So I've been responding to a lot of requests for new Emergent Village cohorts lately. (I'm on the Emergent Village Cohorts Team, and whenever someone fills out the request more info form on the EV site I'm one of the ones it comes to - we average at least one or two a week, sometimes more.) The problem is that a lot of them are coming from folks in very small towns and rural areas. Often they are the only "emergent" person they know of in their whole area, and frankly, there's a good chance they actually ARE the only emergent person in their whole area. I send them the information about how to start a cohort anyway, but, as one of them was kind enough to point out to me, our advice works a lot better for folks who are in urban or suburban areas (where there are coffee shops to hang out at, local colleges to advertise at, and a wide diversity of churches to draw from) than it does for rural, small town folks.

So that's my question: what can we (i.e. Emergent Village folks, and those of us on the cohorts team especially) do about that? What can we do for folks who are desperate to join the emerging church conversation, but are in very isolated areas where they don't just feel like the only crazy one out there, they most likely are the only crazy one out there, at least in an hour driving radius?

- Are cohorts still the best structure for these folks?
- If yes, how do we help them find others in their areas to start these cohorts with?
- If no, what other kinds of structures could we create that would help rural emergents plug into the emerging conversation?

Any ideas?

Update (6/29): Out of this conversation over the past few weeks has come a google map to help people connect with other emergents and existing communities near them, as well as a new online cohort, Emergent Outliers, for isolated and rural emergents. Check them out!

Labels: Emergent Village, emerging church

This site is pretty funny (riffing off of the "Stuff White People Like" blog), though it really ought to be titled "Stuff White Middle-Class Contemporary Evangelical Christians Like". Anyhow, here are a few of my favorites:

#5 One Hour Church Services
The only acceptable reasons for going over the one hour allotted are communion and multiple baptisms (a single baptism is expected to replace either a praise song or one out of the three points of the sermon), and even then it better not be more than 15 minutes. White Christians will allow the Spirit to move them to clap or sway slightly during praise and worship, but they prefer that the Spirit does not move them to sing any additional, unscheduled songs.

#9 Breaking Scripture Down into the Original Hebrew or Greek
White Christian pastors, ever eager to prove that they went to seminary, like to break down scripture into the original Hebrew or Greek. While the congregation marvels over the accurate pronunciation (they assume) of words like "rhua" and "metanoia," the pastor proceeds to translate these foreign words into English. Inevitably the congregation comes to a new and profound understanding of the passage, which ingratiates them to the pastor. For this reason, a great conspiracy exists among pastors and Zondervan (the Halliburton of Bible publishing) to keep a Bible that actually translates the original Hebrew and Greek into English from reaching the marketplace. Zondervan will go to great lengths to maintain the dominant status of its New International Version. The NIV, although it is in English, apparently is sort of like Cliff Notes for the real thing, necessitating further translation by the exegetically superior from the pulpit. Pastors that begin to raise a fuss are immediately offered book deals (e.g. Rob Bell, Rick Warren) in exchange for their silence.

#12 Waxing Nostalgic about Hymnals and Organs
Having moved from a traditional church service into the aforementioned contemporary worship, many white Christians fondly recall "the good old days" when organs and hymnals dominated worship experiences (even if these days were only 3 years ago). These Christians enjoy waxing nostalgic, but not to the point of actually wanting these items in their worship experience... In the mean time, praise and worship songs are PowerPointed to the marvel of all. Song lyrics will likely be on delay and slightly out of sync with the music because of the tech guy's inability to follow along, but to white Christians, this is a minor pittance to pay for the glory of digital text without music to read. Forget those old-fashioned "musical parts"- now everyone can sing the melody!

#13 Diversity
The only thing more highly valued in a white Christian church than visitors are minority visitors. As the deer pantheth for the water, the white Christian longs for diversity. Unfortunately, as much as white Christians want diversity, they are unable to achieve it. Part of the problem is that white Christians prefer their diversity candidates to dress like them, talk like them, like the same style of worship as them, and, ideally, to have attended the same Christian college as them. In short, the average white Christian church wants to attract white Christians who are not white.

#14 Potlucks
White Christian children all know that potlucks represent their eating something other than their mother's cooking, that the food will be far worse than their mom's food, and that they're going to be required to sample a lot of other family's crappy casseroles or "crap-eroles." White Christian children are encouraged to "just try it," knowing full well, that with the author of this devil-dish watching their every gag reflex, there's no praying themselves out of this dining purgatory.

