An Important Request from Emergent Village

That was an interesting survey. Does anyone care to share what vision for emergent they resonated most with? I prefered one of the first two, simply because I am nervous about emergent solidifying into a denomination… I feel like this could lead to the same old problems. Also, I’m not sure about how the emergent ideas look as the foundation of a body of Christ (a church). I’ve read Tony Jones’ book where he discusses different churches, but I don’t think it was clear enough for me.

OK i am a UK poster here, but one with a great passion for the US church, and i think a sense of how we need each other now big time. i would love to beleive the ‘emegent has done it’s job’ scenario…but by 2011 you are joking. in the UK we have 15 years ahead of you on this project.. though to be honest not i think as well spent sometimes! but if i see right we are dealing with a new incarnation of Christianity at a major cultural epoch. thuis stuff takes a decades…it won’t be there by 2011!
i think somtehing near the church planting option may be needed. but i went for ‘another option’ Emergent becomes a missional monastic order, sending people to serve the church, forming a spirituality and rule of life for the emerging culture, planting churches perhaps but as part of their service to the church not as a new denomination

a missional monastic order serving the church… I like that. Could it become closer to the new monastic movement then?

Steve, I hear ya. But that isn’t E.V.’s job. The movement has a long future, I believe, but the question is what Emergent Village’s role in the future will be. I voted for option A. I think now is the time for E.V. to step back and let things flow. If they don’t, I honestly believe it will limit the future by bottlenecking the imaginative and creative work of the Spirit.

I wrote more here:

http://markvans.wordpress.com

I voted for both D, and the idea of moving toward being a monastic order or at the most, a loose sort of denomination (gasp!). I realize the latter is not a popular concept, however, Emergent does have an identity, and the differences in what we are doing are unique and beautiful. I don’t think we can necessarily escape the inevitable, but we can do the inevitable BETTER. The word ‘denomination’ has become hijacked into something negative, but there is something to say about the joy of being in a community of accountability and conviction. Is that not what Emergent is about? There seems to be too much organization and too much need for a core identity to just be a loose sense of friendships. After all, we have our own niche of books. At some point, we do need to define a boundary for how far this informality can go before we start voting on some large issues of theology and allowing individual churches to work out the details of their worship (style, etc.)Perhaps denomination is not the best word, but we do need a community identity that is expounded upon.

I like the missional monastic option. However, what if we see EV less as an order and more as a center of discourse and for discussion encouraging the church in a missional-monastic direction? This could be embodied in local communities (option C—i think)that are loosely organized to insure a continuous posture of conversation and openness.
I like talk of a “denomination” least. Institutionalization is troublesome, casting problems and disputes into the concrete organizational realm rather than letting them work themselves out in the interpersonal realm. in such a setting, openness to new move of the Spirit, new ways of talking about our life together as Church become either threats or policy—neither option being good.

I don’t want to see too much groupism/denominational heading or anything like that because I want to be fully apart of the wider Christian community and to have a voice in my brothers and sisters lives. Believe it or not you can have community with people who don’t identify with emergent (isn’t that kind of the point?). I can understand wanting to move in that direction, but I want both the resources and conversations and vision emergent has, without seeing it splinter off (and thus lose its presence in existing churches) like other movements did.

Ashlie, what do you mean by defining theology or doctrine? I do think this needs to happen in churches to some degree, but I think we also always need the (emergent) voice who is will to humbly ask questions (reminding us that we can be wrong) within those same churches.

Well, what I mean is this: there is beauty in definition. At times, I feel in the Emergent discussion, we avoid theology and doctrine so much out of a fear of what has happened to us. I’ve yet to see in my own emerging discussion how one can’t question and have theology. Theology to me, is a form of art. This expression, and expansive discussion we have not only in community, with past voices in the faith, and the cultural ‘laws’ that we emergents exist in need to be accepted. We do need to call our practices and the assumed theology that we’ve created for what it is. Think of a family. Families all exist together, love one another..but there are also rules in each family . Unspoken traditions that just are the way they are. Bobby kisses his mom three times before going to bed. He does it, but he doesnt know why..he just knows that that is what makes him a Brown. I feel that this is where Emergent is. It’s a community, but needs to move towards a family. We are living in fear of an identity, instead of really investigating in a discussion of the theology of our words and the meanings of our purpose. Perhaps denominationalism is the bad word, but there does need to be a discussion of what identity is. Not everyone in a group needs to have the same beliefs, but I do feel that the sociological mores and culture we’ve created are telling, and do speak more of who we are.

