As you may gather from the tenor of the discussion on this blog so far, I have a fond place in my heart for the recent movement that has been labeled the "Emerging Chruch" or "Emergent Church." The lifeline of this movement, coincidentally, has run parallel to that of post-postmodernity along the lines that I discussed in an earlier post. I think that that coincidence stems from the fact that both post-postmodernity and the Emerging Church are not definable as concrete states, but are both more experimental, hopeful, journeys away from something and toward something else. An excellent discussion on this theme can be found on Pastor Rick McKinley's blog. The following is a brief excerpt from that discussion.

"The truth is we don’t know what exactly the emerging church will become. There is a great effort to try to divide it up into categories. I suppose I understand that desire from the vantage point of good people who simply are trying to understand what is going on out there among Christians and they need to have it broken down for them.

The problem I see with the categories, however, is that they appear like a helpful tool but it’s just not that cut and dry. There are no teams yet. They may be forming but there are a lot people just getting into the game, or showing up at practice or just signing up to play.

The danger that I see is that people, particularly Americans love to quickly categorize people so they can either turn them into a celebrity or a demon. We really don’t want to read what they have written or take the time to get to know them. We simply want to know what category they fit in so we can pronounce our judgment if we disagree with them or subscribe to their podcast if we like what they said.

These categories are going to turn out to be very harmful to the church. The emerging church has not been around for very long. There are some beautiful expressions that are sprouting up all over the place, they are organic works of the Spirit of God living in and through the life of his followers. We should be very cautious to squelch this. It is a young and fragile thing that if we fail to create a safe context for it to grow it will either shrivel up and die, or become high jacked by the more mature plants and therefore will not really be a fresh move of God at all.

This is a new thing that God is doing and we should respect it as such. When we force the emerging church to define themselves in order to put them into camps it is the equivalent of telling a ten year old to declare what his major in college is going to be. Telling him that if he does not hurry up and figure it out, then there is no telling where he will end up. We are essentially scaring the hell out of him. Putting a yoke upon him that will crush all the life and creativity that is, by nature of being young, the thing we are all attracted to in the first place."

Pray for this fledgling expression of the ecclesia. It's got some potential.

Grace and Peace,

Raffi