chimponaut

Brian Prior will be the next Bishop of Minnesota

Check it out, Brian Prior got elected to be IX Bishop of Minnesota on Saturday, October 31. Here's the official word from the diocese: www.episcopalmn.org.

I think this is a great choice and look forward to new directions for the Diocese.

It's a girl!

Are you emergent?

Have you ever wondered if you are emergent? Read this blog post from Kevin DeYoung, co-author of Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) on how you might know if you are emergent…(editor's note: sounds strangely like describing an Episcopalian...what do you think?)

After reading nearly five thousand pages of emerging-church literature, I have no doubt that the emerging church, while loosely defined and far from uniform, can be described and critiqued as a diverse, but recognizable, movement. You might be an emergent Christian: if you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, N. T. Wright, Stan Grenz, Dallas Willard, Brennan Manning, Jim Wallis, Frederick Buechner, David Bosch, John Howard Yoder, Wendell Berry, Nancy Murphy, John Franke, Walter Winks and Lesslie Newbigin (not to mention McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D. A. Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem; if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu; if you don’t like George W. Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage; if you are into bohemian, goth, rave, or indie; if you talk about the myth of redemptive violence and the myth of certainty; if you lie awake at night having nightmares about all the ways modernism has ruined your life; if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you search for truth but aren’t sure it can be found; if you’ve ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths, candles, Play-Doh, chalk-drawings, couches, or beanbags (your youth group doesn’t count); if you loathe words like linear, propositional, rational, machine, and hierarchy and use words like ancient-future, jazz, mosaic, matrix, missional, vintage, and dance; if you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naive, and rigid; if you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic; if you disbelieve in any sacred-secular divide; if you want to be the church and not just go to church; if you long for a community that is relational, tribal, and primal like a river or a garden; if you believe doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus; if you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business and no one may be there anyway; if you believe salvation has a little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its Maker; if you believe following Jesus is not believing the right things but living the right way; if it really bugs you when people talk about going to heaven instead of heaven coming to us; if you disdain monological, didactic preaching; if you use the word “story” in all your propositions about postmodernism—if all or most of this tortuously long sentence describes you, then you might be an emergent Christian.

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