I recently encountered a great quote from the book Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, a sort of personal narrative/anthropological study of one scholar's experiences with Haitian Vodou:

"Family memories are held collectively; some persons know much more than others, but no one knows it all. The full story, or I should say, the real story, cannot be written down. The full story can only be performed by a noisy family group, with each member adding his or her versions. The real story exists only for the transitory period in which the family takes pleasure and finds meaning together in bringing their past alive."

I've experienced this sort of thing a few times even in our own culture - think about the times when you've just got back from some really amazing awesome experience with a group of friends (like after a youth group retreat or a road trip), and all of you are trying to explain it to someone else at the same time - but it's much more rare than in Haitian society apparently. I think this is one of the great advantages that a predominantly oral culture like theirs has over a written culture like ours - for us stories become fixed, not dynamic or collaborative, and we are thereby deceived into thinking that there is only ever one, authoritatively "true" rendition of the past.

Here's the highlight video from Christianity 21. Julie shows up at about the 1:33 mark:

Labels: Christianity 21, Julie

Umair Haque, an innovative strategic business advisor, has posted an awesome statement of what so many of us are starting to see is wrong with the world, and, more importantly, what we'd like to see instead. It's encouraging to see someone in the business world say things that resonate so deeply with the same kinds of things those of us in the church world have been saying for quite a while now as well. Not being in that world, I don't know whether I agree with every single point he makes or not, but I do think he's pointing in the right direction. Check it out:
Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.

There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."

What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.

Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again.

The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or "morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.

You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.

But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's what I mean:

"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."

Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution. We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.

I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me: every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.

Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?

Love,

Umair and the Edge Economy Community

PS - Fire away in the comments with thoughts, questions, or — because I've left a ton of awesomeness out of this post — more examples of Gen M people and organizations.

Labels: Generation M Manifesto, Umair Haque

Julie spent last weekend up in Minneapolis at the Christianity 21 conference. She has an update here. I'm still totally jealous that I couldn't be there. :)

Anyhow, one of the cool things that came out of the conference was a list Lauren Winner presented of 21 Things Christians will hopefully be known for by the end of the 21st century. Here's what she suggested:

By the end of the 21st century, Christians will...
1. Be peacemakers.
2. Be expected to be the first ones to show up when disaster strikes.
3. Rest, because they know they're not the ones in charge.
4. While resting, reconfigure their work.
5. Live well in their bodies, whether by their diet, their sex lives, or the clothes they wear.
6. Practice boredom. They will not succumb to the "fetish of the new or the cult of novelty" when it comes to their faith.
7. Be truth-tellers, even if the answer is "I don't know." Even "authenticity" and confession can be a pose.
8. Practice silence in small and big ways, including in solitude.
9. Live in communities where everyone has access to power, and everyone can and will share it with others.
10. Live in communities where women can do anything.
11. Go to church with the people they live near.
12. Persist in making Kingdom demands. This means taking the same request to God, over and over!
13. When we think about God, we think about what needs to change next. This is largely informed by Tozer: what we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about ourselves.
14. Eat fewer strawberries. We will tread lightly on the planet and not risk the energy and harm to our planet just so we can have strawberries in January.
15. See ourselves as small characters in a larger story. As Winner's colleagues at Duke suggest, a "saint" can fail in a way that a "hero" cannot, which opens the doors to ideas like forgiveness and new possibilities of God.
16. Lament. ("We don't do this well. Jews do it a bit better.")
17. Throw good parties. Afterall, we're here to practice for the heavenly banquet!
18. Not gossip. This means talking about someone who is not present. Period.
19. Have unity without obliterating diversity, and that's because of the Trinity.
20. Understand something about grace (despite our 19 wonderful attributes above).
21. Describe reality and the spiritual sacraments in such a way as to "make mouths water and hearts hunger."

via Kyria Blog

Labels: Christianity 21, Lauren Winner

As promised, Russell Rathbun has dropped in to share a bit of his new book, nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation. Russell is a great guy and a very good writer, and this new book, while short and to the point, carries a great message. Here's what his publisher had to say about him and the purpose of the book:

Russell Rathbun is a founding minister with Debbie Blue of House of Mercy, a pioneering emergent church in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also the author of the new book nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation (Judson Press) which responds to recent reports of Christianity's image problem. In nuChristian, Rathbun offers practical suggestions for leaders who want to reach out to the new generation with a Christlike community that is

• Transparent
• Holistic
• Loving
• Engaged
• Just
• Humble

Rathbun invites us to move beyond statistics and defensiveness to hear a new generation’s critique and to be authentic about who we are as flawed human beings saved by a gracious God.

