Last on Emergent Confernce
A few closing thoughts on the Emergent Conference at Columbia, especially from the comments of Brian McLaren in the closing session.
Criticism makes you either bitter or better. Criticising never makes you better, so McLaren suggests never criticizing anybody. Let thousands of flowers bloom. Think us-us, not us-them. Let your circle of love include those who define themselves over against you. Sounds like Jesus.
Move away from thinking about saving the church and think about the presence of the good news of the presence of the kingdom of God. Move from theory to action. Join God at work in the world God loves.
Find some friends to be with. Going outside the boundaries, living through change is so hard, so demanding, you need friends for the journey.
If you can start something new, do it. You don't need permission to serve God.
Support experiments. Expect failures. Adaptively imitate success.
Emphacize first order practices such as prayer, loving your neighbor, practicing hospitality, and giving to the poor. Most of our problems, he suggest come from 2nd order practices such as theologies.
Hope against hope. Ask, what if this works "exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask or think". (Eph. 3: 19 - 20)
What especially draws me to this is what I have spoken to before: the willingness to be in dialogue/relationship with those who differ from you; the attempt to get beyond the institutionalism that marks so much of our church life; the focus on first order practices and being at work with God in the world. McLaren and the Emergent community are inviting us to think creatively about new ways of being church in the 21st century. For me, evocotive and helpful.
Jimmy
Criticism makes you either bitter or better. Criticising never makes you better, so McLaren suggests never criticizing anybody. Let thousands of flowers bloom. Think us-us, not us-them. Let your circle of love include those who define themselves over against you. Sounds like Jesus.
Move away from thinking about saving the church and think about the presence of the good news of the presence of the kingdom of God. Move from theory to action. Join God at work in the world God loves.
Find some friends to be with. Going outside the boundaries, living through change is so hard, so demanding, you need friends for the journey.
If you can start something new, do it. You don't need permission to serve God.
Support experiments. Expect failures. Adaptively imitate success.
Emphacize first order practices such as prayer, loving your neighbor, practicing hospitality, and giving to the poor. Most of our problems, he suggest come from 2nd order practices such as theologies.
Hope against hope. Ask, what if this works "exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask or think". (Eph. 3: 19 - 20)
What especially draws me to this is what I have spoken to before: the willingness to be in dialogue/relationship with those who differ from you; the attempt to get beyond the institutionalism that marks so much of our church life; the focus on first order practices and being at work with God in the world. McLaren and the Emergent community are inviting us to think creatively about new ways of being church in the 21st century. For me, evocotive and helpful.
Jimmy
posted by Jimmy at 7:30 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for the blog. I like when you "break it down" into things we can do. I don't understand high theological terminology sometimes. I check your blog every day, looking for words of wisdom.
Thanks.
Cheryl
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