chimponaut

My 2 cents on Emergent Village

A couple of months ago I made the trip to DC to participate in a conversation about re-imagining Emergent Village. I wasn't quite sure why I was there. I haven't traditionally been all that active in Emergent Village. Yea, I occasionally visited my local cohort meeting. Yea, I am working with a bunch of folks to foster along a little bud of a community (www.secondsunday.org). Yea, I'm a hyphenated and have talked my share of smack about emerging within the walls of the Episcopal denomination in which I find myself.

As it happens, it was one interesting conversation and I did far more listening than I can usually muster. As it happens, I'm more trained as a political scientist than anything else. As it also happens, my specialty is interest group formation and maintenance. Listening in over the course of those three days, I would make the argument that in many ways Emergent Village is kinda like an interest group and has followed the typical trajectory of an interest group - forming in reaction to something going on in wider culture; engaging in some very specific and often provocative tactics to gain attention; gathering around a few (or a few more than a few) charismatic leaders that very much carry a unique vision for change and newness; enjoying widespread support among like-minded folks who have been waiting for a 'voice' that represents them; and ultimately changing the 'culture' that it formed in reaction to.

Here's the thing, when the culture starts to change, when the provocative no longer causes the same level of reaction, when the innovative leaders lose their perceived edginess or their energy wanes or life happens around them, the interest group hits a critical crossroads - is it about forming something new or maintaining that which has already been created? Will it continue along the path of maintenance with roughly familiar leadership, tactics, rhetoric or will it re-group, re-form and re-consider where the new edge lies? There's no judgement here. We need all types of organizations because they provide important ongoing support for folks who have joined. Think along the lines of a continuum - we need organizations all over the continuum from the fringy and radical to the staid and predictable.

Honestly, I don't know where Emergent Village locates along that continuum and I don't know what my hopes are for EV - and it's taken me a long time to say that. There are a whole lot of people who depend on EV - just as it is - to sustain their connections and ministries. That's important and holy stuff and it really shouldn't be handled carelessly.

But, being just as honest, there is a new edge forming - a new and provocative way of being. A lot of us can feel it. Is it interfaith conversation? Is it apart from Christianity altogether? I had a friend who has been a part of EV for a long time tell me that she now perceives EV as an institution and thinks she needs to back away from all Christianity because we just can't seem to function without institutionalizing. Huh....

I don't know if Emergent Village is called to be out on that edge or if there's a new network apart from EV in the making. I suppose time will bear this out but I suspect that all of these conversations back and forth about the death of EV, etc. are pointing out the timliness of this reality.

And, by the way, I read a lot of complaining about past leadership. But really...don't blame Tony Jones or Doug Pagitt or Brian McLaren. This, in my mind, is the natural and predictable progression of things. One of my personal heroes, David Brower, was intensely active in the Sierra Club during an era when they were engaged in some pretty heated battles around the Glen Canyon dam. Brower was one of those charismatic leaders that brought the Sierra Club to a new level of popularity. But when the fight was over, the Sierra Club as an organization just couldn't maintain that level of dissonance. So, Brower, with all his gifts of charisma and passion, left to form other organizations, among them Earth Island Institute. Visionaries, innovators...they are founders, they aren't maintainers and they know when something new is happening and they tend to want to participate in it. So, being gracious people, we should thank them for sharing their gifts through EV and release them on their journeys.

Still bragging about the skater girl

Bek wins 1st place in the Junebug

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. (Hebrews 11:1)

You know....it can be pretty easy to pick off denominations.

Afterall, they've been around for a while - in the case of the Anglican Church, since sometime in the 16th century. So of course, being the humans that we are - and being the human institution that the church is - awful, terrible, horrible things have happened. Some of them noticed in a large-scale kind of way, and some (maybe most) go completely unrecognized but have nonetheless torn at the very fabric of the denomination and of Christianity as a whole.

I get this. I know this. I believe that to participate in a denomination is to own my part in this -- past, present, and future. Acknowledging these things, I hang my head in shame.

And yet, I stay connected to this immensely flawed institution, this Episcopal denomination, this stuck, broken church. Why?

