Thoughts on the Emerging Church stuff
My friend Aaron asked me to comment on the emerging church stuff on Live Journal. I ended up writing way more than was approapriate for a comment, so now his LJ users are being directed here to read if they want. The question posed was in regard to thoughts on the EC. I am responding to a comment that was made by a guy in regard to the EC.Happy reading!
I have alot of thoughts in regard to emerging church...mainly due to the fact that I have spent the better part of my 20's seeping myself in the study of POMO, the church, and trying to swim my way back to the surface in this ocean of emergent church stuff.
The conclusions that I have come to about emerging church movement are seeped in cynicism and come from a jaded post-everything, young woman. Am I post-modern? Uhhh...Post-evangelical? Post-fundamentalist? Maybe. Am I emergent? Am I incarnational? Missional? Am I a host of other labels that people create in order to define things that at times are undefinable. God is not definable...let's not try to systematize everything so that our finite minds can try to grasp it...cause we won't.
The comment that guy made, something about it's more about the culture of the people shaping the church, rather than letting the church shape the culture scares me that is what someone would say marks the emergent church movement. I think that the people(body of Christ) has the ability to shape our culture. I think that often the culture of the people shapes the church...I'll be frank...the culture of America is pretty fawked up. I think that the two(culture and church) work together simultaneously. It is not an either or thing. I think that it is important to speak the language, being a person in which communicates the love and compassion of Jesus, but I think that it can both working together, culture and church that shapes things. I think that both are so intertwined....culture(i.e. who we are, what makes us a people, what has a hand in shaping "us") and the church(body of Christ, people who are being knit together as a family unit, to be the hands, feet to bring the light of Christ into our despairing world.) You can not separate them, but I don't think that the emergent church movement is marked by allowing culture to shape the church. I think that is WRONG.
My perception of the emergent church movement is that it is a people wanting to express God, experience God, and enjoy God in the way in which He has knit them to be. Often, it is hard to come into one's self, one's person, one's identity in Christ. It brings about an even greater challenge when the person God is creating in you is very different from the people that make up the majority of the church. A majority of the church is not functioning as a church. There are millions of people who claim to be "in Christ" or "in attendance" or "in relationship" but their lifestyles do not reflect these claims. This may only be my view, but if each person were truly functioning in the roles that God has called them to I think we would have a lot less materialism, consumerism, fundamentalism and all of the other ism's that direct christian culture's course. Call me crazy, but personally God has not called me to be a Bush-voting, right-wing fundamentalist who listens to only the top 40 christian music and reads "The Purpose Driven Life" while I drink my $6 dollar Venti mochas while my neighbors are hungry.
Back to my original thought...the emergents are people who want to figure out who God has called them to be, and have the freedom to do what God has called them to do, even if it means going against the fundamentalist grain. Even if it means having a few more Jello-shots than necessary. Emergents want to express, experience and enjoy all that God has for them, all that God wants to do with them. Period. Who cares about what is shaping culture or the church...it is about being the expression of Christ to the world. It is about experiencing the depths of the beauty of God wherever that may be found. Best of all to cherish and enjoy each precious moment that we have to be in relationship with the Maker of the Heavens and the earth, and with all of creation to sing, to shout, to drink, to laugh, to paint, to be.
This is what emergent church is to me.
posted by Kat @ 1:12 PM
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