerging church and Emergent has become so problematic and so hindered the work he's trying to do (mainly by causing supporting churches and organizations to distance themselves) that he's dropping the use of the words.

Further, Dan Kimball here talks about a new network forming with Scot McKnight that would seem to be positioning itself as a counterbalance to Emergent. 

As for me- I don't know if I'm done with the phrase "emerging church" yet- but just about. I know that when I say it, I'm more often than not now answering a question about what we aren't than what we are about- and that saddens me. I'm profoundly grateful for the emerging church conversation and for the role that guys like Doug, Tony and Brian have played both in it and in my life as well. 

But I do have some deep concerns about some of the things I see in the movement as a whole- and to be honest, though I once spent a lot of time defending the emerging church, I want to be about the Gospel. Answering questions about what someone else does or doesn't believe, even someone I consider a friend and influence in my life, just doesn't appeal to me any more...

New Christians wrap up and...

Okay- I know I've been pokey about getting to the New Christians and A Christianity Worth Believing.
Sorry.
Just been pokey in general...

I want to wrap up one and bridge to the other... first, some general comments.

I liked The New Christians. The book has roughly three movements, not so much segregated or delineated, but... The first third is some interesting history of Emergent, with much of the behind-the-scenes thinking and feeling filled in. I was especially glad to read a balancing perspective on what's now risen to the status of "lore" in modern-day evangelicalism: Mark Driscoll and his exit from the original group the would become Emergent.

The last part of the book is a helpful look at various emerging church communities and how they live out their community lives.

The real meat of the book, I think, is in between.

The middle part of the book tackles various themes of theology, truth and objectivity and how "emergents" tend to come at the issues differently. If anyone is going to have problems with the book, it will be here. Jones tries to take a "middle way" approach (something I very much appreciate).
The inherent problem with a middle way approach , however, is that it's highly dependent on what you plot as being the end points of your spectrum. Put John Piper on one end of your spectrum and Rick Warren on the other and you'll get a very different "middle" than if you put Rick Warren on one end and Marcus Borg on the other.
On the spectrum of liberal to conservative in Christianity, we not only tend to lean towards one end or the other, I think we tend to "write off" those at the farthest end from the side we lean towards. So, folks on the more conservative side of the spectrum, even in the emerging conversation tend to view guys like Borg and actively lesbian Unitarian pastors with the same suspicion and through the same lens that those on the more liberal end of things tend to view fundamentalists with big black King James Bibles, wives who don't wear pants and more Old Testament sensibilities when it comes to various social issues... as "sub-Christian."

Lucas Labrador on the Emerging Church, pt 2

He's back...

Well, that clears that up...

Come Hear/Interact With Doug Pagitt

... Next Wednesday, April 16th, 6:30-9pm

Doug Pagitt will be here in Portland next Wednesday. We'll be hosting a reading/discussion with him and YOU are invited to hear from and participate in a discussion with Doug in a smaller setting.

Here's the deal:

When: 6:30pm- 9pm, Wed April 16th

What: Doug reading from A Christianity Worth Believing with a discussion following

Where: 11000 SW Boones Ferry Road, Portland, Or 97219

How much: We're asking for $10 donation at the door to help Doug pay for this trip. BUT- just for coming you'll get a copy of Doug's book Body Prayer ($11.99 on Amazon- limited to the first 50 people to show up). We'll probably also have some drinks and munchies...

What else: We'll be adjourning to a local watering hole after where Doug will buy everyone a drink (just kidding). Come to the reading/discussion to find out which of PDX's great pubs we'll be hitting afterwards.

Email bob at evergreenlife dot org to RSVP or ask questions
If we get more than 35 or 40 folks, we'll probably look for a little bigger venue, so- can you let us know you are interested in coming?

Len Sweet on Emergent...

From a back issue of Relevant...

“I am both an absolutist and a relativist,” he [Len Sweet] says. “You can’t escape absolutism. To say there are no absolutes is in itself absolute. The Pharisees were the absolutists. Pilate [was] the relativist, asking ‘What is truth?’ I find both of them within me. But both the Pharisees and Pilate stared truth in the face and didn’t see or hear it.”
 
The tricky part with truth, he says, is how it resonates with people.
 
“I believe in absolute truth, but the New Testament presents a new understanding of absolute,” Sweet answers. “Fundamentally, truth is relational. Absolute truth is Jesus, God’s perfect pitch—His tuning fork to the eternal. Every tuning fork needs to be struck to be heard. The striking of the eternal, unchanging tuning fork took place on Good Friday with the pounding of six-inch nails.
 
“This is the real reason I fear that Emergent may be losing its way,” Sweet continues. “It isn’t striking that tuning fork nearly enough. Jesus said, ‘If I be lifted up, I will draw all people to God.’ We sit at drawing boards, trying to design all sorts of blueprints and experiences to draw people to church and to God, while Jesus Himself is the draw. It’s all about truth, which means it’s all about Jesus.”

I think he nails it. When we start talking more about life in the way of Jesus than Jesus Himself, we're in trouble. When we nod at the many facets of Jesus' atoning work on the cross, but emphasize only one (whether that be emphasizing only His example or His victory OR emphasizing only the substitutionary aspect) we're missing some things that are essential.

Like I say, Len nails it.  What say you all? (Sorry for the O'Reillyism)

tenable?

  More non-Pagan Christianity? news...

from Tony Jones' new book The New Christians:

"The second characteristic of emergents is a high- if tortured- desire for inclusion. In interviews, similar comments were repeated in all eight churches: 'openness,' 'nonjudgmental,' 'wherever you are on the journey,' 'inclusive.' But they were quick to point out that this doesn't necessarily mean liberal or relativistic. One emergent stated 'Just because our church is open to various viewpoints doesn't mean that anythng goes. We really believe things. We just also really believe that we might be wrong.' This is a tricky middle path between the certainties of evangelicalism and the openness of liberalism, and the jury is out as to whether this middle ground is really a tenable place to stand."

I appreciated that last line more than just about anything I've read from "emerging church" literature recently. We talk the game of a "chastened epistemology" pretty well, but when it comes down to it, we tend to proclaim things just as certainly as those in the church structures/paradigms we're trying to move away from.
So, to hear someone like Tony say (in effect) "Were trying to plot a middle course and it may not work" is really refreshing to me. It's putting that particular value into action where it really counts- not just telling others not to be so sure of themselves and their projects, but admitting: What we're trying to build might not hold.

The fault lines have begun to show between the "emergent" and "emerging/missional" camps... Issues of universalism (which really deals with the issue of "to what END are we "missional?" and the place of evangelism in our communities) and how we think of homosexuality ("Welcoming but not affirming" vs "Welcoming AND affirming"), among others are already showing the even within this "third way" kind of movement, there are and may always be left/right polarities.

Oh, so THAT'S the problem...

Apparently, instead of being vacillating and non-committal, the problem with the emerging church NOW is that we're too certain.

"When emerging church leaders think they have everything "all wrapped up," it’s time to yell, "Time Out!" Putting everything in a little box is not what the church needs at this moment in history. Instead, it’s time to sit on the edge of our seats and listen, look, and learn."

Honestly- this article makes very little sense to me at all. Maybe I need to read it again, but...

Like, You Know?

TeamPyro is using a clip of Taylor Mali performing his great poem "Like, You Know?" to, like, make fun of all those, you know, emergents who can't seem to say, um, anything with, uh...
conviction?

