shall we gather at the lecture

16Jun08

Following up on our conversation from the previous entry, it seems there are several who would be on board with gathering for conversation at the intersection of the Churches of Christ tradition and Emergent. The problem is addressing how to facilitate something that could be accessible to folks from a broad geographical reach. Talking earlier today with Greg, it makes sense to do something in the shadow of a larger institutional arrangement (i.e. Summit Lectureship @ ACU, Zoe Conference @ Woodmont Hills, etc). If we were to gather during ACU’s lectureship (Sept 21-24), we could simply meet at a public space, whether on campus or just around the block. And we could pull in folks during their downtime for conversation. At ACU, McLaren comes to mind as someone who’d be great to connect with at some point (although that may be difficult). And from our tradition, Mark Love and Chris Flanders would be very helpful to snag for some conversation.

[aside rant] The problem with stuff like lectureships is that folks with emergent sensibilities are asking completely different questions than the majority of attendees. Panicking questions like “What is the future of our heritage?” have not yet given way to questions like “How might a deconstructive/prophetic hermeneutic give way to a more faithful reading of the Scriptures that addresses particular societal injustices?” Case in point: last year at ACU’s lectureship in the shadows of keynote events, I attended a missional church panel conversation. Chris was the moderator and Greg was on the panel as a practitioner of “missional” church. The conversation went almost nowhere because the audience hung the whole thing up by asking milky questions like “What is missional?” For those still nagging for a definition, I offer one here. But this is one reason to keep conversations like this under the radar. For those interested but new to this line of thought, my sense is that having some on-ramps are necessary.

Anyway, feel free to blog out your thoughts a al Mark and Fajita or leave a reply.

Oh yeah, it sounds like “restoramergent” or some variant thereof may be the preferred cognomen of our pursuits…On that note, I’ll post a few other comments from the walls of Facebook (I’m a double-poster):

from Drew W:
I enjoyed reading this! +1 point to you.

My submission: Ironymergent. We’re finally accepting that we are a distinct group with a heritage and a culture of our own, and are thus finally able to have meaningful conversation with other Christian groups. I.e. it has been through the acknowledgment of groups, not the elimination of groups, that has been most successful in making advances towards unity.

from DPS:
I did not see “First Centri-re-emergent” or “Usheremergent”. The first being a recapturing of the First Century ideals, filtered through ritual and history and the latter being a partner with God in ushering the Kingdom into existence – also filtered through ritual and history.

I look forward to reading what the Gospel Advocate has to say about this facebook topic… )

from Mahfood:
COCmergent? (pronounced “cee-oh-ceemergent”)

Filed under: ecclesia   |  3 Comments
Tags: Churches of Christ, conversation, emergent, missional, post-restorationist