This week, two topics dominated the small slice of the blogosphere on which I keep an eye: the economic bailout plan and the imminent demise of "Emerging Church" or "Emergent."

If you're unaware of the "economic bailout plan" issue, then welcome back from your tropical vacation. Too many great posts on the issue to link to, but this one's my favorite.

If you're unaware of the Emerging/Emergent issue, Christianity Today blogger Url Scaramanga wrote an article called R.I.P. Emerging Church; Scot McKnight responded over at Jesus Creed; Alan Hirsch chimed in, as have many others. Actually, the discussion was sparked a few weeks ago when Andrew Jones indicated he would stop using the terms and Dan Kimball examined the issue and decided that he will be using those terms "more retrospectively than futuristically." I humbly added my two cents, though more geared toward a very specific issue regarding the new network to be formed by McKnight, Kimabll, Erwin McManus, and others.

I had a very pleasant, generous and informative email conversation with Scot McKnight as a result of that post, but since Scot spoke to me via e-mail and not through my comments, I will assume that he wanted the conversation to stay between us; I can respect that and I won't spell out the details. But part of the conversation had to with the issue of blog comments. Parables had a great example of that recently (and, by the way, the contest is still open until Monday; there've been some great responses so far, but the winner is still up for grabs).

And speaking of moronic blog comments:


Grace and Peace,
Raffi