Below is an excerpt adapted from nuChristian:

The Life and Death of a Church Is a Beautiful Thing

There is the sort of general belief that a church is an institution that has a long, long history and therefore should have a long, long future. Of course, there are historic churches in this country that have been around for 150 or 200 years; in Europe some have been active for 500 years and a few for nearly a millennium. However, the average life of a church is around 60 years, which is just long enough for young energetic believers to question their parents’ understanding of what church should be. These youthful believers often band together and form a new church, to grow that church and to grow up together in that church, to get married there, to have children and raise them, to watch their children leave, to play golf together when they’re retired, and then to die and be buried there. The average life of a church is about the time it takes one generation to live their lives together as an expression of the body of Christ. I think this is a beautiful thing. It should not be mourned but celebrated.

Christianity is a dynamic faith, a moving faith. Jesus is always on a journey, always moving. In the Old Testament, the patriarchs were always moving—from one territory to another, usually in obedience to God’s call. It sometimes seems that when the people of God stop moving and set down roots, that’s when things start to stagnate. In the arc of history God’s ability to reconcile the world to God’s self will not be hindered if your local church closed its doors because the next generation goes off and starts something new, in the same way God’s work would not be hindered if my church closed its doors.

Labels: nuChristian, Russell Rathbun

I'm excited to announce that sometime next week UPDATE: this coming Monday, author/pastor Russell Rathbun will be contributing to Emerging Pensees as part of a blog tour for his new book, nuChristian: finding faith in a new generation, which is a response of sorts to Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyon's recent popular book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters. Whereas Kinnaman and Lyon's book highlighted all the negative impressions younger generations have about Christianity, Russell's book tries to offer some solutions to these perceptions. Specifically, he encourages churches to accept these criticisms (rather than getting defensive about them) and seek instead to be authentic about both who we are, and who are striving to become.

Anyhow, Russell is a great guy who I've had the privilege of hanging out with on a couple of occasions, and his previous book, Post-Rapture Radio was nothing short of genius; so yeah, be sure to check back here in a few days to see what Russell has to say.

Labels: nuChristian, Russell Rathbun

I'm currently in a class on the history of Methodism. It's really fascinating, especially these past few weeks as we've looked in-depth at the life and ministry of John Wesley and the beginnings and growth of the Methodist Revival. Basically Methodism started as a renewal movement within the Church of England, John and his brother Charles never intended to start their own sect or denomination. They simply wanted to revitalize faith within the existing church. To do this John spent his time traveling the length and breadth of England, preaching to crowds in churches and fields, and, out of this, starting hundreds of "societies" (what we would call small groups) whose purpose was to encourage those who responded to his revival messages to continue deepening in their faith and practice of the Christian life. Of course Wesley wasn't the sole originator of the Methodist revival. There were dozens of popular preachers traveling throughout England (and the American colonies) at this time who were called by the name Methodist, some of whom were connected with John's efforts, and many others who disagreed with him on various points and were doing their own thing separate from John. In fact, often "Methodist" societies would spring up independently in various places, and John or Charles would come along after the fact and offer to connect them into their larger group of "United Societies". Eventually this movement grew too large and was forced to separate into a new denomination, but that in itself is a testimony of sorts to the success of the Wesleys in bringing about the change they wanted to see in the church.

As I read about Wesley's life and the beginnings of the Methodist movement, I couldn't help but be struck by the many parallels with the emerging church movement in our own day. While the theology and emphases are somewhat different, in terms of methods and organization, it's very similar. The emerging church is not a centralized movement, rather it is a kind of "revival" or "renewal" that is popping up all over the place, in lots of different contexts and for lots of different reasons - sometimes within the existing church, and sometimes as new church plants or separate groups. Of course there are a few well-known speakers, authors, and influencers who work to draw people into the movement, but no one person who is the sole head or leader in any sense. And like the early Methodists, there are lots of little emerging groups (e.g. cohorts, churches) that are popping up everywhere, sometimes in connection with network like Emergent Village, and sometimes completely on their own. These groups are diverse in their emphases and particular interests, but they are united in their desire to see the church "emerge" into something new and wonderful.

I won't hide the fact that I would like to see the emerging church actually grow as a movement, and even take on more deliberate shape and structure. Like the Wesleys, I'm not at all interested in seeing it become a new denomination separate from all the others, but at the same time, I'm not with those who want to keep it so nebulous and unstructured that we can never really make a lasting impact on the broader church. Call me crazy, but I actually believe in the message and values of the emerging church, and I believe that the things we are talking about and discovering together about theology, about worship, about the church, and all the rest, are important and needed in the whole body of Christ. I want to see us make a difference. I want to see real change happen in both the church and in the world. I'm not content to do our own little thing, to be exclusive or unengaged with the rest of the church. I want to see this movement grow, to become more connected with one another, and to begin uniting around a core set of identifiable passions and values that we want to share with the rest of the church.

