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.
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