Interesting thing about this is, I first heard this poem a number of years ago in a sermon by none other than emerging church "heretic" Chris Seay. In fact, he quotes it quite often. I used it in a sermon a few months back, as well...

I guess we're not quite as wishy-washy as the pyro boys would like to make us out to be...
:)

Emerging MISSIONAL Church...

For Hirsch, "Missional" is much more than a buzzword. It's nothing less than a Gospel-orientation in all of life that pushes the church out to the margins, way beyond comfort zones of buildings and programs, into recapturing an apostolic ethos for the good of the Community of Christ Followers as well as the host community being reached.

The Emerging Church needs to hear what this guy is saying...

Speaking of the "Emerging Missional Church" he says:

"The absolutely vital issue for newer emerging churches will be their capacity to become genuinely missional. If they fail to make this shift, then they too will be another readjustment of Christendom. A mere fad. As we will see throughout this book, new and emergent forms of church are the result of being missional, not the other way around. I therefore present the same challenge here to my brothers and sisters in the emerging church as I do to the established church: if you don't just want to be another church fad, don't just make the service and spirituality suit a postmodern audience, start at another place- put the M in the equation first, and the EC will follow."

Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways

Brian McLaren speaks about his critics...

Love him or hate him, Brian is doing his best to respond in a Christ-like way to criticism.

Yes.

Here's a video where he discusses these issues head on with Alan Roxbugh.
Wish I could post it on the bob.blog, but you need to go here to see it.

I hope to interact with Brian's latest book sometime this weekend or early next week.

Why I'm not...

winking.

Yeah- just not going to do it.
Also, not going to spend a lot of time on this, but...

I loved Doug Pagitt's original call to graciousness in the face of critique- particularly the ridiculous kind.
Wink all you want at that...

But when it comes to serious critiques or even reasonably well-presented broadsides from someone you expect to simply lay into you, but who clearly put a huge amount of effort into self-restraint?

Well...

I think "winking" at that shows, not graciousness... but a smart-assed inability to hear critique- something we consistently say we can do when it's presented in a credible, gracious way. I think Dricoll got most of the way there and I'm willing to spot him the difference... and I think you should too, even if you disagree with some (as I did) or all  (as others did) of his conclusions. 

You can lose a lot of things... but lose teachability? Then you're really up a creek. If our collective response of the emerging church becomes to wink at any and all critique, then
1. we're lost
2. I'm out.

So, that's why I'm not winking. 

Driscoll podcast up...

The Driscoll podcast calling out everyone to the left is up.  Here's the message- listen to it. (and skip the first few minutes... You've heard it. At some point Mark needs to start beginning messages with "I know you've all heard the story of my rough and tumble youth, and if you haven't, just pick a random podcast from iTunes- I'm pretty sure it will be in there.")
 

To sum up-
He uses the word "heresy" in and around the discussion, and while he doesn't apply it directly to the forehead of either Brian, Doug or Rob, he doesn't leave a whole lot of doubt as to what category he places these guys in mentally...

So- for the record...

Battle of the Mars Hills...

So Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Seattle has now officially called Rob Bell of Mars Hill Michigan (along with Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt) a heretic.

Man... I'm bummed. Not necessarily surprised, but bummed. We all knew what he thought of Brian McLaren... and he hasn't been too charitable to Doug either (goats??), though they were once friends.

I'll listen to the message from the Convergent conference when and if they put it out there and hear what he has to say.
But as of this point- I'm doubtful that Rob is anything approaching "a heretic."

And just for the record... I didn't write this in my pajamas and  don't live with mom :)

Doug P And J. Mac on Yoga- pt 2

I want to write more later today on some boundary issues I've been thinking about that tie in here, but for now, here's comment I posted on the Pulpit Magazine website- a John MacArthur joint that posted the below video of Doug and Dr. MacArthur commenting on yoga.
My comment follows many "anti" and a few "pro"... and even a few by Doug himself wading into the midst of the lion's den!

Notice:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
(While I'm not sure if this is also a Phil Johnson joint, I'm thinking maybe. I guess we'll see if my lifetime ban for the "cheap shot" of referring to John MacArthur as "Johnny Mac" applies across the entire internets or is limited to the Team Pyro site)... Anyway, I start with a quote from earlier in the comment thread...

“I find it heartbreaking when someone allows the practices of a religion that denies Christ as Savior into a building designed to worship Him.”

Me too– that’s why I’ve abandoned Easter and Christmas, and everything related to them, refuse to use words like “Thursday” and “Saturday” because of their pagan origins and…

Oh wait. I didn’t do that.
And I’ll bet neither have you.

While I would like to have heard Doug (who I consider a friend!) make a statement about some kind of boundaries (”Of course, often Hindu spirituality IS woven into yoga and that should be avoided by those following Jesus”) I’m basically with him. Simply because people who don’t follow Jesus meditate doesn’t mean I can’t if I’m meditating on the right thing. Ditto prayer, serving the poor, and in my opinion yoga.

For me, yoga is a great means of stretching and exercise (which, looking at the average American Pew-Potato, we could all use a bit more of) and more importantly, a time of prayer- a time to prostrate myself before God, focus on the words of the Bible I have just read and PRAY.

We don’t need to abandon every practice simply because of non-christian origins. We redeem them. Some practices may be antithetical to the gospel and need to be avoided all together, but MacArthur and others here have failed to make that case as regards yoga. I especially love the guys who claim that Paul’s eating-meat-sacrificed-to-idols argument is basically anti-yoga- when he says clearly “For why should my freedom be limited by what someone else thinks? If I can thank God for the food and enjoy it, why should I be condemned for eating it?” His point is to protect the consciences of weaker Christians…

So
1. You claiming that I can’t do yoga puts you in the position of “weaker brother”. If that’s where you want to be, okay… but most who push an anti-yoga agenda do so because they think they are more mature and “discerning.”
2. Paul’s argument would lead me to believe that it’s wrong for me to try to get you to participate with me. Also, for me to do it in front of you? Probably not great since your conscience is weak in this area. But for you to forbid me from doing yoga stretches as I pray?
“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

I want those who criticize this practice on the basis of “pagan origins” to put up or shut up. Are you willing to never again have a Christmas tree? To never use the phrase “Easter” or “Wednesday”?

If not, if you actually believe that such pagan practices can be redeemed and turned towards the worship of the one true God, how about a little benefit of the doubt here?

All in all, though I think he negated it with comments later in the video, I actually agree with Dr. MacArthur: “Well, that would depend on how the yoga is conducted. If it’s just purely exercise and you’re a strong Christian, it probably wouldn’t have any impact on your faith”

Update: Here's a great comment that in true "online discernment ministry" fashion got moderated... but survives on the blog of the commenter. Good arguments against those who say any yoga at all is verbotten for the Christian

Misc...

An excellent, balanced critique of the emerging church here.
Quotes:
"...from my experience in and reading of the emerging church, there is no reason to assume that emergers deny any essential doctrine of the Christian faith."
and
"In sum, hard postmodernism should be seen as a threat. It is not possible to be a hard postmodernist and be a Christian. Soft postmodernism on the other hand presents the church with many lost virtues of grace and irenics (theology done peaceably). For this we can be thankful. But we must guard the truths of Scripture with the conviction that the evidence has presented. Our traditions may or may not be wrong, but that is for the evidence to decide. There also are non-essentials that need to be spoken about with conviction, even if we might be wrong in the end. In short, let us be balanced in our understanding of the issues on the table and let us not lose the conviction that the truths of Scripture produce."

