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go here to buy my stock photography Alan Creech
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aaron klinefelter
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Anyway, because most of "us" have come out of one context and moved into another, there has generally been a lot of talk by many of "us" about how funky and undesirable our former ways of life were and are, how they need to change, etc. A good deal of this talk has come to the attention of the folks we used to be related to in a church sort of sense and they, as you can imagine, don't really like it all that much. They, not all of them, but generally speaking, they think we're kooky and weird and perhaps even "dangerous." That's understandable and not very surprising. Hey, some of us may be kooky. We might need to be aware of that and be open to wearing some spiritually corrective shoes. So, as I started out, "in our own context" - there is a certain context of life as church that we are now in. It might well have been necessary for a while for some of us to speak out loudly about certain things that we had done or been, if not only to remind ourselves, to keep ourselves from going back there. There may always be an element of that. There was ecclesiastical funkiness that developed in the New Testament era that needed deconstructing for goodness sake. There probably always will be. So there will always need to be some arse-kicking going on and some moving on to be done. I may finally be here. I want to start not so much hollering about what was, but encouraging us about what we're doing now and will do in the future. Now, to someone out there, this will automatically sound like I'm drawing some kind of sectarian line. I am not. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm just saying when I want to talk about this or that kind of thing not being effective for transformation in a community, I want there to be a reason for it in my own context and not just be referring back to something I'm not even doing any more. It's kind of pointless for me to just randomly go on a rant-page about "preaching from a pulpit" not being able to accomplish change in the hearts of the "congregation" - because I don't preach from a pulpit - I don't live in that context, and neither do the people I'm related to in this whole deal. So, unless I'm asked about it, it would be sort of pointless. Unless it raises it's head in my context, I wonder if I should raise my head in it's. There will undoubtedly remain crossover points that will still be talked about, because they are relevant, because most of us who are doing whatever we're doing are people of two worlds. Perhaps we'll have a new generation of church planters, practitioners, in the future, but not now. We have to try hard to shed the old way. It hurts us. It's painful and frustrating and gets us in a lot of trouble sometimes. It won't be that way for our grandchildren maybe - maybe. I pray not. Of course, they will have their own hard struggles. God's Grace be with them, and with us. I hope that finally made sense to whom it needs to make sense. Peace. Labels: church, emerging church :::
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> today
three quotes |:: "Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." "Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." "...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."
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