My Great Emergence

Occasionally, it becomes necessary for us to spend some time trying to articulate and translate what seems to be happening within. This is just such a time. My hunch is that this will take several posts over the next few days and perhaps weeks. Instigating this attempt at sharing my story would most recently have to be my experience at The Great Emergence conference in Memphis this past weekend.
(click the image to the right to view a brief you tube video)

I traveled to the conference with a group of about ten friends from the Greater Cincinnati area along with a new friend from Louisville. We overnighted at the Gen X Inn just east of downtown Memphis. Although the name of the establishment was a bit peculiar, we found the accommodations more than adequate and I have no complaints except for the crunchy bananas (pictured behind my buddy, Aaron).

Enough about fruit texture...the conference was like a spiritual retreat for me. An emphasis on attending to "Divine Hours" created a spiritual rhythm to the schedule which provided, for me ,much needed interaction with God's Word, the Holy Spirit, and the shared experience of many Christians past and present. For those who aren't familiar with the concept, read this quick description. Along with the readings and prayers we shared some great times of corporate worship which stretched me in terms of style and liturgical approach.

Besides the spiritual refreshment which came my way over the weekend, a staggering amount of content, church history, and many other categories of information came flooding through the various presenters, conversations with peers, in addition to the main presentations from Phyllis. Perhaps the most cage-rattling component to this piece of the conference was the discussion of our basis for authority. During the time of the reformation in the early 16th century, the overriding sense of authority shifted from the papacy to the scriptures and the stage was set for sola scriptura. After about 500 years of viewing God, Christianity, and our world through this lens, it appears that the lens (or it least a filter) is changing.

I will hold off on discussing more of the actual content in future posts (such as the quadrant categories of Christianity, the Jerusalem-Antioch conversation, science-faith interplay, etc) and will shift now to some thoughts on personal application and "so what?" kinds of comments. These questions are the ones I most anticipate in the next few days and of course some of the most difficult statements to articulate. I want to discuss three points of application here and will begin with the most basic...personal impact...then to theological impact...and finally to ministerial or ecclesiastical impact.

Personal Impact: As I already mentioned, the personal impact of not just this conference, but the 3 to 4-year transition I've been experiencing in my spiritual life is quite a deep one. For several years now I have begun to discover and explore several problems in the ways in which I've been spiritually formed over the years and how I learned to relate to God. When you're raised in a conservative evangelical context (especially one which emphasizes behaviors and externals) I believe one of two things typically happens. As someone at the conference said, you either live in such a way as not to piss God off too much because of your humanity OR you perfect religious performance to a degree that certainly assures you of being one of God's favorites.

My guess is that I've erred on the side of being overly impressed with my own religious performance and building most of my relationship with God apart from being truly intimately connected with Him. In the past few years, I had to come to grips with the bankrupt nature of this kind of religion. As various struggles involving anger, depression, anxiety, addictions, etc have emerged, the necessary foundation of authentic trust and intimacy with God was not sufficiently in place.

[These statements should not lead anyone to believe that I am ungrateful for my spiritual/Christian heritage or for the positive influence of the Nazarene tradition. We are all shaped by various stories which are all, in and of themselves, insufficient compared to the grandest Story we hope to live, love, and journey towards.]

Another piece of the personal impact has to do with being okay in my own skin. As I shared from a panel of participants in front of the 300 or so conference attendees…the last three attempts of being on staff in ministry has felt like a continuous effort to pound a round peg into a square hole. And I continually wonder if God has a plan (or allowance) for me to engage in a form of ministry which perfectly matches an authentic expression of my passions and myself.

Theological Impact: This discussion is going to take some more time to sort out. For now I think it will suffice to say that if Phyllis is correct about the dismantling of sola scripture over that past 150 years…it fits with my own sense of where God is moving (an emphasis on Christ, i.e. solus Christus). Many will misinterpret my voice, as well as the voice of countless others within this “emergent” movement, but for too long the Scriptures have been used as a weapon or as some sort of divine trump card to manipulate, control, or otherwise abuse all the people God is so desperately trying to love back to himself.

Ecclesiastical Impact: So here’s the one I really have to be careful with since I find myself employed by the church. Although I don’t have a clear ‘next step’ in this area just yet, my heightened sense of disdain for the institutional church will ultimately lead me to a precipice of choice. When I reach this ledge of loyalty to my tribe or to the church as a local system of religious experience, I will indeed have to make a choice in terms of what shape life and ministry will take for my family and myself over the next few decades (God willing) of my life. When I reach a decision in these regards…I’ll let you know. ;-)

To wrap up this post for the time being, I better just make it clear for any who find themselves reading this for the wrong reasons. I am purposefully identifying and aligning myself with a vast group of other “emerging” Christians because I wholeheartedly believe that Christianity is certainly changing. The thought scares me that someone branded me as a “young Luther” while I was in Memphis. For starters, I have no visions of that kind of grandeur. I also don’t care for the Lutheresque implications of being hunted down for inquisition by religious leaders of the day. But I also don’t want to miss what God is doing because I’m too damn proud of the religious reputation I’ve built for myself over the past thirty years.