Are you post-emerging church?
9 Aug 2004
There have been many posts about “What is the emerging church?” on blogs. I am amazed at the speed with which this phrase has become common parlance for much that is being explored. I’m going to post later this week, what I love and find frustrating with ‘emerging church”, and I have a love hate relationship with it, but before I do that want to ask you all a question. I have noticed recently several people positioning themselves as “post-emerging church”. Statements about there being nothing being said that’s any different, been there done that got the T-Shirt…etc.
So are you feeling a little post-emerging church? Let us know how you feel about the emerging church?
www.post-emergingchurch.org or maybe my book title will be “post emerging church”, maybe ;-)
Tagged: Key-Posts
25 comments
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Comment by will
7.57 pm on 9 Aug 2004
I wonder if the problem isn’t that some looked to “emerging” as the latest fad and haven’t gotten bored with it already. It seems to me that there are certain values in the idea of emerging that we all should embody. Perhaps emerging could best be thought of as the most accurate description for how to be a follower of Jesus in our time?
Comment by pastor draven
10.40 pm on 9 Aug 2004
I was considering writing that very same book. Please do so, it’s needed.
It seems to have become yet another buzz word to add to the already monsterous pile. Too many boxes out there that we’re struggling to be free of, yet we either jump into another, albeit larger box, or are forced into someone elses box. Labels have become cumbersome instead of descriptive.
I’m an avid subscriber to psychotactics teachings about psychology and marketing, and I really like what they have to say about not using titles or labels when asked what we do for a living. If we give a description intead of a title, there is much more freedom for discovery and intrigue. Stereotyping, boxes, and the sense of staleness that they bring with them have little place in a description. But when does the description become a label within itself?
Emerge already! Become… something!
I like how Ikon manages to stay outside the box:
“experimental project of spiritual exploration being undertaken by a group of individuals on the edge of, or completely outside, the traditional church institution.”
Trackback by ICTHUS
12.28 am on 10 Aug 2004
Toward a Post-emergent church
Jason Clark has an interesting question about the “emerging” church. I have noticed recently several people positioning themselves as “post-emerging church”. Statements about there being nothing being said that’s any different, been there done that got…
Comment by Conrad
7.06 am on 10 Aug 2004
Now here’s a thing… I’ve always assumed that the word “emergent” in the phrase emergent church referred not to the orginary verb, as in: this is the church that is emerging; but to the adjective in vogue in chaos/organization theory … “emergent behaviour”… like an ant colony displays a rich set of emergent behaviours not because of central control but rather it’s what happens when you reach a critical mass of fairly simple units acting on a few very basic rules.
Comment by Michael Toy
7.11 am on 10 Aug 2004
i’m actually ok with emergent becoming uncool. it doesn’t stop me, the word still works for me. i am happy to be as uncool as emergent.
to everyone who understands emergent so badly as to believe that we are lame and stupid and shallow, i happily release them to use their brilliant powers of deduction on the next movement.
those who understand emergent well, and believe we are lame and stupid and shallow, i also release, because i got here by following god down a rabbit hole and i’m not leaving without god pulling me out.
if it is useful to other people to describe my journey as stupid or shallow or irrelevant, i can handle that. i’m a big boy, and i wasn’t in this to impress these “other people” in the first place.
Comment by jonny
2.25 pm on 10 Aug 2004
The real cool would isn’t ‘emergent’, though.
Think about it.
The cool ‘word is: the prefix ‘POST’ – which, if you put in front of anything you can consider yourself cool, and ahead of [and superiour?] to everyone else.
Post is the new cool.
‘yeah man that’s so post’
‘hey dude you a real postie’
;)
Comment by robbymac
5.27 pm on 10 Aug 2004
Then maybe “going postal” will become a positive thing?
And we can all shift to being post-tribulational in our eschatology.
We should only eat Post brand breakfast cereals.
Wow, this whole “post is the new cool” could revolutionize just about everything!
Oh, man! Now I get to push the “POST” button for this comment! The implications are limitless…
:)
Comment by Rachelle
12.00 am on 11 Aug 2004
don’t you dare take my book! someone has to leave some topic for me to work on now that my kids are old enough to let me have a career again!!! :-)
rachelle
Comment by Rachelle
1.21 am on 11 Aug 2004
Woah guys! I just read all the comments. (I have to read and write in snapshots — it’s a mother-of-preschoolers thing.) What’ with all the grumpiness about coolness and not coolness? This is what I was just blogging about at my place. Why can’t there be something else — something that’s not exactly the same as emergent church –without people getting snippy and grumpy and competetive over who is coolest? I think what I’m doing might be post-emergent or post-modern as opposed to emergent, or something, because it doesn’t fit into patterns I see floating to the surface at places like EC. But that doesn’t mean I think I’m cooler, or that you should climb out the rabbitt hole or anything. (I think we’re all down the rabit hole together, actually.) It doesn’t mean that I think you’re lame or stupid or shallow. It just means I want to do something “other”…that obedience, for me, means doing something “other.”