Also, Sally Morganthaler has a must read article on her movement/change in understanding since writing Worship Evangelism on the Allelon site, here.

Quote: "Conference organizers were confused. They wondered what had happened to me. Where was the worship evangelism warrior? Where was the formula? Where was the pep talk for all those people who were convinced that trading in their traditional service for a contemporary upgrade would be the answer? I don't have to tell you this. The 100-year-old congregation that's down to 43 members and having a hard time paying the light bill doesn't want to be told that the "answer" is living life with the people in their neighborhoods. Relationships take time, and they need an attendance infusion now.


I understood their dilemma, and secretly, I wished I had a magic bullet. But I didn't. And I wasn't going to give them false hope. Some newfangled worship service wasn't going to save their church, and it wasn't going to build God's kingdom. It wasn't going to attract the strange neighbors who had moved into their communities or the generations they had managed to ignore for the last 39 years."

A serious question...

I ask it here, and to be honest, I'm surprised no one asked it before me. Could be interesting.

I'll have more to say on this next week...

Radio Orthodoxy...

I'd say this needs to be amended to read "Blogosphere Orthodoxy", but it still hits home...
From Out of Ur:

Sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura,…sola radio? The following conversation is based on true events.

Church member: “Pastor, I’m very disturbed by something you said in your sermon yesterday.”

Pastor: “I’m glad you came to talk with me about it. What’s bothering you?”

Church member: “In the sermon you mentioned Erwin McManus.”

Pastor: “That’s right. I quoted something he said about church membership.”

Church member: “Well, I’m very disturbed that you would reference someone like him in a sermon? McManus is part of the emerging church, and I have serious problems with their theology based on what I’ve heard on the radio.”

Pastor: “You do know Erwin McManus is a Southern Baptist and I’m pretty sure his theology is quite orthodox. In fact, our denomination invited him to speak at our convention two years ago.”

Church member: “Yes, I know they did and I’m very bothered by that as well. McManus is part of the emerging church, and the emerging church is involved in all kinds of heresy.”

Pastor: “The label ‘emerging church’ is used to describe a lot of different things, and I know some emerging church leaders are pushing the envelope with their theology, but I don’t think Erwin McManus is one of them. To tell you the truth, I’ve never really considered McManus part of that movement. I think his books are just packaged and marketed to that crowd. I don’t think you have to worry about his theology. Have you ever read one of his books?”

Church member: “No, but I don’t have to. I listen to Chuck Colson on the radio and he says the emerging church is very, very dangerous. It’s not something we should be messing around with, and the fact that you’d quote an emerging church pastor in your sermon is very alarming.”

Pastor: Well, I’d encourage you to read up on what McManus teaches and believes, and if you find something problematic let me know. I’d be happy to talk with you about it.

Church member: “I don’t think you heard me. Colson said on the radio that the emerging church is full of heresy. It’s dangerous. Why would I read one of those books?”

Pastor: “I haven’t listened to Chuck Colson’s program, but I can assure you in my study I’ve found nothing wrong with Erwin McManus, and neither have the leaders of our denomination.”

Church member: “Yes, but Chuck Colson is on the radio. I’m just letting you know it really bothered me yesterday. I hope this isn’t the start of a trend. I don’t know what I would do if this church started becoming emerging.”

I’ve recapped this conversation for you because it jives with something Brian McLaren wrote a few years ago. He said:

Sometimes I think that the most powerful and popular denomination in America is a stealth one. It’s not the Baptists or the Catholics or the Methodists or the Assemblies of God. It’s "radio-orthodoxy"—the set of beliefs promoted by religious broadcasting. Do you doubt the power of radio-orthodoxy? Just try contradicting it.

New BMac Album cominatcha...

Okay- for the record: I like Brian McLaren. To say a number of his books (most notably Church on The Other Side and More Ready Than You Realize) have been instrumental to me would be an understatement.

But there is this one little part of Brian that kind of disturbs me...

His ideas on hell? No, no...

His politics? No...

His ubiquitous blurbs on the back of every book published since 2001??? Again, no (but closer...)

It's the guitar-playing, song-leading, let-me-teach-you-one-I-just-wrote Brian that makes me squirm a bit.

God love 'im, but Brian is basically songwriter/amateur musician who happened to hit it big with his writing... and now occasionally uses the openings that provides to, uh... introduce crowds to his music.
If you've ever been involved in a BMac sing along, you know what I'm talking about...

So, he has a new book coming out, and a companion album with it.
And I think he's been writing some songs...

Here's one...

It's not too bad until it hits the chorus. And then?

Whoa...

The chorus kind of makes me a little dizzy.
Deep breath...

Ok. Check out this scathing review from CCM Patrol  (tagline: "Where Christian Music is Allowed to Get Bad Reviews")

Ouch.

What do you all think?

Stuck in the middle... again.

It seems odd to me to be arguing with emerging church type folks on one hand, and more institutional church type folks on the other. There's that via media again...
But it shouldn't be surprising to me... both arguments are really about the Gospel.

Some of my first "emerging" type thoughts were stirred by hearing Todd Hunter and Dallas Willard talk about how we had basically reduced the Gospel down to an overly-individualized, Jesus 'n' me, accept-Jesus-so-that-when-you-die kind of message that was pretty good for after death, but not terribly useful in the here and now. By reducing the Gospel to just the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement, we had cut out so much that was vital, including an understanding of Christ's invitation into the Kingdom here and now.

Along, into my thinking, came Stan Grenz. Grenz summed up the whole story of redemption by saying that we were "created for community" by the God who Himself was an eternal community of three Persons, and that God's purpose in history was the forming of a redeemed community, living in a renewed creation in relationship with the Triune God.
Beautiful!

So, in light of all that, it made sense to me that we would talk so much about and place so heavy an emphasis on "community." It made sense to me that we would work so hard at the reformation of our communities, to get them back to a place where the Missio Dei was again central, where we would understand our fundamental identity as sent and where we would work hard to contextualize the Good News, this message of repentance and redemption for this postmodern place and time in which we find ourselves.

It never entered my wildest dreams that I would find myself arguing with other people who also identify with "the emerging church" about the value of belonging to a community... about church.
What the...?

I mean, we're not just talking about models here, you know? Like I've said- I don't care if it's house church or mega church, organic or programmed to the hilt... big, small, simple, complex, monologue, dialogue, whatever... I just can't read the New Testament and come to any other conclusion that it's wrong for a follower of Jesus to disengage from other followers with an attitude of "I don't need them." I'm not going to rehash the whole argument here... check out the comments on the Next Wave article for the fun...

But I will give a shout out to Derek Webb who makes the argument much more persuasively and artistically than I:

"I have come with one purpose 
to capture for myself a bride 
by my life she is lovely  by my death she’s justified   

I have always been her husband 
though many lovers she has known 
so with water I will wash her 
and by my word alone   

so when you hear the sound of the water 
you will know you’re not alone   

‘cause I haven’t come for only you
but for my people to pursue you cannot care for me with no regard for her
if you love me you will love the church"

On the other side of things, it was Tim Keller that fleshed out my understanding of the Gospel, with an incredible message on preaching the Gospel. Keller's thesis was that reading the Bible topically led to an understanding of the Gospel as "God, sin, Christ, faith" and this leads to a very individualistic Christianity. But if we read the Bible linearly, cover to cover, we understand that the purpose of the Gospel is a new creation! That God Himself has come to rescue and renew all of creation through the work of Jesus on our behalf! That all of Scripture points us to the person of JESUS- it's about HIM, and not us... and His purpose is bigger than just ME... That Christ's substitutionary atonement accomplishes not simply MY salvation, but the redemption of a whole creation that even now groans, waiting "for the day it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay." (Romans 8:18-25)    

I'd like to say that it surprises me to get pushback from "the right" when I talk like that... but it doesn't. I've been around this emerging conversation enough to know that I could quote Spurgeon himself, and if I were to avoid attributing it, get pushback from the nitpickers who are looking to find anything and everything they can to pin a "different Gospel" charge on me and people like me, not even realizing how DEADLY serious it is to do something like that as cavalierly (or at least as promiscuously) as they seem to.