I think Wesley has some things to teach us about how to do this. In my opinion, there were two main things that he did which gave the Methodists the push they needed to go beyond a nebulous and momentary revival, to a full-fledged movement with lasting results. First, he traveled and, by his physical presence, connected the diverse societies into something larger than themselves. This is something that I think is desperately needed currently, among the many, various "emerging-ish" churches out there certainly, but most especially among all the cohorts currently affiliated with Emergent Village. In my experience cohorts are a vital part of the emerging conversation - they're where local, face-to-face community happens, where new and challenging ideas can be worked out in a safe environment, and where these new ideas can then be carried out to the various established churches (and other spheres of life) represented in a cohort to produce real fruit for the kingdom of God.

Pesonally, I've been working on the Cohorts Team of Emergent Village for the past few years, and in that time I've received literally scores of requests for new cohorts all over the country, and helped many of those get off the ground by encouraging and advising folks (usually via email) on how to do that. However, I've also seen a lot of cohorts or attempted cohorts fizzle and die for lack of a clear sense of purpose, connection or direction, and a lack of continued support, encouragement, and equipping by folks like myself who are just too busy to act as consistent liason for Emergent Village. To put it shortly, what I think we need is a John Wesley type who could dedicate himself or herself to multiplying, growing, equipping and encouraging these cohort groups. More than that, an Emergent John Wesley could help connect each of these scattered "societies" into something larger than themselves, help them not feel so alone or overwhelmed - and to help give them a purpose of reform and renewal in the larger Body of Christ that would go beyond simply deconstructing and complaining about what is wrong with the existing church. I intend to write a follow-up post soon outlining even more specifically what I think an Emergent John Wesley job description would entail.

The second major thing Wesley did to build the Methodist movement was to put a lot of effort into writing and defining what the core theology and beliefs of Methodists were all about, and then disseminating this to the various preachers and leaders of the societies. Frankly, I think something like this is also needed currently in the emerging church. Now I know emergents, by definition, shy away from anything like a "statement of faith", and that's as it should be, IMHO. Part of the point of the emerging conversation is that we are learning and growing together regardless of any theological differences. However, the flip-side of this openness is that we can tend to lack any sense of cohesion or common purpose. What is it that makes one "emergent", and what's the point anyway? What's our message, what are we hoping to accomplish? I've given some thought to this (and, again, I hope to write a follow-up post outlining this in more detail), and I think it is possible to identify a few unifying aspects of the emerging movement that nonetheless don't limit or exclude the diversity among us. In good evangelical fashion I've boiled them down to three, semi-alliterated points:

1. Kingdom: by this I mean a commitment to working on behalf of Christ and his Kingdom in this world (in all the various forms this can take). This would include terms like "missional" and "social justice", as well as "evangelism". Bottom line, is that I think all emergent folks are united by a passion to work for the good of the world on behalf of God. I think this can be a driving purpose of our efforts without unnecessarily narrowing or limiting the emerging movement in a way that excludes any who want to be a part of it.


2. Convergence: rather than being sectarian, or claiming (as most other reform movements have done in the past) that we alone finally have figured out the right way to be Christians and do church, the emerging conversation is described by what many have called a deep ecclesiology - a commitment to honor and serve and learn from the church in all her forms. As Doug Pagitt put it once, we don't want to define ourselves by what we're are not. Rather, we want to define ourselves by what we're kinda like - Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Anabaptist, Anglican, Pentecostal, Reformed, Evangelical, Liberal, whatever. While we have critiques of all of these, we also embrace all of these as well. We're not an opposition movement, we're an inclusion and renewal movement.


3. Conversation: by this I mean the relational aspect of this movement - we are bound together, despite (and really, in celebration of) any differences, by a simple commitment to be in relationship with one another. The emerging church is a safe place, a place to ask the questions, to explore theology, try new practices, and pursue God in both new and ancient ways without fear of condemnation or exclusion. The only requirement is that you have to likewise be willing to extend this safety and respect to others yourself. That doesn't mean we minimize or cover over our differences, quite the contrary, we celebrate and learn from them. All it means is that no matter our differences, love wins.

(Incidentally, these parallel the four Values of Emergent Village, though I've included both number 1 and 3 in my first point.)

What I would like to see is the cohorts and churches associated with the emerging movement become more explicit and vocal about these three defining characteristics (or some variation of them) as a defining statement of what we're all about. I'd like to see these (or something like them) become the unifying and driving force behind everything we're trying to accomplish - something to give shape and purpose to the movement, without thereby limiting it or excluding others. Personally I think these three are broad and inclusive enough (and yet also specific enough) to fulfill this goal. I think these are what we need to working towards as we seek to renew and reform the existing church. Just as Wesley intended the Methodists to be an inclusive movement that would bless the whole church, the emerging church needs to likewise unite around a few core values that we want to offer as a gift to the whole Body of Christ.

Of course all of this is just in my personal opinion. What do the rest of y'all think?

Labels: Emergent Village, emerging church