Emerging Christians. Boring.
When I was in high school my geo/history teacher wouldn’t let me do an independent study on Communism because as he said, “It doesn’t work”. For him, that box had already been explored and declared DONE.
Here we go again. Is it done? Are we there? Why are we talking about this stuff still? Who is even talking about this stuff still? Why do we care? I just do stuff now.
The Emerging… term refers to so many things that I don’t even know what it is I am supposed to be tired of anymore.
Many are blogging about and linking to this question by Kester Brewin.
I side with Tony Campolo when he cautioned Tony Jones, “Do not EVER emerge. Always be emerging” (or something like that)
How arrogant of us to say the fad is done? Every day there are folks who are discovering a new (for them) paradigm and are searching for those with whom they can wrestle through it. There are people emerging constantly. What do we say to them? “Oh, sorry. Talking about emerging and post modernism was so 2006. I don’t talk about that anymore. You should just go do stuff now.” If some of us found extreme encouragement in the simple conversation about it all, how dare we reject the conversation with those who are stepping out into a new world for the first time. Or say that it is not ‘popular’. I know conversation is different than blogging.
Sounds like:
“Pshaw.. you sing praise and worship songs? Didn’t you know that the worship war is over? We just do stuff now”
…
Less cynical now.. here is a thought. A lot of different people fell in together when E——-g Christians began to congregate. Pastors, not-pastors, social workers, historians, anarchists, theologians, etc. Now some of those folks have dealt with their similar questions and have gone back to where they were to work and incorporate their new ideas and habits. Excellent. That’s kind of the point. My fear is that we may be tempted to close up the boxes we opened up a short while ago. Maybe the best thing we can do is leave the boxes open. Never try to end the conversations.
Or maybe I am just paranoid that – as I head back to college this year with a massive collection of stuff to explore – I will receive some sort of cold shoulder from academics that already touched the stuff and won’t feel inclined to let one more person touch it. Or maybe I’m just still bitter about my highschool teacher.