Ahh well... Here I stand. I can do no other. :)

Worship?

We in the emerging church don't talk enough about worship. There are other things we don't talk nearly enough about, but nothing quite so important...

And until we become a people who worship God first and foremost, with our lives, our actions, our words, we'll never be doing anything more than just playing at church.

Here's a bit of what I preached on Sunday:

“Give thanks”- literally “confess, acknowledge” and so calls us to thoughtful, engaged, grateful worship…

Many of us are the people who left the traditional, institutional, do it by the book without feeling church behind. Right? My biggest complaint was that the worship in my church growing up was dead- noses in hymn books, singing words we could have meant, but never made the emotional investment to mean.

So should we go hard the opposite way? No…
Many of us are also the people who left the emotion-over-thought, manipulative, everybody put your hands together happy clappy worship behind.

We have always, from day one at evergreen said- adopt whatever posture in worship you need to adopt. But what we have never said, at least for those who have moved beyond exploring and have decided to become a follower of Jesus, is that worship is optional.

So what’s left? Exactly what this psalm calls us to- thoughtful, engaged, whole mind, whole body, whole spirit worship of the God who is. The God who made us. The God from whom all good things come. The God whose faithful love for us endures forever.

More on this in a bit... And here's B.Mac with a good word-

Ladies and Gentlemen...

I give you, quite possibly, the most ignorant, wrong-headed critique of the emerging church EVER.

(And brother, that's saying something!)

I give you: Why Al Qaeda Supports the Emergent Church

I was pretty sure... actually, I was hoping this was a joke.
It's not.

That's right you lefty-loving, Osama-cuddling, cappuccino-sipping, truth-relativising, surrender monkeys... YOU are losing us this here war on terror!

Support the war effort! Burn a McLaren book today!

Wikiklesia Project...

I've written what very well may be the least coherent and weakest chapter (really!) of what should be a stellar project. (yeah... I'm just not that happy with my contribution... I know where I wanted it to go, but...)

Anyway, some truly amazing thinkers like Kester Brown, Drew Goodmanson, Andrew Jones, and Scot McKnight (full list here) have each contributed a chapter to "Wikiklesia."

Here's the press release:

PRESS RELEASE (Download PDF HERE)
Publication Date: 23 July 2007
Distributed by: Lulu.com
Wikiklesia Press, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9796856-0-6

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 9 July 2007

Voices of the Virtual World explores the growing influence of technology on the global Christian church. In this premier volume, we hear from more than forty voices, including technologists and theologians, entrepreneurs and pastors… from a progressive Episcopalian techno-monk to a leading Mennonite professor… from a tech-savvy mobile missionary to a corporate anthropologist whom Worth Magazine calls "one of Wall Street's 25 Smartest Players." Voices is a far reaching exploration of spiritual journey contextualized within a culture of increasingly immersive technology.

ABOUT WIKIKLESIA: Conceived and established in May 2007, the Wikiklesia Project is an experiment in on-line collaborative publishing. The format is virtual, self-organizing, participatory - from purpose to publication in just a few weeks. All proceeds from the Wikiklesia Project will be contributed to the Not For Sale campaign.

Wikiklesia values sustainability with minimal structure. We long to see a church saturated with decentralized cooperation. The improbable notion of books that effectively publish themselves is one of many ways that can help move us closer to this global-ecclesial connectedness. Can a publishing organization thrive without centralized leadership? Is perpetual, self-organizing book publishing possible? Can literary quality be maintained in a distributed publishing paradigm? Wikiklesia was created to answer these kinds of questions.

Wikiklesia may be the world’s first self-perpetuating nomadic business model - raising money for charities - giving voice to emerging writers and artists - generating a continuous stream of new books covering all manner of relevant topics. Nobody remains in control. There is no board of directors. The franchise changes hands as quickly as new projects are created.
tags: collaborative ecclesial nomadic participatory publishing wikiklesia

Next Wave July...

The July edition of Next Wave should go live very soon...
With a cover story by yours truly on "Why I'm Not Done With Church."

Here's an excerpt/teaser...

I've often wished I could write off church... It certainly would make life easier in many ways and at least I'd get to sleep in on Sundays. But, I'm beginning to think that if I truly understand the Gospel... I just can't.

More and more people are declaring "I want to follow Jesus... I just can't handle church." The rise of the free-range Christian along with its attendant cynicism towards all things institutional has been one of the big stories of the last couple of years, most notably highlighted in George Barna's book Revolution

In it, Barna describes a new movement that "entails drawing people away from reliance upon a local church into a deeper connection with and reliance upon God."

He envisions a generation "choosing from a proliferation of options, weaving together a set of favored alternatives into a unique tapestry that constitutes the personal 'church' of the individual."

"The personal 'church' of the individual"?

To be fair to Mr. Barna, I haven't read the whole book, just clips, and when I heard him speak at the Off-The-Map conference last November, I loved much of what he had to say and got the distinct impression that he was really talking about people being involved in small house churches, and other ad-hoc groups/gatherings of Christ-followers.

But the problem with what he is describing is that while many are leaving the megachurch for smaller, more simple, missionally-focused expressions of community (something I'm all about), many are choosing simply to disconnect and not engage in Christian community at all, choosing the very "personal church of the individual" that Barna at times seems to be advocating.

Now, before you think I'm going to write off or condemn any and everyone who finds themselves disconnected from church community, let me say a couple of things. First, as I mentioned before, I've been there. Oh, man, I've been there. Disillusionment, anger, hurt, burnout??? Check , check, check and, uh... check.

Check it out...

CS Lewis to us Emerging Church hipster-types...

"You can't go on 'seeing through' things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is not the same as to see."- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Team Pyro's Frank Turk lays down the smack...

From Team Pyro:

Bob Hyatt Calls Phil/TeamPyro "the smartest, most eloquent" ... but the smartest, most eloquent source of "waay off base slams" against the Emergent church. Open challenge to Bob: At TeamPyro, we offer critiques to everyone -- evangelical, emergent, reformed, arminian, smart, stupid ... we give everyone something to chew on. Can you personally name anything wrong with the Emergent church which anyone ought to be concerned about, or is Emergent free of any riff-raff? Think about that, bub, before you start with the "way off base" smears.

1st- It's "Bob" not "bub", but I guess the keys are kind of close together? Anyway, no offense taken.

2nd- as for your challenge... Can I personally name anything wrong with the "Emergent" church which anyone ought to be concerned about?
Well, as for the Emerging Church, yes. And as for Emergent Village the organization yes.
I have named various things that concern me about both...
here,
here,
here,
here,
I opened up a monster can of Driscoll on Spencer Burke's book here,
and took issue with Emergent Village specifically here.
I also recently published this mixed review of the Emergent Manifesto of Hope...