#15 White Jesus
White Christians are quite familiar with the Bible (well, the New Testament anyway). Based on careful analysis of the Gospels, all white Christians have come to the conclusion that, without a doubt, Jesus was white. Despite rumors of Middle Eastern ancestry, our Savior is always depicted as having white skin, angular features, long brown hair, and piercing blue eyes... White Christians effortlessly counter claims of an olive-skinned Jesus with historical evidence of their own: Arthur Maxwell's The Bible Story and the Hanna-Barbera video series "The Greatest Adventure Stories From the Bible" clearly show that not only was Jesus white, but so was every other person mentioned in the Bible.

#19 Calling Themselves Followers of Jesus
"Christian" seems very non-inclusive in this day and age and the likes of Jimmy Carter and Jerry Falwell have poisoned the "born again" well - leaving "follower of Jesus" as the only viable option for the white Christian. Being a follower of Jesus automatically distances the white Christian from all of the unpleasant perceptions about white Christians. The follower of Jesus no longer has to apologize for the Crusades, "Bible-belt people", or the passages in the Bible non-Christians find distasteful.

#25 Retreats
It should be no surprise that white Christians like retreats- they combine the outdoors (known to white Christians as "creation"), "getting away from it all," and the opportunity to dabble in different worship experiences (prayer vigils, raising hands, publicly crying, etc.) that would never be attempted in regular white Christian society.

Labels: fun

As some of the comments on Julie's Memorial Day post show, it can be dangerous to try to post about a war-related holiday if one is not unreservedly, 100% pro-war and pro-military. Nonetheless, I just wanted to throw out a quick reflection based on a discussion I had recently in my Educating for Peace and Justice class at seminary in honor of Memorial Day. For one particular class session we read, viewed and listened to several items that discussed the psychological and spiritual effect war has on those in the military. It is common to refer to death in combat as "making the ultimate sacrifice", but Stanley Hauerwas (among others) points out that willingly dying on behalf of others, while certainly noble, is not the only sacrifice that our culture asks our soldiers to make. Hauerwas points out that from a spiritual and human standpoint, we should also consider the sacrifice of being asked to kill another human being.

It's one thing to be willing to die for a cause. It's quite another thing to be willing to kill for it. Any taking of human life, no matter how necessary or how justified by some "greater good" (if indeed such justification is possible), nonetheless takes a spiritual and psychological toll on the killer. To kill another child of God, to end the life of a person who is just as loved and valued and spiritually significant as oneself, leaves a mark on the human soul. Certainly it is huge thing to ask our service men and women to potentially die for us, but asking them to kill for us is huge too. We are asking them to sacrifice their morality (the part that tells us that no matter the circumstances, killing is still an evil) and a piece of their humanity.

One of saddest things we discovered is that many veterans return from combat unable to really talk about what they experienced - especially the difficult, traumatic choices they had to make to take another human life. Our culture welcomes soldiers home as heroes, and acclaims them as brave and strong and praiseworthy, but we don't seem to want to hear about those who come home broken and hurting and agonized over the choices they had to make and the things they had to do while in combat. There isn't much communal (or government) support for those who need help processing what they went through and what they had to do. We like to honor veterans in superficial ways, but does anyone want to hear to hear them talk about the horrors of taking another human life, about what that did to them spiritually and personally?

One program that is doing good work to reintegrate veterans into civilian society and help them deal with their experiences is the Beyond the Yellow Ribbon program started by Major John Morris. You can hear an interview with him at NPR's Speaking of Faith website. And this Memorial Day, while we honor the soldiers that have made one kind of ultimate sacrifice, lets also remember the veterans still among us who have been asked to make an equally signficant one, and who may still need permission to talk about what they saw and did, and perhaps even some assistance in the healing of their souls.

Due to an exceptionally busy semester (I had one more class than normal, which means that not only did I have more homework, but a big chunk of time I would have spent doing homework was instead spent in class), I've not been able to keep up with much blogging. These past two weeks especially I've not had any time for anything but finishing up final papers and tests (over 75 pages of writing!) Now that I'm done though, I hope to have more time to blog. After all the writing I did the past few weeks though, I'm going to have to ease back into it. My brain's tapped out for a little bit. :) I need to spend some time just getting back into the rest of my life, and getting some stuff done around the house.

