Sep 23 2005
Church of the Apostles in Seattle held an emerging church learning party This past Saturday at their meeting space (abbey). I want to play and learn like that too. I’ve been trying to see if some other emerging church folks in W. Michigan would be interested in doing something like this. Maybe I’ll explore this with the EWM cohort.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Sep 23 2005
I am a big fan of the material put out by the altworship folks in the UK. I think they have a really great way of taking the historical rituals patterns and breathing new life into them.
Her are some other alt worship links I’ve come across recently
Sue Wallace: An A to Z of Alternative Worship
planet telex » Blog Archive » Mobile Theology… Liturgy for Closing Service
Popularity: 9% [?]
Sep 23 2005
What if faith is like jazz? After a reading Blue Like Jazz, having a EWM conversation with Steve Argue where he suggested we think of doctrine as being like a song and Anthony Smith sharing a quote from Rodney Clapp
" jazz can correct what James Cone, I am afraid with all too much justification, has called the "the heresy of white Christianity." I think faith is like jazz.
I am more and more convinced that jazz the all American musical form birth from the womb of New Orleans is the way to salvage the theological conversation going on in emergent and modern circles. The tension is between those who say you must belief something absolute, be able to express those beliefs and stand on them to really be called a Christian and those who are hesitant to express the faith in terms of absolutes and certainty.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Sep 21 2005
If you ever want your church to be reviewed like a Broadway show or movie? Then check out this web site Church Review and Guide.
"Well Bob I give it a 7 for worship style, a 8.5 for creativity & 6.4 for bible form. That’s a final score of not recommended"
Well I give this a 
for bias and one sided reviews. But then that’s just one person’s opinion.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Sep 20 2005
Last week I got to hear Brian McLaren in a conversation with two other folks who are not embedded in the emerging church conversation discuss what’s emerging in the emerging church?
When pressed to say what the Emergent folks think the Emerging church should stand for I was gratified that Brian said the following are issues on which the emerging church should take a stand
In describing the emerging church McLaren used these words
missional
integral
conversational
Evangelical
catholic
monastic
global
flawed
immature
a couple other snippets McLaren says
He expects more conversation in Europe and england
NT wright not Brian mclaren
sharing the gospel with gentleness
check out the talks from Brian and other here.
Now the commentary
Many people in the emerging church conversation are satisfied to talk about theology, worship styles and flat leadership models without dealing with the dagger in the heart of establishing real community, classism and racism. I had a renewed hope for this conversation when Brian made it clear that all people but especially Anglo people need to explore and understand the significant role that colonialism, racism and class have played the church’s practice of the faith in history. He described it as "the history that the rest of the world know that we don’t want to talk about." It created the impression that "White Christians think they have right to do anything they want to do."
This was very important for me to hear as it affirmed the discomfort I have felt with a "Negroes welcome" (thanks to Maurice for lending me the language to describe this) attitude from some in this conversation. It looks like this You all can come talk if you want to, on our terms, but we aren’t going to make room for you or include your historical contributions, or recognize your voice or hear your story. If you want that then go form your own sacred circle!
How is that different from the modern church? Hmm… let me think 
its not!
So hope renewed and with some Anglo folks who get (EWM) it and a couple other folks of color now in the conversation I press on.
Thanks Brian for taking the time to tackle a tough but critical issue.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Sep 20 2005
Last week I met a new friend Anthony Smith known in the blogosphere as postmodernegro. He was in Grand Rapids to be on a panel and present a paper a t the Civitas Conference at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.
Anthony is one well read brother. He is conversant in the dialog going on in many spheres of theology from Hauerwas to Cone to Grentz. I was inspired by the breadth andndepth of his knowledge and his inquisitive approach to theological inquiry.
Few people of color that I have meet are able to soak up material from so many different sources and still maintain their connection to their roots. Further more he is able to integrate all this knowledge into a sensible and compelling philosophy of ministry that speaks to the soul. As he said often in our conversations he is practicing Pentecost.
Sure you right Anthony I’m glad you are in the EC conversation
press on bra
Popularity: 8% [?]