And the list goes on... I'm both a critic and a defender of the emerging Church. What I find myself doing most often, however, is defending it against ill-informed, uncharitable and frankly waaayy off base slams... like the new ironically titled book by John MacArthur, "The Truth War"
... or even the silly broadside by TeamPyro against Dan Kimball.

Why do I bother? Because honestly, honesty matters to me. There are genuine heterdoxies present within the emerging church, just as there are in most movements and denominations. There are some who are off base and need some and encouragement to watch their "life and doctrine"  (as Paul wrote to Timothy) closely.
But...

Overall, what I sense in the best of the emerging church (which the critics almost NEVER bother to even look at/mention/commend) is a true Gospel-shaped missionality that sees Jesus and His invitation to life in the Kingdom as a passion worth living and dying for- and that's what attracted me and keeps me in this church that is emerging. I see in  the emerging church a challenge to church  consumerism I see in few other places and  a missionary passion to contextualize the Gospel that is absolutely needed in this time and place.

The Good News of the Gospel is too important to play church games with. There are vast numbers of churches dotting the American landscape who are wondering where all the 20-30s are. And I never got the sense that they wanted to hear the real reasons why. They just wanted to be told what to adjust to get the young people to care about what they were doing again. And frankly, the issues are much deeper. So that's why I made "the jump." There are those who have the temperment to hang around for a decade and maybe, just maybe, turn the ship. But not me.

Do I have concerns? Of course. But I also have hope. And I'm much more likely to hang around something new and try to shape it rather than hang around something old and try to change it. I see much better returns on my efforts this way.

So, sorry Frank/Team Pyro. I know it will come as a disappointment that someone who considers himself very much a part of the emerging church movement might also critique it. I know it doesn't fit the silly stereotype of whiny "Can't we just all get along?" latte-sipper you like to imagine as being the majority of those of us in this movement. But the truth is, some of us are in this thing precisely because we love Jesus, love the Gospel and want to see as many people as possible give their lives to Christ and become followers of Jesus.

I just wish that side of the emerging church would get some play on blogs like yours...

Praxis...

Monday June 18 in Portland, OR
and Tuesday, June 19 in Seattle, WA

Fr. Ian Mobsby, an Anglican priest and emerging church leader in the U.K (serving at 'Moot,'
an emerging congregation of St. Matthew's Westminster) will share insights from his dissertation research on how renewed Trinitarian theology, ecclesiology and missiology are fueling new forms of church and mission across Europe and North America, and how these insights can spark new and creative missional engagement in your local congregation and context.

CONSIDER REGISTERING A TEAM OF LEADERS FROM YOUR CONGREGATION !

Register for MONDAY JUNE 18, 7-9 PM in PORTLAND, OREGON
http://praxislectureportland.eventbrite.com

Register for TUESDAY JUNE 19, 7-9 PM in SEATTLE, WA
http://praxislectureseattle.eventbrite.com

Praxis Mission Center seeks to 'companion congregations and leaders in emerging church and mission'. - Praxis event emails are sent to those who have previously attended Praxis events (learning parties, days, lectures, conversations...), to northwest area pastors and lay leaders, and friends of Church of the Apostles, Seattle. - To no longer receive notices about Praxis mission learning events in the northwest, click 'safe unsubscribe' in the section below.

Praxis events are sponsored by Church of the Apostles, Seattle, an Intentional Community in the Way of Jesus Christ. Worship, Saturday, 5 pm @ The Fremont Abbey, 4272 Fremont Ave N, Seattle, WA, 98103

Ingrid and Doug...

A number of people have asked me what I think of the interview between Doug Pagitt and Ingrid Schleuter, she of the newly re-imagined Slice of Laodicea website, sworn enemy of all things emerging church.

First, I know Ingrid isn't hiding her position on the Emerging Church at all...

Postmodernism’s war against the meaning of words came through loud and clear today. Yet ironically, the emergents use words to undermine the Word. They are inconsistent. If words can’t mean anything authoritatively, why are these guys writing so many books? Why do words mean something when Pagitt or McLaren undermines basic biblical doctrine, but not when a Bible-believing Christian shares the fact that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”? At bottom, the emergents believe very much in the power of words. Without them, they could not do the work of destroying confidence in the Word of God. With their endless questionings of basic teachings like original sin, a literal hell, etc. they chip, chip, chip away at the faith and beliefs of Christian young people. They use “great swelling words” of wisdom, as the Book of Jude describes, but are clouds without rain.

and I am amazed that Doug doesn't seem to have known who this top-ten emerging church enemy is (though in some ways, that's actually kind of nice, if you think about it...), but at minimum a Google search previous to appearing on the program probably would have been wise... and probably would have provided enough info to at least suggest that this isn't the nice, book-plugging interview that Ingrid wanted Doug to think it was. Yeah- I think Ingrid was a bit tricky with this one- calling Doug's book "fascinating" in the beginning of the interview and not at least giving him the courtesy of a bit of back story of her involvement in harshly critiquing both him and the emerging church in general. I may be wrong, but it seems this was an ambush. I think Ingrid's questioning showed her true colors as the interview went on, but still...

To let Doug speak without knowing that he would be not only critiqued  but mocked afterwards was dirty pool. Doug deserved to know to whom he was speaking, I think...

But, the last time I was with Doug, I told him something that had been on my mind for awhile...

The Gospel...

For those who think that either evangelism or the Gospel is lost in emerging churches like evergreen, let me recommend this post by Chris Sowers, blogger, Christ-follower and fairly standard emerging church-type guy (notice the conversation about Jesus took place in a bar!).

Apparently, there's still some Gospel up in here, eh?

Doug and Ingrid... and some rambling...

Ahh... Doug Pagitt gets sucked into the New Slice of Laodicea vortex, even dropping a comment there and an entry on his blog, both of which are followed by anti-emerging church folks who exemplify the "Let me misunderstand/misrepresent you and then proceed to rip that misunderstanding to shreds" method of conversation.

As for me, it takes something really egregious to even get me to respond to these folks anymore, which I think is some measure of progress. They speak into an echo chamber, and I'm increasingly content to allow them to do so.

What does frustrate me, however, are some of the reports coming back from the decent number of evergreeners who attend Western Seminary, my alma mater and where I plan (eventually!) to get my DMin, of increasing numbers of professor-tirades warning students of the "dangers of the emerging church."

I'm all for eyes being open to the downsides as well as the upsides of any movement- egalitarian, charismatic, Reformed, emerging church, whatever...

But honestly, Doug hits in his comment what's been my main concern for a long time- the absolute slander that masquerades as "critique" among many of those who launch said breathless tirades. I've seen some good, decent critique and some waay off base slams (Justin Taylor and Phil Johnson/Team Pyro , respectively, representing the smartest, most eloquent of each of those types).

Saddest to me is a recent comment I had reported back to me. A newer evergreener/Western Student mentioned to someone that they had started being a part of our community and was told "Oh... don't go there! They have women elders!"

"And...?" was the response.

"Well... it's just a slippery slope, you know?"

Not- "Don't go there, they don't talk about Jesus." Or "They really don't preach the Gospel!" but rather "They have broken out of the modern American Evangelical fiction of calling women pastors "directors" and rather than force gifted women to teach with their husband in the corner of the room as their 'covering' actually have recognized the Deborahs, Huldahs and Priscillas among them."

Uh... Sorry.  Got kind of worked up there :)
My bad.

By the way, appropriate head coverings for all those  unwilling to join us out here on the slippery slope can be purchased here!

