Emerging Women

I just wanted to spread the word about a new blog (as in very brand new)from Off the Map that is being co-hosted by EW Rachel Stanton. Check out the Justice and Compassion blog. I’m looking forward to the conversations, information, and challenges I expect this blog will provide.

For our upcoming Emerging Women Midwest Gathering we are offering the option of purchasing an Emerging Women t-shirt. I know some people love stuff like this and others could care less. We just thought that we would offer the option of getting an EW t-shirt to everyone before we placed the final printing offer.

Click here for images, colors, and sizes.

These shirts are made in the USA by an ethically conscious company (Bella Clothing).

If you are interested in ordering a t-shirt, I’ve added a PayPal shopping cart on the sidebar for them. I’ve never set up one of these before, so I’m hoping it works. We will place the initial order at the start of March and the shirts will be shipped by mid-March.

I don’t want this to be a cheezy sales pitch, just wanted to offer the option if people are interested!

So amidst the recent surge of posts, here’s the Weekly Round-up.

But first some blog news.

I finally got around to getting the welcome to Emerging Women/ FAQ’s document up. It is linked in the sidebar. This is a basic introduction to the blog and the group Emerging Women. It covers the blog rules and some of the questions I am frequently asked. If you’ve joined the blog really recently, you will have read a lot of the stuff in this already. But if you aren’t a member or joined awhile ago, I highly recommend you read it over. Read it here

We did start this month’s book discussion on Hagar, Sarah, and their Children yesterday. It’s a few posts down, but easily accessible from a sidebar link if it gets too buried. Everyone is welcome to join in even if you haven’t read the book. Click here for the discussion.

The book selection for April has been posted. We will be reading Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. And don’t forget that the March book is How (not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins. We are looking for suggestions for upcoming months, so send them in!

And one final news bit. The Midwest Emerging Women Gathering is filling up fast, but there still are spots available. The registration deadline is noon on March 9th, but it’s first come first served. So far we have a great group of women participating and I’m very excited about how its coming together. If you want to register click on the link in the sidebar.

Here are some of the events and blog posts of note from around the Emerging Women community from this past week. Anyone is welcome to submit posts or events to be included here to emergingwomen@gmail.com.

Lisa has a great article posted on The Ooze called Grace-filled Relationships: Yuk, What a Mess!. Read it, leave comments, show your support for EW writers!

Read about patriotism over at Calacirian.

Check out posts exploring what it means to love others over at Swinging from the Vine and onehandclapping.

Kim has some good thoughts about church membership and sharing the gospel.

Happy reading!

Hi all. Time for our weekly round-up. But first a few updates about blog stuff.

I’ve added a link under the “related links and resources” section in the sidebar for a HTML Cheat Sheet. My husband created this for me a couple of years ago (so yes all the examples he uses are from our blogs) and it was a big help as I tried to learn basic html stuff. This just covers the very basic stuff – how to create links, how to post pictures, how to alter text… I thought it might be useful to have handy.

A few people awhile back had requested a “Friend of Emerging Women” button to put on their blog. I came up with a very basic one (I am so not a graphic designer) that we can use. So if you want to show your support of Emerging Women by displaying the button click here to get the code to paste into your blog. Enjoy.

And now for our weekly round-up. These are what emerging women are blogging about that I found of note. As always feel free to pass on any post you think should be feautured.

Wilsford blogs on defining the emerging/ent church.

Check out Jan’s series of posts from the Mainline Emergent conference.

Ari had a great post on decentering the Sunday service over at Swinging from the Vine.

Be treated to the story of Princess Ariana and the Magic Cupcakes over at QuirkyGrace.

Amy blogs about her reaction to a rite of passage ceremony at her church.

And I ramble about questioning everything at onehandclapping.

And be sure to check out the latest additions to our blogroll -
Brethren Priestess Online
Falling Awake
Calacirian
Out of the frying pan into the…friary?
Honduras+

I was the new kid precisely once when I was young and remained so for my entire youth. When I was a baby my parents moved from their hometown areas in Massachusetts to Kansas. When I was six we moved back to the restrictive confines of New England and an insular small town in Vermont. My parents remain in that small town and are still considered new comers … 40 years later! (Psst … do not do the math … I’m hiding my age )

Fortunately for me that was my one and only experience of not quite belonging. I have spent the rest of my life being pleasantly surprised by the capacity of people to incorporate new friends into their midst. I went to college and blew out my horizons by studying political science and international studies. So I went to Washington DC to change the world or become a foreign services employee. Instead I met my husband … became ADD and have done some very different things over the course of our 20 year marriage (do not do the math).

I was raised in a family where God was not that important. We didn’t go to church and my parents still tend to believe that faith is a crutch for those who are mentally weak in some manner. I’m the oldest of three children and fight my bossy-big-sister tendencies all the time. And I know there are some who might say that this faith of mine began in some sense as a rebellion against my parents. Sobeit. God takes our sacrifices no matter how meager and uses them to change us.

I began my journey of faith in an Evangelical Free Church in the very early 90′s. I’ve been a Sunday School teacher, a youth worker, a Bible Study teacher, a small group leader, and house church leader. We left that church 2003 for many different reasons that are all too lengthy to list here. It’s an unhealthy church. We now refer to it as the Church we Left Behind (CLB).

We’re now part of an emerging community of faith. I’m part of the group that plans and organizes our worship experience each Sunday. I get to teach and lead worship every so often, which is to say, when it’s a subject that I’m passionate about. Being a part of this community takes so much more intentionality, transparency and basically hard work … but the reward is occasional glimpses of the Kingdom. That makes it all worthwhile.

Yes, I have a blog which you’re welcome to visit as you wish. I write there under the penname aBhantiarna Solas, which means Lady of Light in Celtic. I’m looking forward to listening more here, and chiming in occasionally. I’ve promised some book reviews on women in ministry and those will begin popping up here and there. You may promptly beat them down in a virtual game of Whack-A-Mole. But … enough about me …

So after staying up way way too late last night playing poker at a church overnighter, I braved technology and switched the blog over to the new version of Blogger (which was really really easy). If you are a member of this blog, you will need to switch over as well (whenever it is available to you) in order to continue posting as a member. If something is weird with switching over and you need a new membership invite sent to rejoin just let me know.

One of the new features is the label feature for posts. When you create a new post, you have the option of adding labels to it that describe and categorize it. I’m in the process of going through and labeling our archived posts, but have created a “blog categories” section on the sidebar with the most popular categories. You can now access all posts within particular categories through that. It would help if as we created new posts, we tried to all use the same categories. A post can have multiple labels since I know it is hard to limit how some of them are categorized. The most common labels that I have used are – Blog Stuff, Book Discussions, Church, Community, Culture, Emerging Church, Events, Fun Stuff, Gender Issues, Politics, Social Justice, Theology, Weekly Round-Ups, and Women in Ministry. I know that some of those are very broad – like I use theology to refer to most things religious, biblical, spiritual, philosophical, and strictly theological. Gender Issues not only refers to general discussions about gender roles and the like, but other gender related issues like health, beauty, sexuality, and homosexuality. Anyway, I hope the categories prove helpful and aid discussion.

Happy blogging and Happy New Year!