Labels: personal

"Post-modernity is about announcing the doctrine of the fall to arrogant modernity"

This prayer is from the book out walking by John Leax. This is the prayer we began our Nature class with every session. I thought it'd be appropriate to put up here as I work on the final paper for the class. Plus I really like it. It's an interesting spin on the Lord's Prayer that helps me see its meaning in a whole new light.


Mother of all creatures,
whose dwelling extends beyond this world,
let no one trivialize your being.
Let your order prevail.
Let your intentions come to be
for creation and for yourself.
Give us, each day, no more than we need,
and forgive us when we take for ourselves
the well being of others,
as we forgive others who seek to take ours.
Lead us away from our dreams of power
that we might be whole,
satisfied in you.

Tony has some good thoughts up about why he doesn't like the "package deal" among liberal Christians, where it is assumed that if you support GLBT rights (as Tony does, as do I) and other similar causes, you must therefore also reject the historical, physical reality of the Resurrection of Jesus (which Tony does not, nor do I). He writes:

Why is that important? Because I'm a real person. Because the people to whom I have ministered in Jesus' name are real persons. We're not hypotheses, fables, or legends. And we need real healing, all of us. While our realities may be largely socially constructed, we have real DNA, real physical, material properties.

Thus, since the resurrection of Jesus is his defeat of death, evil, and grief, it's important to me that it really happened. Without a resurrected Jesus, Christianity is impotent. (Exhibit A: liberal Christianity) And I don't mean a Jesus who was "resurrected" in the Disciples' hearts, and in my heart. I mean a real resurrection in the space-time continuum by a physical being known as Jesus of Nazareth, as 99.99% of Christians for the last two milennia have believed.

Read the whole post here.

Labels: theology, Tony Jones

Scot McKnight has a thought-provoking article on the out of Ur blog about spiritual eroticism, i.e. the idea that sometimes we Christians are more in love with being in love with God, than we are with God himself. He writes:

Friends of mine today worry about consumerization or commoditization in the church. I offer a slightly different analysis of what might be the same thing: for many, Sunday services have become the experience of courtly love. Some folks love church, and what they mean by "loving church" is that they love the experience they get when they go to church. They prefer to attend churches that foster the titillation of courtly-love worship and courtly-love fellowship and courtly-love feelings.

They say they love worship, and by this they mean they love the courtly-love-like songs that extol the experience of loving Jesus or the experience of adoring God or the experience of a concert-like praise team that can generate the sound of worship intensely enough to vibrate the very soul of the worshiper.

Such folks might like sermons that create powerful contrasts between God’s wrath and human sinfulness or between our sinfulness and God’s gracious love; or they might like stories told so well as to usher them into the depths of human loves and hates and tragedies and comedies. What they like is the freshness of discovery or the flush of shame or the intoxicating sense of learning something new. They may create such a stir of silence in expectation of some great preacher or some great leader that the sheer presence of that person makes their soul swoon.

But this does not describe worship.

Click here to read the whole article.

I've definitely had this experience myself, and while I'd want to push back on Scot just a little bit with the recognition that we always have impure motives in seeking God and God in his mercy still uses that, I nonetheless admit that this is is a problem and one that we should try to be aware of in ourselves. This is part of the big reason that I don't actually enjoy most "praise and worship" services anymore, because a long time ago I became aware of the emotional manipulation that was occurring within me, and how I was becoming more attached to that experience itself than to God.

Labels: Scot McKnight, worship

My friend Karen Sloan has helped launch a new venture called Formation House in Pittsburgh, which is intended to be a kind of training ground to develop new leaders for intentional communities by immersing them in an existing community for one year. As Karen describes it:

I have met countless people seeking ways to embody missional faith in intentional communities. And my ears have perked up when Emergent leaders validate this part of emerging Christianity. Yet, after a multi-year search of knocking on community doors, I failed in finding long-term new monastic training. What I gained was a number of formative pieces, which equip me for living out a blend of prayer and work with a community. Now in God’s unexpected ways I find myself organizing a foundational year, for others to become leaders with intentional Christian communities, sharing rhythms of prayer and work.

I'm really excited about this. There is a lot of interest right now around the whole idea of neo-monasticism and intentional communities, but so many people who would like to embrace this lifestyle have no idea how to get started. That's why I'm thrilled to see some structures being put into place to help train people in this way of life and begin to multiply the movement.

If you want to know more, or are possibly interested in applying to be a part of Formation House, click here.

Labels: emerging church, neo-monasticism