(I kid, I kid... I'd hate to misrepresent anyone and then slam that misrepresentation, you know?? :)

Have a good Friday, everyone!

Webber's self-written Eulogy...

Author Robert Webber (whose book, The Younger Evangelicals is still one I recommend to those trying to wrap their heads around the Emerging Church) died recently after a long battle with cancer.

A statement he wrote before his death, to be read at his funeral represents some of the best of Christ-centered Emerging Church thought:

Dear Friends,

As a Christian I have always believed in Christ as the Victor over sin and death. I believe that Christ was the Second Adam, sent to this earth as God Incarnate, suffered death, was buried and rose from the dead to restore the entire creation. I believe that it is God who narrates the entire world and creation, from start to finish. Consequently, I have no fear of death although I do fear the process.

Today, there are literally hundreds of different styles one can follow and model for a funeral. However, historic Christian funerals were always about God. I was able to think about my own funeral and truly want it to be about God who created this world, defeated Satan at the cross and rose victorious over death and grave.

Today we begin with several eulogies, then when those are done, the real funeral begins and it's all about God. I want my funeral to be a testimony to the God who raises us from hopelessness and blesses us with new life in Him.

I hope these few words help to explain why my funeral is being done in a more ancient than modern way.

Bob Webber
The Lord be with you!

ht: reclaiming the mission

yeah, baby...

ht: Alan Hirsch

The Single Biggest Problem with Emerging Church Critique

I know that's a big "claim"... to be able to identify the single biggest problem with emerging church critique. And to be honest, it really is a toss up between two huge, huge problems with emerging church critique. So, if you lean towards the other one, I certainly won't be offended.

Phil Johnson has posted a (mostly) apology in regards to the ridiculous, unfounded broadside he offered up to Dan Kimball this last Good Friday.
Phil says:

"In that post yesterday, I remarked, "The message that comes across in [Dan's] chapter is that he really doesn't want to be bothered with doctrine."

Clearly, he is more willing to be "bothered" than I surmised from his chapter—and I'm more than happy to concede that fact. I appreciate his reassurance that "doctrine is very, very important." I'm very glad to say plainly that I was wrong and he is right on that score. And I tip my hat to him for his willingness to put as much time and energy as he has into an exchange like this during Easter season.

I also want to acknowledge the point Dan made about my choice of words when I said "his response to Driscoll [in the Listening to the Beliefs... book] consisted of a scolding." Dan's affection for Mark is the theme that dominates that part of the book, and it's not fair of me to characterize it as a 'scolding.'"

Well and good. He owned a huge part of what was wrong with his post.

However.

The biggest issue remains...

For me, the runner up to "the biggest problem" is the attribution of a single person's stated theology to a movement as a whole. In other words, taking a position laid out by someone like McLaren, or Doug Pagitt or anyone else for that matter and attaching "the Emerging Church believes" to it.
For reference, this is equivilant to basing a statement about Reformed eschatology on the beliefs of John MacArthur or Reformed thoughts on government on the beliefs of R.J. Rushdoony. It simply doesn't work that way... unless you are talking about the emerging church it seems, and then it's fine to write entire book length critiques of a movement based largely on critqueing the theology of one voice within that movement.

But as bad as that is, Phil and his friends among the Watchblogging community commit an even bigger solecism...

Geoff on an order of Attractional with a side of Missional...

and a dash of Organic (mmmmm... organic).

Geoff Surrat has posted some thoughts prompted by some things here on bob.blog... excerpt:

"First, I've never seen a purely attractional church. Every church I've been connected with is deeply concerned with helping people become disciples of Christ. When I've sat down with the staff at the largest mega-churches in America they are all exerting an incredible amount of energy to discover new and better ways to help people grow in Christ. I'm sure that there are churches in America who care only about making the turnstile spin on the weekends, but I've never experienced one.

Second, I've never seen a purely missional church; every church I've seen has a desire to be attractive (from the Greek root "attractional") They sweep the floors, turn on the lights, set the air conditioner. They buy sound systems so the musicians and speakers can be heard, they set up chairs, they make coffee. While they may never buy a billboard or send out a mass mailer, every church I've seen makes an effort to be attractive to those who might attend. And the ones who do a good job grow. Bob wrote recently about experiencing so much growth he was having nightmares about having to start a video venue.

Third, every church I've been around is missional; they all see their members as missionaries in their communities. This whole idea started with Jesus when he told us to go into all the world and make disciples. His final instructions before he caught the last cloud back to heaven said our job was to share the good news in our neighborhood. So called attractional churches see the weekend service as an intregal part of fulfilling this missional calling. While their preference is that members share their lives and faith in their own neighborhood, they also recognize that most people need some help. Similar to the idea that parents should be able to teach their children to read and write, but we need schools to help, attractional churches see their weekend services as aid stations for their member/missionaries.

Fourth, Jesus ministry was both missional and attractional. He sent his disciples out into the communtiy with nothing but the clothes on their backs on a missional journey to share the Kingdom with the world. (I bet they smelled pretty organic after a few days on the road.) At the same time he performed many miracles which attracted large crowds to which he taught Kingdom principles. It is obvious that he wasn't simply healing the sick, feeding the hungry or raising the dead; there was a reason why he performed the miracles he did, when and where he performed them. At least some part of the motivation behind some of the miracles was to give the Gospel a wider audience than just the twelve. If not he would not have wasted his time teaching the crowds when they came. One of the best Biblical examples of an attractional style of ministry occured when the charismatics got crazy on the day of Pentecost and thousands came to hear Peter throw down the Word. And someone took the time to count how many people connected with the church that day as though they felt big numbers were a good thing.

Finally, we are spending way too much timing criticizing everyone else's way of doing church. I have so much to learn from how you do church, how you build biblical community, how you grow disciples that I really don't have time to pick at your methods. God will probably lead me in a different direction than the one you are taking, but that's ok. As long as we're both pursuing him and bringing others along with us I think our methods are somewhat irrelevant.

So for me the ultimate church is an attractional, missional body of believers growing organically through every means possible. We seem to waste so much energy throwing rocks at other people's tents we lose sight of the fact we have a very limited time on earth to spread the Good News and to build Kingdom community. If your church meets in a stadium, hires a rock band and is seeing people becoming disciples of Christ, that is very cool. If your church meets in a bar, features dialog rather than sermons and is seeing people becoming disciples of Christ, that is very cool as well.

And hey, Hey, HEY put down that rock!"

We then had a little back and forth...

Phil Johnson misapprehends

Phil Johnson over at Team Pyro has chosen Good Friday of all days to post a very misleading article on Dan Kimball.
An excerpt:

In a recent symposium on the Emerging Church movement (Mark Driscoll [et al.] Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007]) Dan Kimball says the only doctrines he is really sure about these days are a short list of credos generally agreed upon by Christians and spelled out in the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds.
See if you don't think Kimball's perspective contains a classic echo of the kind of thinking I am suggesting colors the typical postmodern mind. He writes:

"When we move beyond what the Nicene Creed discusses, I feel that it is not as easy to be saying so confidently that we have things all figured out. I wonder quite often if, beyond the Nicene Creed, we end up shaping some theology or even choosing what theology we believe because of personality and temperament" (p. 92).

The position Kimball has staked out for himself is frankly hard to understand, because the Nicene Creed, in 325 AD, actually marked the start of several volleys of controversy about the person of Christ. In fact, the worst of the Arian controversy came after Nicea. And it wasn't until the council of Chalcedon, 126 years later, that a creedal statement was written which explained in simple terms the hypostatic union of Christ's two natures. That's what finally helped end a more than 200-year-long parade of heresies about the person of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity.