If “emergers” react to, not the “next” thing, but any “other” thing with defensiveness, that reflects things about them/us that you/we disliked about the church establishement that you/we “emerged” from. No one’s got a corner on the “life with God” market. Can’t we make space for one another without the great land grab?
Kindness. Grace. Space. Let’s cultivate those things.
-R
Comment by marko
1.44 am on 11 Aug 2004
love jonny’s comment above. it sure does seem to me (just “seem”, i’m not stating this as fact) that in the em-church blogosphere, it’s much hipper (and easier) to define oneself by what one isn’t than by what one is.
Comment by Michael Toy
8.33 am on 11 Aug 2004
i like the call for kindness — good point.
i think when i feel someone is threatining my “permission to be different”, i go slightly psycho.
Comment by Michael Toy
8.38 am on 11 Aug 2004
still thinking about this.
maybe post is the only cool.
Comment by Jonny Norridge
12.46 pm on 11 Aug 2004
I think some humour was lost in translation with my coment [and perhaps with jasons post]. Sorry if I caused you offence Rachelle.
I think Marko’s comment sums it up for me. If only because I tend to react that way myself.
Comment by Paul
1.27 pm on 11 Aug 2004
The love affair of the millenium, am really looking forward to the Jason Clark love/hate story – hmmm not a book but an autobiography…
On your question though Jason, I think it is a good one to reflect on… surely the post-emergent church would be the emerge(d) church – am thinking may b style it as the E-merge church with a funky mircosoft explorer-esque E to show that heh we’re still pionereering folks (as well as doing a lot of surfing!) and the merge part maybe as a funky swirl effect to get that blending of ancient/now/future sort of effect.
Seems to me its all a question then of tense (and one or two tense posts too :)but then the history of the last 2,000 yrs would seem to say that we are both – emerging and emerged – a cycle. It depends on what we set out to do, what our goals and hopes and dreams were. If we achieve them then maybe we’ve emerged but on the other hand if we then get a load of new ones well then we can go back to emerging – one things for sure – they’ll still be things we love and things we hate, what ever we call the thang!
Comment by Willer
1.41 pm on 11 Aug 2004
hm – i dont know that much about the whole emergent discussion but in the last 3 months i have been reading a lot of “emerging – blogs” and i’m still not quite sure what emerging church is. Is it a feeling? Is it a way to say what we are not (like marko said)? is it a group of men and women who is disillusioned with church? Is it missional communities? Is it a church planting movement? Is it just for grumpy people?
I dont know but i would like to know
It seems that the people that first came up with the word emergent had some thoughts with the word but now the word has lost its meaning… i dont know if that is true – just a thought
Comment by Heidi
6.24 pm on 11 Aug 2004
For me I am more over-emerging church.
Comment by Randy
7.39 pm on 11 Aug 2004
Should we move from post to pre. Then nonone can accuse of us being shallow…after all we are creating the future at a depth unfathomable for the current setting.
I’m not post emergent…I’m pre-_______.
What? Help me fill in the blank!
Comment by Randy
7.50 pm on 11 Aug 2004
Seriously….is the core of the emergent philopshical/theological group different from the emergent dissatisfied with what’s going on group, the bohemian spiritiuality group and the “what’s cool or what’s happening now” group. Do these and others exist in this current churchdom subset. Each of these groups have some things in common but have many differences.
the what’s cool are usually louder than the philo/theo/thinker groups and are usually bored quicker, after all they are moving towards what is happening now.
The philo/theo/thinker groups spend more time and could care less about what’s cool.
The bohemians have a little bit of both groups but don’t bathe. JK, they look for some sort of transient, non-authoritiave free flowing spiritiuality that the philo/theo/thinkers embraced in the beginning for the sake of creative force but are moving away from as something takes shape.
the dissastisfied group is usually dissatisfied with the way things are going, the way things went and the way things will be. They are good at dissatisfaction. Their dissatisfaction brought them here and now they are dissatisfied with the fact they are here.
Okay, overkill but you get my point. Since the EC was emerging and its basis was so much about personal interaction within culture with each other as we follow Christ vs. the evoloution of a theological redevelopment (i.e. moving from orthodoxy to neo-orthodoxy) it only makes sense that many will discover what came out of the womb was not what they thought they had created.
Or then again….I could be just one of the “I think I know everything about what’s right” group in the emerging church. Oh yeah, I am.
rj
Let’s keep the conversation going rather than abandoing it becasue it starts to look different than what we hoped for.
Comment by Keith Seckel
8.36 pm on 11 Aug 2004
I like Conrad’s point about the etymological roots of the whole “emergence” concept.