Sep 11 2005
Where is the EC going? Is it going anywhere? Is it going in the right direction? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? I am close to the saturation point with the talk about the emerging church. It is all beginning to feel a bit trendy. It feels at the same time so wide open that it is becoming disconnected from anything that has come before in the Christian faith, (maybe that is intentional?) and limited to only those who say let’s trash everything and reinvent the wheel to fit our (predominately Anglo) liking.
It seems to me that the conversation outside the core circle of those who head up emergent village is not amounting to much more than repeating the patterns of the modern church I hoped the emerging church would critique. A recent conversation on the EV forum over at the ooze left me wandering? Is the EC just about having a place for church drop outs or is something bigger than that. It is just this simple as one person responded to the concern about the lack of people of color in the EC.
This is going to go against the pc code of diversity ethics, but I’m looking at this from a different angle. I don’t see Emergent being the Sacred Circle that invites people In. We’re not a popularity club.
Emergent is made up of people who have drifted away from all the other sacred circles. We became a demographic at some point, and when that happened, the sacred circles were asked to come to terms with that. It is the sacred circles that are presently having the hard time letting us bring what we really want to bring back inside. It seems to me that African American Churches are very satisfied with their identities and their sacred circles, and I have not been made aware of any exodus from them that looks like Emergent.
Instead of looking at the White spiritual exodus and saying, "Hey, whatta ’bout us?!" why not look at their own situation and ask, "What is emerging out of our own Sacred Circles?" and then just showing up at a gathering and report on it.
So should we all now go and find/create our own little sacred circles and do that, because there is nothing that really connects us anyway? The one thing I thought the Emerging church had going for it was drawing all kinds people together to live into the great narrative of life and faith in God. Now that seems to relegated to the sweet by and by, as some gather in their sacred circles to celebrate being dropouts. I believe that’s the kind of stuff that is raising eyebrows all other the church at large. It looks more like a home base for trendy reactionaries rather than this;
Emergent is a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ
Maybe I need to hear Jason Clark when he says that Emergent and the emerging church are not the same thing.
Maybe we should all read Paigett on unraveling emergent in RELEVANT MAGAZINE as a starting point.
Maybe as Kester brewin suggests in The Complex Christ we need to realize that the emerging church different from the Emergent church
We need to distinguish carefully between talk of the emerging church and the emergent church…. My problem with the many of these merging Church projects is they are still attempting to bring the church up to date by "train spotting" some aspect of culture and and making church fit it… in the emergent church the emphasis will be on being the train rather than train spotting; rather than trying to import culture into church and make it cool, we need to become wombs of the divine and completely rebirth the church into a host culture.
Maybe we can’t know anything about the emerging church because it really isn’t anything. Maybe the best thing to do is just live out the values as God moves is our hearts and somewhere down the road it will all make sense.
Here is what others are saying:
Jerry Jue (professor at Westminster Seminary asks what’s emerging in the church? In article for Reformation 21 magazine he writes.
What McLaren and other Emergent leaders and scholars have failed to do is carefully examine the historical sources as well as the writings of other historians who have contested the neo-orthodox historiography
Is it going to do a crash and burn as Ron Gleason at challies.com suggests:
It’s my settled opinion that the ECM will eventually crash and burn. I’m saddened, however, by the spiritual destruction that will left in the wake of the ECM juggernaut. Not only will we be left with the biblical ignorance caused by decades of catering to the whims of unchurched people from the Baby Boomers, but now we’ll also have to contend with the Gen-Xers who are equally bereft of any serious biblical knowledge.
So where is the emerging church going? it your turn to sound off
Popularity: 8% [?]
Sep 10 2005
Just in case you aren’t sure. There one web site designed to help you answer the question - Are you good enough to go to heaven?
Unbelievable but true.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Sep 08 2005
In a recent conversation I had with some folks about leadership models for the emerging church it was suggested that there were no more prophets and no more prophetic voice. Still listen to the prophetic voice of Dr. King as he calls for what we now describe as an emerging church.
"But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust." - Martin Luther King, Jr. writing from the Birmingham Jail
I believe God is still raising up prophets in our midst would that we had ears to hear and eyes to see. Thanks to Anthony Smith for resurrecting this quote on his blog
Popularity: 6% [?]
Sep 05 2005
The Old Bill has gathered an incredible collection/galleryof images of Jesus it’s well worth a visit.
Popularity: 5% [?]