"Emergent" and "emergent church" have become popular terms to describe the wind blowing today from the East. Here's a decent overview of it, from Wikipedia.
While I won't call myself an Emergent (any more than I would call myself a Christian) and I don't worship with an emergent congregation, I will say I find many things to identify with in the emergent "conversation." Rob Bell (one of the ministers at Mars Hill in Michigan) is one of my favorites, although he keeps his distance from the word "emergent."
Here are a few snippets from this article that I particularly identify with:
Missional Living
...Being missional within the emergent church framework can be defined as having the knowledge that one is living in the Kingdom of God right now and that there is a strong desire for others to share in that temporal blessing.
The Church
...the idea of "being a local community of people on a journey" and not "a corporate church."
Narrative theology
Narrative presentations of faith and the Bible are emphasized over exegetical Bible study and propositional presentations such as systematic theology which are viewed as reductionism. [Also from Wikipedia: Reductionism is a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things is reduced to the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things. This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings. THIS is at the very heart of my new outlook on life and the Way of Jesus.]
Christ-centered life
A commitment to emulating Jesus' way of living: in particular, his love of God, neighbors and those normally considered enemies. It has an understanding of the gospel centered on Christ, a message about the Kingdom of God being reconciliation between God, humans and creation. This is opposed to the more traditional approach of Christians who sought to ready others for eternity.
Authenticity
Favouring the sharing of experiences and interactions that are personal and sincere such as testimonies over scripted interactions such as propositional, formulaic evangelistic tracts and teaching.
I really like a lot of things out of this movement. I am not a fan of ents, ians,ists or isms at all. It seems like as soon as people start laying down the rules about how to be or not to be something, the sorting begins. Thinking about who has it right or who does it right just makes me tired and weary of being in my own mind. I don't even want to bother anymore. I have given up on trying to figure out who "get's it" just for sheer laziness. It's too much work! I just want to love Jesus. Not like I'm stoned on him, like he's my family and he's my friend. Ideology...who needs any of it? Could it be that any ideology other than love God, love neighbors actually draws attention away from Christ. That's why it, and other ideologies regarding faith tend to annoy me. It's like can we stop orchestrating and choreographing the dance folks? Let's just move.
ReplyDeleteI share your dislike of labels. Labels tend to indicate some kind of system. Systems require adherence. Adherence requires standardization and uniformity.
ReplyDeleteWhich runs counter to God's sense of variation.
Hopefully this whole thing will remain a "conversation", and it won't take on any recognizable forms.
Whatever "it" is, there are quite a few feeling the same breeze blowing.