Tony Jones, the National Coordinator of Emergent, has posted an excellent article on the State of Emergent this past year and what is ahead for 2006. If you're not familiar, Emergent is "a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ." In other words, it's one of the more "official" groups that comprises this whole emerging church thing, though it's certainly not the only one. As Tony puts it, the emerging church is like the Internet and Emergent is one of the servers.Tony will actually be in town next weekend for a conference at Wheaton College and he'll be getting together with a small group of us from up/rooted, the local Emergent Cohort for the Chicago area, for a late-night conversation on Sunday the 22nd. It should be a good time.
Labels: emerging church
At 1/12/2006 02:59:00 PM, 
Mike Clawson
Hey Kevin, good to have you here. We'd love to have you out at an up/rooted gathering. There are no terms of attendance except to show up and be willing to share your questions, ideas and experiences with the group.
Up/rooted actually meets in several different ways and in several different locations. The north suburban group operates out of Life on the Vine Church up in Long Grove, but they don't meet on a regular basis, usually only quarterly or so for speaker type events.
There is also the up/rooted.west group which meets in the Wheaton area (i.e. west suburbs). Our next get together is that Tony Jones thing on the 22nd at one of our member's houses in Winfield. You can get more details at the up/rooted website. If you can't make it to that gathering, we usually meet monthly for an informal "theology pub". Contact me at mjclawson@hotmail.com and I'll add your email to our regular update list.
Hope to meet you in person soon!
-Mike
At 1/17/2006 05:58:00 AM, David Fitch
Mike ... er gandalf ...
Blessings on the imminence of the new church!
Your link to Tony Jone's paper didn't work when I tried it ... is it me? ...
also I need your help getting the "Consumerism and Christianity Conference" stuff up on Up-rooted's blog from this blog ... (http://missionthink.typepad.com/)... and I probably need your help getting the image and all that on my blog too ... Can we meet a half hour before Tony Jone's meeting?
Blessings dude!
David Fitch
At 1/18/2006 10:55:00 AM, Mike Clawson
Hey Dave,
I can't meet you before the Tony Jones thing 'cuz I have to pick him up from the college and bring him over (plus I'll be at another shindig in Wheaton right before that), but maybe we can find a little time afterwards to chat briefly.
And sorry about the link. I don't know what's going on with my blog lately. Nothing seems to be working right.
-Mike
Gandalf... I've been reading your blog for a week now since I found it on Gerbmom's blog. I have been trying to decide if I was going to make the drive all the way out to Long Grove to see what you all were doing. Anyway... When I saw this post I thought I'd love to get together with your Up/root group and see what other locations are closer and where I could fit in.
What are the terms of attendance?