Also, and this is more of a response to sagely but, I am a futuristic thinking. I never look at the word denomination and say ‘this is bad, we need to avoid it’. My response is: how we change things for the better? I didnt grow up a Christian, and once I became one, I really loved the ‘bonded’ mentality of the church. I’m proud to be a part of the emerging discussion.I think we have some beautifully unique characteristics, and I think thats a part of being the Kingdom, creating peace in the midst of diversity. That doesnt mean we have to wipe out who we are, it just means we need to be an example of openness, love and authenticity. God can change things through us in any capacity. I mean, we already have a board, so we have some sense of governing power. And, emerging is now featured in the majority of theology and church history books on college campuses. So we do have and identity, presence, and I believe some power in the Christian community. So A, seems like an impossibility. I don’t really want to come off as individualistic or modernist (thats not my intention), however, I do think we need to come to terms with our influence, or walk away. I’m a INFJ (go Myers Briggs), so everything to me eventually comes down to systems and systems thinking (I’m an organizational thinker, so sometimes I feel like us intellectual planners are left out in the conversation). God has the power to use Emergent in any way, regardless of what the decision.

I think I’m understanding you… I just have a very different idea of what emergent is.

See, I don’t care if “emergent” has doctrine or a systematic theology, because I do already identify with my church history and certain theology within the church (reformed would probably be the best label if you want to give me one, though I don’t fit perfectly). I have no problem attending a non-denominational, evangelical, reformed church, but I think my church needs emergent thinkers in the congregation. That is, we need people who are willing to keep asking the hard questions and keep the conversation going, always reminding us that though we have answers we don’t have all of them and we could always be wrong! I see emergent thinkers as a group that could bond and have identity across denominational lines, promoting unity among the church that way.
It sounds like we just have a different vision. I absolutely agree with you that theology and doctrine can be a good thing, as long as we don’t let ourselves get stagnant or become afraid of different ideas or new information. This is why I have a hard time envisioning emergent as a solidified group, but I like it that way. I feel like I have a group (followers of Christ, or at least people who claim to be Christ-followers), I like them, but they are sometimes really mean to each other and I don’t always agree with all of them (I don’t think I do with any individual entirely). I want to be a voice within that group that promotes fellowship, friendship, unity, and good conversation. I don’t want to make another separate group.

I guess we will have to see what happens : )

btw, I’m an ENTP : ) I guess the “n” and “p” describe my comfort with un-concrete-definedness huh?

I chose #2—retaining prophetic voice and continuing to work at networking with perhaps one or two large format events per year.

Why? I think this has been the unique contribution of Emergent Village as an organization to the emerging missional way. This is EV’s particular charism.

AND… Though I see some signs of missional LANGUAGE beginning to spread into the mainline world I inhabit (United Methodist Church), I see that language often getting expressed and co-opted in definitely non-missional (but rather attractional paradigm) sorts of ways. Did I say co-opted? Really, to me, it sometimes feels more like an instance of Borg assimilation (as in Star Trek, not as in Marcus). Not everywhere—but mostly.

We need you to keep being the hub of connection and prophecy here. We don’t need or want you to go away. We don’t need you to think that the rest of us out here are “good to go” (because I can tell you flat out that we’re not!), and we don’t need you at all to start planting congregations. Do that, and your efforts will have ended in the sort of “dead sect” within a generation or two that John Wesley feared (rightly) the people called Methodist, especially in America, might become.

Salt, light, networking… keep with that.

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

OK
if missional monastic is too hard to chew on, then the missional mystical wing of the protestant churches :)

I think we are a movement, and should not be shying away so much from stating the obvious. I think we need increased networking, and will for years to come. I think EV can grow, and still be networking rather than ossify into denominational structure.

Missional monastic is great, but I don’t see that as EV’s role. That’s something better taken on separately, IMHO. Of course, it would be part of the networking.

Thanks for the survey, BofD. I am really grateful for the chance to reflect on these questions. The questions were very honest and vulnerable and like many I was impressed with the option to say “end things” even though I felt that wasn’t the way to go.

I wondered if you could possibly post or at least e-mail those who responded to the survey the different descriptions of the options we had to chose from. I have been thinking a lot about the question of “where do we go next” and would like to have those descriptions to consider and loot at again. Is this possible?

An update on the status of the Emergent Village survey is here:
http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/emergent-survey-update

How disappointing that you could get too many responses and close the survey a month early. So hope to be able to participate in the future. How do you define too much input anyways? Was there a limit?