And re: post, pre, etc —
>
…I think there is something to be said for the validity of “vis-a-vis”-type descriptives. While we are communing, we are also delineating. Describing the outside of the circle is as useful as defining the inside — as long as we, like Rachelle encouraged, foster space and grace and kindness and the like.
Maybe what we need is some sort of radical new set of ancient-now-future descriptives. Something current, you know, that emphasizes the existential now, but also hearkens back to the saints who’ve gone before, and looks also forward to what the rest of the as-yet-undiscovered rabbit-hole may resemble.
I’m wondering how useful it might be to simplify the whole thing and maybe just drop the prefixes and suffixes and superlatives altogether.
What if (GASP!) we just called ourselves: church.
I know, I know, the baggage that goes with that one ancient-future word is enough to gag a whole warren full of us rabbit-hole dwellers.
But for me, the term “church” is good enough. And when people (whether they be fellow rabbit-holers or not, or even disciples or not) balk at it because of the baggage it has for them, then that just opens dialogue to go further together down the road of mutual understanding and (albeit sometimes symbiotic) growth.
And while we spend our time trying to redefine what we do or don’t do, or who we are or who we aren’t, aren’t we just (as someone above mentioned) jumping into another box?
Recently I’ve wondered if maybe (just maybe) we’re discovering together that being “outside the box” is as passe as a concept as the phrase itself is.
Maybe (again, just maybe) boxes are a given — maybe it is just the size of the box that varies. Or who is in the box with you.
Psychology has long known the organization process of schemas which occurs in our brains. Seems to me God’s design is useful. That kind of mental rolodexing and file-cabinet-ing helps me remember stuff.
So as we emerge and post-emerge and pre-develop and arrive, maybe getting stuck in etymological quandaries is less important than just being.
>
~ Keith
Comment by jen lemen
4.47 am on 12 Aug 2004
oh my lord, we must be the silliest people in the universe. do you really think it matters? does anyone care? i have no idea what i am other than a royal pain in the ass when i get on these subjects. i want to dump the baggage of structures and church (most forms) makes me crabby but i really don’t want to lose the people. because if god is real in you and i can catch the vibe, then i’m lucky, no matter where you fall on the continuum, how ever uncool or how ever “post” you are. it really doesn’t matter.
i’m always going to be skittish about how things are organized but that’s just me. a little paranoid. call me whatever you will. i just think a lot of people are going to be pissed if we make up one more category and then tell everyone else they aren’t in it. it’s junior high hell all over again.
Comment by Joe
12.57 pm on 12 Aug 2004
Post Emergent. A new label for a new millenium!
Seriously though, I resonate most with those that agree how much of a “non” issue this is. Why do we all feel the need (myself included) to label one another. I think the only label we should gravitate towards is disciple of Christ.
Comment by Whitewave
5.28 pm on 23 Sep 2004
*sigh*
This whole thing makes me want to laugh and throw up at the same time. I know I’m late, but I am too busy riding other waves to stay on top of this one all the time.
Yes, Keith! Rolodexing. Great word. I struggle with organizing the folders in my inbox because one person is part of two or more different catagories… what to do?
I’m going to attempt the impossible. I wonder if the old-skool word “paradox” is the same as this. I don’t want to use it though because it has collected too many meanings over the centuries and now it means too little. [] Some of us own our baggage and push the pendulum back towards the middle where it will do the most good, and others dodge responsibility and keep the house rockin’.
[...and my proposal -->]If we’re going to be able to FUNCTION as “just church” as Keith seems to be hinting at, then we’re going to have to agree to hold these things in tension. If you can admit that your issues are pulling the wheel too far in either direction, then deal with that. Not just talk… blah, blah, blah… but resolve it. If you need us to help, we can help. I think our love for each other is established enough to be a good enough womb for that kind of growth [
Comment by Andrew Jones
9.16 pm on 28 Sep 2004
post emergent? uh uh. dont go there girlfriend! uh uh!
Trackback by ICTHUS
8.32 pm on 14 Jan 2005
Toward a Post-emergent church
Jason Clark has an interesting question about the “emerging” church. I have noticed recently several people positioning themselves as “post-emerging church”. Statements about there being nothing being said that’s any different, been there done that got…
Comment by PJ
5.06 pm on 28 Jun 2005
Yo,
Reading the above statements was the funniest moment of my life…other than my first shot at sky-dumping (a new tradition at my college…er…post-high school educational conversation event of authenticity).
The emergent stuff is good, and there’s a lot of people in ministry who are stuck in the confines of what their denomination or theology/ministry manual says, but they don’t have a grasp on culture, so emergent stuff can help them see the church’s place in culture.
I grew up in liberal Europe with conservative American parents who were singing praise choruses in the 70’s. I didn’t know what a hymn was until it came out on a Chris Tomlin cd. I guess i was born emergent….event though there weren’t candles in the room…
http://www.post-emergent.com is a sight my friend sug is getting together. It’s so emergent it hurts.
Late,
PJ
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