I am all for building, and moving forward, and trying to heal relationships (some of the time ) , but without some of the negative aspects i encountered I would never have been pushed to grow. that’s why balance is so hard, but still necessary.

On the whole – I think that the emerging church must be proactively seeking to establish and maintain unity between itself and mainstream evangelicalism. It must value humility and avoid arrogance. With the former in mind, it must seek to minimize uninformed judgment and misinterpretations. Each of these will surly generate a more tolerant attitude and ease the resistance to change.
As individuals – I think that we as emergent’s should focus less on the negative responses we are generating, and more on the implementation of the changes we desire to bring about. We must not be reluctant to share our thoughts and theologies. Criticism (both positive and negative) is inevitable, however our focus should remain on influencing whatever community we have committed to.

To summarize: both inside and apart from the traditional church; while on one hand we need to be concerned with the overall appearance of the emerging church and work to promote a positive and “united with all believers” image, on the other we need to place a greater emphasis on our personal contributions than on the negative “attention” the emerging church receives; while on one hand we need to support the emerging church body, on the other we need to first give loyalty to God and apart from any “movement” fulfill His will in our lives.

Somewhere above lays a concept (though I am fumbling to articulate) that I believe will be challenging, yet essential to establish.

I really like what you gals are doing here at Emerging Women!

Sorry about that.

Tiffanie, I think your last post has a both/and answer if what you’re getting at with the second option is a sort of comparison to new ideas being attacked by the “establishment” (i.e. Protestant Reformation brought new ideas that the Catholic church resisted). Though I don’t think that the theological differences are as drastic I understand the comparison. In this case, I think you didn’t mean PERSECUTION so much as looked down upon or simply overlooked. And you brought the word persecution in more as an analogy. (am I right here?) Cori I think your notion of the large stream of ecclesial/theological movements getting shot down and Tiffanie’s second option aren’t as far apart as they appeared.

BTW – I LOVE YOU TIFFANIE!!

The question of unity in/with the emergent church and evangelicalism at large is difficult. I think mostly because the emerging chruch is so diverse. For simplicity I’ll reduce the emerging church to two main streams of thought in this post (I think Scot McKnight recently used them): missional church and postmodern church. Missional I will define as wanting to reach the lost primarily in the individual’s own sphere of influence rather than bringing them into the church’s sphere of influence as soon as possible. Postmodern church I will define as adapting church practices, philosophies, and theologies to one extent or another to draw in people who are postmodern. To be fair these definitions are sometimes blurred and each of the categories often informs the other to various degrees. But for this post I think they can stand as distinct subcategories in the emerging church.

Ok, so I think evangelicalism at large has more of a problem with the postmodern push than the missional push, but often still has a problem with both. Why? Again, complex, but I think you can narrow it down a great deal by categorizing a little more (this is nowhere near comprehensive). There’s resistance: 1) because of perceived or actual hypocrisy in emerging church ideals vs. praxis, 2) because of establishment tendencies in the evangelical culture, 3) to all things postmodern.

So back to the both/and response to criticism. I’m only echoing other’s comments here, but the Body of Christ needs people who are informed by emerging church thought to be both in more mainstream evangelical churches and to form new churches that more completely embody the currently-still-developing emerging theologies/philosophies. Not every person needs to do both, but certainly there is NO cause for a wholesale abandonment of the evangelical church (it has it’s place too). Every believer should be informed and shaped by other believers and so too should each denomination/movement/whatever be informed, influenced, and shaped by others. This takes a great deal of humility on both the part of evangelicals and emergers. We tend to think that the burden of humility is on the evangelical side, but this is not necessarily the case. If we think we have “new” insight then it is our burden to live out these things quietly rather than to squawk them and lord them over others.

On a personal note, I choose to remain in my church with the brothers and sisters in Christ that God has put in my life. I may be overlooked or looked down upon, but that’s ok. If my life continues to (or ever does) immulate Christ’s nature then I will have my chance to share Christ’s work in me and influence the thinking of others. I think this is primarily the way that emerging thought will filter into the church at large. Popularity contests, cool gimmicks, crowd pleasers, and shouting matches won’t ever make the cut.

Sorry for that last bit of rant. I think I might expound on some of this on my pretty crappy blog in the next few days if anyone is interested.

By the way, I really like what you guys are doing here at Emerging Women!

Sorry to raise the testosterone level briefly, but I appreciate the ability to comment and hope that I didn’t completely forget what I was talking about.

Your brother,
Stephen
lunchroomtheology.typepad.com

The first was:
“Might our ideas be better tolerated if they were not accompanied by a label or a proclamation of the new and better way?”

And the second, if I understood it correctly, was that perhaps resistance to the change the emergent movement wants to bring is persecution due to its ‘righteousness’.

The second really worries me because then, in the face of criticism, one can just keep saying, ‘That’s persecution, I don’t have to listen to that.’ It seems to suggest taking the moral high ground and that always seems to me a dangerous place to be standing!

The first idea, of not proclaiming quite so loudly that we have a new and better way seems tops to me. I have already felt disillusioned by people who have claimed to have ‘new and better’ ways of doing church under the banner of emergent and yet were doing the same old human things that hurt others (like being arrogant, speaking more than listening, wanting to teach and tell others what to do rather than humbly learning).

Perhaps the emergent thing should be more about ‘being’ than ‘doing’. More about being in a church, regardless of the church, than doing all these things to look and sound emergent, more about being in relationship and in community than doing a whole lot of relational/community activities with a bad ‘state of being’.

So many movements (within the church) have come and gone, and irritated the mainstream church, proclaiming a new and better way, and proclaiming their own moral high ground (and bemoaned their persecution at the hands of other Christians). Let’s not become another one of those!

Soldiermom asked a great question; what is unity? How will we convey to the rest of the world that we are one body? What issues are so prominent that lead us to sometimes take an “us” and “them” stance?

OR

I recently attended a talk on persecution. Can I apply it to my concerns here? For righteousness sake, we will be persecuted. If we are following God’s will in our lives by “emerging” maybe this is all irrelevant? Are these concerns holding back my potential?

Would appreciate your thoughts; as mine are still emerging.

John Frye writes that “when Jesus broke bread, He broke Israel…” By starting a new movement and inaugurating a new covenant, did Jesus realize he was the first “church splitter?” Shouldn’t he instead have worked for change within the system? It seems that new wine often bursts old skins.. and that is painful and messy.. but perhaps God is in the mess.

And yet so much of me feels and believes that the kinds of things the Emergent Movement is about need to become a reality in our traditional churches!