So it would actually be much easier to understand Kimball's position if he said he thought the Council of Chalcedon marked the final plank of vital orthodoxy. I would still disagree with him, but his position would make a lot more sense.

But he is definite about setting the boundaries of his certainty at Nicea. And the point Dan Kimball is making about this is not just an obscure, offhanded remark that I dug out of his chapter in order to have an easy target for criticism. It is virtually the main point of his chapter. It's also the one point he makes in his rebuttal to Mark Driscoll's chapter.

In short, Kimball gives the distinct impression that he thinks any doctrine not settled by the time of the first ecumenical council is not really worth fighting over.

Everything beyond that, he suggests, is negotiable—or at least he dismisses all differences on such matters as consequences of a person's genetic predisposition, personality quirks, or whatever.

Consider the implications of that: If that's really Dan Kimball's position, then he has in effect repudiated the Protestant Reformation, not to mention Augustine's refutation of Pelagius and the Council of Carthage's condemnation of Pelagianism (which occurred nearly a hundred years after the Nicene Council)."

I can't say I'm surprised by this... this is the kind of stuff that seems to have become de rigeur in critique of emerging church thought.
Here's how you do it.

1. Take a sentence.

2. Make some inferences from said sentence (the more outrageous the better)

3. Attack those inferences (Don't test whether inferences actually bear any correlation to author's original intent)

4. Condemn author

5. Repeat.

I'm so tired of this kind of stuff, but coming from the Tonto to John MacArthur's Lone Ranger, I don't expect a whole lot else.

No- scratch that. I do expect a whole lot else. A whole, WHOLE lot else. We can start with a sense of fairness and move on from there.

I spent some time typing out a comment on the post, only to notice when finally wading through the entire thread that Dan Kimball himself had shown up and made much the same points...
Did Phil acknowledge his mis-deeds of slander (yeah... I'm just going to call it that (and no you don't need to tell me the difference between slander and libel. One is legal, the other biblical)), even when directly confronted by the offended party?

Nope.

He fell back and regrouped. He insisted he had not misunderstood or taken Dan out of context. He insisted he was simply trying to get at whether Dan believed in salvation by grace alone.

Really...

In the face of Dan Kimball appearing on his blog and completely contradicting Phil's assertion that "he really doesn't want to be bothered with doctrine" Phil allows that statement to stand in the original post. No retraction, no apology.

But when someone makes an inference he disagrees with from something he's said? He's quick to correct that!

I don't see the "contradiction" you're claiming is there. "Ever-diminishing" doesn't mean "non-existent." Why do you act as if it does?

I appreciate Phil's mind, but he really can be a blow hard. And yeah, I know he'll read that. And no it's not the nicest thing I've ever said, but honestly- this guy is playing dirty pool here, and more and more, like on the old Slice, allowing his commenters to do the REALLY dirty work with comments like "I think Dan is a master of subtle deception and is often given a platform for this subtle deception... I think its a real stretch to call anyone a brother or sister in the Lord who promotes rituals like the labyrinth."

In the words of Gob Bluth:

"Oh, COME ON!"

So, here's what I was going to say... points still stand. I may end up posting something, but fact is I've already wasted too much time on this garbage and have better, more important things to do.

"Phil- you infer from Dan what he clearly did not mean to imply- and you do him injustice.

He said: "When we move beyond what the Nicene Creed discusses, I feel that it is not as easy to be saying so confidently that we have things all figured out."

You infer from that: "he thinks any doctrine not settled by the time of the first ecumenical council is not really worth fighting over."
and
"Everything beyond that, he suggests, is negotiable—or at least he dismisses all differences on such matters as consequences of a person's genetic predisposition, personality quirks, or whatever."

What he actually said was "IT IS NOT AS EASY." You assert someone hearing you say "ever-diminishing" and taking away "non-existent" is misrepresenting you.
I say you quoting Dan saying "It is not as easy" and then acting as though he said "It is impossible" is doing the same exact thing. "It is not as easy to be saying so confidently" does not mean "there is simply no basis for doctrine or assertive beliefs or the Protestant Reformation, not to mention Augustine's refutation of Pelagius and the Council of Carthage's condemnation of Pelagianism."

Why do you act as if it does?

Let's be clear and let's be fair- Dan BELIEVES plenty of things. In searching for a sense of humble orthodoxy he is tying to get Christians to major on the majors- all things that coming from anyone not associated with the emerging church many would be applauding.

Please take more care, brother. When you say things like "Everything beyond that, he suggests, is negotiable—or at least he dismisses all differences on such matters as consequences of a person's genetic predisposition, personality quirks, or whatever" you do damage needlessly to the reputation of a pastor who loves Jesus and preaches the Gospel. I have some other names for that kind of thing, but I'll let it be...

It's a simple thing- Dan is (unlike many others) very accesible. Email him. Ask him point blank "I infer from your comment on page 92 that you believe everything is negotiable. Are you, in fact, dismissing all differences on doctrinal matters as consequences of a person's genetic predisposition or personality quirks?"

How much do you want to bet he'd say "no" and be happy to correct your misapprehensions?

And please don't blame this on vague communication on his part. You took a clear statement "it is not as easy" and ran with it to places Kimball clearly did not mean to go.

I know this, that is to say I, an emerging church pastor assert this as truth, because you left out this important piece (page 94): "Please understand, [he's looking at you, Phil]... it doesn't mean I don't believe you can't come to solid conclusions about many things in addition to the Nicene Creed. There are many things not mentioned in the Nicene Creed that I believe are clear, such as Jesus' teaching about marriage, the authority of the Bible itself, the role of the Spirit in sanctification, etc...
I believe doctrine is important."

I'm at a complete loss as to how you could actually read the above words from Kimball's own hand and then actually say something like: " Frankly, the message that comes across in that chapter is that he really doesn't want to be bothered with doctrine."

In fact, I think you owe Dan an apology."

attractional vs missional

Alan Hirsch, who (along with Michael Frost) in the amazing Shaping of Things to Come, further defines the "missional vs. attractional" question here.

"I think the use of the term attractional is a tad ambiguous, but because I am partly responsible for introducing it into the broader conversation I have to stick with it. What I am trying to get at in using the term attractional is what I call the missionary mode or primary posture of the church in relation to its context. An attractional church is one whose primary stance towards those it seeks to reach is couched in the expectation of a come-to-us mentality. And this expectation as it plays out in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. was basically formed in a time in history where the church had a central position in the culture and people naturally came to church to be cared for, to hear the gospel, and to participate in the community life. The problem is that adopting such a mode is at the cost of fundamentally altering our understanding of ourselves as a ‘sent’ people. (Incidentally, the word missio, from which we get our word mission, comes from the Latin word meaning sent.) And this is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in what historians and theologians rightly call a post-Christendom era. In other words, an attractional church can work in a Christendom context, but in a missionary context it actually undermines our efforts to reach people meaningfully with the Gospel of Jesus. It is literally out-moded! A ‘sent people’ no matter how you configure it implies a going of sorts. And when combined with the other primary theological metaphor in the bible of how God reaches the nations, namely the Incarnation, it clashes head-on with the primary expectation built into attractional forms of church. Hence the conflict–they are basically two different conceptions of church vying for our loyalty in our day.

But another ambiguity can be explained by saying that while a more missionally defined church moves from a come-to-us mentality to a go-to-them mentality, nonetheless all expressions of church should be attractive. That is, we should always be culturally compelling. Don’t mistake not being attractional for not being attractive."

