emerging mosaic

Recently i discovered a voice in the emergent conversation that I was not aware of, melvin bray.

His bio reads

I  am a professional speaker and aspiring author. I am contributing the chapter “Reading the Prophets for Justice: How can we read the prophets to learn justice?” to An Emergent Manifesto of Justice [Baker Publishing: Emersion Books, February 2009]. I am seeking to broaden my audience with my regular contributions to God’s Politics blog (beyond those blogs I manage myself).

He has commented several times on the EV blog post on race. I am really interested to hear more of his perspective.

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Technorati Tags: diversity, emergent, emergent_village

I got the latest Emergent/C (which is the newsletter/communication piece of Emergent Village) today and it included this quote.

We in Emergent Village are poised for an important year in 2007. A pivotal year, I’d say. Lots of people are watching—some with high hopes that EV might be a part of a re-birth of Christian faith, a revolution in what it means to follow Jesus. (Others, of course, are plotting our demise J.)

The part I highlighted above about revolution has got me thinking. Is that why some people are “plotting the demise” of EV. Would it be more accessible for people to think of the emerging emergent church as an evolution of how the church practices the faith rather than a revolution? Can the emergent folks make claim to being the vanguard of a revolutionary movement in following Jesus (especially when it is still so monolithic in its racial ethnic makeup)?
Kester Brewin in his book Complex Christ suggests that emergence is more closely connected to evolution than revolution. Revolution he continues correlates more with insurgence than emergence. The point of view from which we view the emerging church and emergent conversation determines how we pursue the developing practice of the faith and who ends up coming along for the ride.

So is it evolution or revolution? Maybe it is both and what say you?

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Recently the Emergent West Michigan cohort asked me to talk about racial reconciliation I’ve been encouraging folks to read the writings of Howard Thurman as a way to broaden their theological framework, a couple have followed through. Thurman was a man before his time. In 1944 Thurman left his position as dean at Howard University to co-found the first fully integrated, multi-cultural church in the U.S. in San Francisco, CA. Thurman is the only writer theologian I am aware of who writes about reconciliation as a spiritual discipline. If there are others out there please let me know. Here’s a quote from his book Disciplines of the Spirit.

"The concern for reconciliation finds expression in the simple human desire to understand others and be understood by others." This is the miracle. One person standing in his own place, penetrates deeply in to the life of another in a manner that makes possible an ingathering within that other life…

So  in March I’ll be sharing my thoughts on Towards a Generous Orthopraxis here’s a brief summary of my intent. A few years ago pastor, theologian and author, Brian McLaren challenged us to broaden our thinking about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in his book Generous Orthodoxy. Using the writings of theologian and author Howard Thurman (Jesus and the disinherited, Disciplines of the Spirit) I will challenge us to broaden our way, acting on patterns of life that Jesus lived and taught as we move Towards a Generous Orthopraxis. Specifically what does it mean to "rehearse" Pentecost through the spiritual practice of reconciliation?

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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

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A new friend Steve sent me this from the emergent-us blog. He an I have had several conversation about the lack of diversity in emergent.  After reading this and looking at the comments on the blog here’s bullets of my response

• When it comes to diversity and the emergent conversation I have to say we have a long way to go.
• The problem as one commenter said is the emergent stuff is look a lot like all the other groups out there. On top of that the responses to issues of race, racial reconciliation and racism are sounding like those existing groups as well. We aren’t diverse, but at least we have women.
• The issues of diversity for white women (who represent a majority of this country and the church) are not a the same as those for African American males for instance but that has long been an excuse for the mainline church in its lack of response to diversity.
• I am more and more disappointed by the lack of creativity brought to bear on this subject by folks who so highly value creativity.

what say you

Andre

emergent-us: Brian McLaren Reflects on the Emergent Summit

First, we have been increasingly concerned about diversity for a few years. Fortunately, there has been denominational diversity among us since the beginning - and it has grown steadily in recent years as emergent has become a "post-liberal/post-conservative" common ground. But the "white maleness" of almost all Christian leadership networks has been of concern to us. (I was not surprised to learn from Tony Jones that 95% of Evangelical pastors are male; I was surprised to learn that 85% of mainline Protestant pastors are male.) We talked at length about how the Emerging Women’s Leadership Initiative has helped the emergent community seek to make progress in this regard. But EWLI has also helped bring diversity in other areas to the fore.
I’m very optimistic about what will happen as increasing numbers of First Nations, African American, Latino, Asian, and other leaders bring their leadership to emergent. When progress in this area is combined with progress in our global network (where exciting things are happening - stay tuned for amahoro.info) - our potential will multiply.

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Rudy carraso recently asked this question on his blog. is the emerging church racist? his answer was no i want to add a qualifier to the question is the emerging church intentionally racist? my answer. no it is not intentionally racist but I think it is racist. by placing racial reconciliation and the evil of racial oppression in our world, so far down the totem pole of things that are important to address the emerging church is operating out of the same place of power and control that the moderns do.

so often it seems the emergent conversation has just becomes another in the latest philosophical and intellectual discussions driven and led by white males with very little perspective or interest in the perspective of people of color.

this makes me sad because there is so much of the emerging church that i resonate with and I think is shared by many people of color. but somewhere along the line all the “openness” of the emerging church folks seems to have degraded into the openness to the issues those who are driving the conversation think is important. as one commenter said over at carraso’ urban onramps “the reconciliation and ethnic diversity conversation can be too energy-consuming and overwhelming”

but if walking the talk and living more like Jesus is what the emerging church is all about; how can we not put our energy into the things like racial reconciliation, poverty and diversity that seems so important to Jesus. is that just a convenient excuse. was Jesus more concerned about worship style than freeing the captive and releasing the oppressed?

well there i got this off my chest. now its your turn holler back!

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Technorati Tags: diversity, emergent, emergent_church, emergent_village, emerging church, racial_reconciliation, racism