Because I also see the good. I see the good it has done and the good it can do. I see the creativity and hopefulness that is just at the edges, ready to be released. I see God at work among the people I know - individuals who are trying to figure out where they are called to be and what they should be doing.

I believe that the Episcopal Church, at its best, is adept and well-equipped to discern the will of God and to join all that God is doing. I believe that the longevity of this institution gives us a wealth of praxis and experience in the ways of Spirit that is informative and useful and it would be a terrible shame if it is carelessly cast aside.

Despite my "episcopalness" you will more regularly find me at Solomon's Porch on a Sunday. Why? Because apart from being Episcopalian, I am also a fully postmodern contemporary kind of person who just can't make the extraordinary leap from the world in which I live into the current version of of the Sunday morning Episcopal church in Minnesota. But, make no mistake, this is a choice made with considerable tension and sadness.

On a particular recent Sunday at Solomon's Porch I was called on to explain the Episcopal Church and why I'm still a part of it. With no opportunity for preparation at all, I was surprised to find myself pointing to the profound understanding of ritual and liturgy that has developed in the Episcopal Church over the hundreds of years -- this "practicing" undertaken by people like me. All the thought and reflection and trial and error that undergirds everything that happens in the church. In some deep sense, I crave participating in these centuries-old practices. I feel less than whole when the wisdom of those who have gone before me is lost.

Having been raised in the Disciples of Christ and having attended all sorts and flavors of Christian churches over the years, I have found no other church that sets aside and handles the sacraments with such meaningfulness, grace, and depth as the Episcopal Church. I like the hocus pocus. I like the mystery and the sanctity of the Eucharistic feast. I like the imagery and belief in the communion of saints. I want to stand at the communion rail and take my place alongside everyone who ever has been and ever will share that meal.

I also want and need that global community that only a worldwide denomination can offer. I recently led a mission trip to Cordova, Alaska with a bunch of kids from Episcopal Churches in the Twin Cities. The people of Cordova took us in and showed us the most extraordinary hospitality. Why? Because we were Episcopalians, which meant we are connected to them through this global communion. They needed to know nothing beyond that - not who we were, not what we were doing there, not how much we can pay them to offset expenses. I like being in communion with these gracious, hospitable, accepting people.

I have rarely entered a church - Episcopal or otherwise - that is not predominantly one race or culture. While I don't particularly aspire to participate in these monocultural settings, I have resigned myself to the fact that, for now, this is how people segregate themselves on Sundays. Participating in a global church allows me the comfort of knowing that while I don't have the privilege of a multicultural setting for my church, I do participate in a broader faith community that embraces all people. This globalized church gives me some sense of hope that these barriers can someday be broken down.

I heard Tony Blair recently say (on the Daily Show, of course) that in our new and expanding understanding of globalization, faith traditions have the ability to either enhance and support our networked world or to pull it apart. He is banking on the institution finding the way of connection.

Given my experiences, I'm with Tony Blair. I believe that the Episcopal church has the tremendous ability and potential to pull people together. Because of its emphasis on community over isolation, incarnation over separation, conversation over common theology, it is uniquely equipped and particularly agile enough to engage contemporary culture and issues and to re-form itself to meet the challenges our globalized age presents.

Emergent Village 2.0...or is it 3.0?

Some of you know that I've been on the fringes of the emergent conversation for a while. Well, on April 24-26, I'm gathering with a group of twenty other folks in Washington DC to work together in re-imagining the future of Emergent Village.  Participants will include both long-time practitioners and new innovators - not sure which, if any, category I fit into.

Anyhow, our goal is not to pontificate on the elusive question of “What is Emergent?”  Instead, we will seek to create an environment where we can begin to see what form this organism wants to have.  What do we need to let go of in our assumptions, and what is waiting to be born?  What is already happening naturally that we should organize ourselves to support?  Where is the life and how does that life get nurtured? What is important about the past ten years that needs to be conserved?  What should be left behind?  As a first step, the Emergent Village board of directors has already begun a transitioning process toward repopulating a new board.

I'm intrigued and curious about what this weekend will be like and, in a real way, I feel exhausted just thinking about the massive and 'heady' extent of it all.

I'm sure I'll be twittering away, follow me: @wendy_johnson.