What do you think? Is it possible to be missional without be attractive? Without being attractional? Was Jesus either? Would Jesus hire a clown and set up carnival rides and send out mailers to the neighborhood?
Talk amongst yourselves...

The emerging church... young and stoopid!

Good to know... the real issue is simply that we are young and stupid. What an erudite critique!

Inside the Missional Matrix...

Okay- I'm not done posting about teh MPC and I certainly haven't forgotten about the Preaching With Dialogue Series (this is what happens when you read a blog subtitled "thoughts from a very distracted mind.")

Anyway- just to let you know about a cool event coming up: Off The Map and Shorline Vineyard in Seattle are bringing in Scot McKnight and Todd Hunter, both of whom rock, for "Inside the Missional Matrix."

Check it out...

Dang it...

See, now I wish I had spent the 40 bucks and gotten the audio from our critical concerns course with Doug, Mark, Karen and John Burke.

Drew Goodmanson has posted a review by someone who was there that has me wondering if we were in the same room. In fact, I guess I know we weren't...

He pulls out two quotes in particular:

Our second guest was Karen Ward from Church of the Apostles. This was an interesting exercise in nailing Jell-O to the wall. Part of what concerns me about this new form of liberalism is its purposeful vagueness as if it is to be commended that we obfuscate rather than clarify our words and ideas. The disdain for definition is felt immediately when I began to ask questions about what acts as her underlying belief or presupposition for theology or ministry. The word games and semantic shuffle makes you feel like your herding cats with a bubble blower. I realize this form of communication is considered avant garde in our pomo/post-pomo culture, but this is nothing more than repackaged deconstructionism sprinkled with postmodern Christianese to be passed off as deeply intellectual thought.

Another quote:

This session ended with all four of the speakers sitting up front to field questions which were written down for them to answer. Low and behold my question was the first up- “What role does the cross-specifically the aspect of penal substitutionary atonement play in your ministry.” it saddens me that Karen and Doug gave your typical “cross as example” answer and left John and Mark having to explain the significance of the cross of Christ. John did this very politically correct and Mark basically said (and I’m paraphrasing) that if you don’t get the cross, you’re not a Christian. It is what sets Christianity apart from all other beliefs and faiths. Mark then gave a great explanation of the many aspects of the atonement and what Christ accomplished for us on our behalf.

I left a comment (still in the moderation que):

I was in this seminar as well and will attest to a couple of things.

1. There was palpable tension between Doug and Mark

2. Mark was not the hero- everyone was wrestling with certain things, including their personalities. Sometimes it got the better of them, including Mark. In fact, I will say, especially Mark.

3. Karen Ward, with whom I spent much time this week, is not Jello. Unless Jello has a spine of steel. Her theology is exceedingly well-thought out... read the book.

4. Cats are only difficult to people that try to herd them, which is kind of a dumb thing to try and do with cats in the first place.

In fact, Karen gave some very gentle, very effective rebukes to both Doug and Mark during the time. She gave visible testimony to the fact that what your theology does to you, how it makes you treat others, especially those with whom you have friction, is at least as important as the theology itself.

My associate Pastor wrote up his thoughts (on the book and the time together) here

Honestly... if the story that is going to be told of this time, which I have very mixed feelings about overall, is that Mark went in and kicked theological butts right and left, I will feel morally compelled to balance that out, get the audio, and do some commentary.

This could have been a much mre fruitful time... but not without certain people laying down the idea of a theological bingo card and that what represents a good time together is when someone hits all the right squares of "Penal Substitution!" and "The Horror of the Cross!"...

Aye carumba... too early in the morning for this...

Listening to the Beliefs of the Emerging Church, pt 1

(1pm, Tuesday)

I'm sitting at the National Pastor's Convention... in the first session of "Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches", also known as "Doug and Mark In The Same Room!!"

If I were perfectly honest, I'd have to admit that I'm in this seminar for much the same reasons most people go to Hockey games... it's really not about the score- we all know which team we're rooting for, and it's really not about what the final score is- we just want to see what happens on the ice. And we're all, in a very sick way, hoping for a fight.

I honestly don't want to see a fight- but I do want to see some real discussion.

Chris said it well- we often see these guys/gals talking about each other... but rarely do we see them talking to each other. So, I'm excited.

The cool thing is, I have reason to hope for some good discussion. Doug Pagitt let Chris and I check out a copy of the book this thing is based on, and from what we saw by scanning quickly, it looked great. It seems as though the contributers were interacting with each other's theology in a substantive, not harsh but not overly polite way.

I'll keep you updated on the fireworks...

NW Emerging Women Leader's Convergence

I just got this email from Kelly Bean, an emerging church leader in the area about a women-only gathering she and others are putting together- you shoudl check it out if you are local:

"Hey there Bob

Deborah Loyd and I, (along w two other women) are sculpting the NW Emerging Women Leaders CONVERGENCE at Edgefield to be held the last weekend of January.

I know that Evergreen is supportive of women leading in the church and wanted to let you know about this opportunity to help encourage your own leaders.

We'd love to have some Evergreen women join in. I am sure they would have a lot to offer (as well as be encouraged). We intentionally have no keynote speakers. Instead we will share stories, make room for everyone to be heard and to share their experience, questions and perspective in various creative ways through the two days (Friday nite-Sunday noon)

Would you be willing to identify some women you see as leaders (there will be quite a range of types of leaders participating so the category is broad) at Evergreen and encourage them (or make it possible for them) to be part of Convergence?

Here's a link for registration...
http://nwemergingwomenleaders.org/"

I'm passing this on to some women in our community and I'd encourrage you to do the same...

The Danger of the Emerging Church?

The real danger of the emerging church...

OTM 2006, 8

Some final thoughts...

It was good to get away to Off the Map this year. I think if I'm asked to present a workshop next year, I'd like to. There were a lot of good thoughts and ideas and I worried that I might not have much to add to the conversation, but I think maybe...

At any rate, overall, it was a god and worthwhile time. Time away with some quality people, time to hear soem good thinking on... Well, here's the thing. The conference had a theme ("Revolutionaries") and many things were shoehorned into and around that theme (and many things fit really well), but like other Off The Map things I've been to, this one was really about our posture as Christ followers towards the world and each other. This one included a beautiful subtheme woven throughout on the kindness of God and our responsibility in light of His kindness to be kind ourselves (I'm expecting a book from Brian McLaren on this!).

The really encouraging thing to me was to hear the subtle shifts that are taking place within this emerging conversation. I heard Spencer Burke say "I love Jesus, I love Scripture, I love the Church!"
I heard Joe Myers say that organic does not mean chaotic and without structure. That there is no such thing as a community without leaders. I heard Jason Clark say "We've struggled for so long to take Jesus out of the church as though the church was the problem. And now we're simply seeing Jesus is in the church."
I heard Brian McLaren exhort (!) the people not to forsake community, not to cease gathering together as Christ followers and reading the Scriptures, praying, worshiping... He even busted out Hebrews 10!

I heard less anger and more charity towards the institutional church, even the (gasp) mega church.

I still heard a lot fo what makes the emerging conversation so good and troublesome and challenging and frustrating... but it was also good to hear it maturing, bring the pendulum back a bit towards the center. There's still a lot to talk about, and by no means have we ironed out all the kinks... but what I heard this weekend encouraged me quite a bit that there's some good things happening in this Church that is emerging.