What Emergents Are Teaching Me

I had the opportunity to be in Philly, Trenton, NYC and now Orlando between last weeks post and now, so consequently I have not written anything new. However, I thought I'd post something I had written and posted on Keith Drury's site (http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/) on what I have learned as I have been reading emergent/postmodern literature. It'll give you an idea of where I am coming from.

I jumped in and started reading postmodern and then emergent literature several years ago. I have bought into it and I have disowned it, and now am trying to live out that which I agree with. I realize I have been changed by my involvement in the postmodern/emergent discussion. I roll my eyes at certain "modern" ways of doing things, and yet I do not embrace all of the emergent teaching. In thinking it over, here are some of the ways I have grown through my interaction with the emergent movement:.

I have developed an appreciation for mystery and a realization that I can't prove all things, and I may not have all the answers I thought I did. Surprisingly, this does not leave me in a crisis of faith. I can deal with not having anything close to all of the answers as long as I remember I walk with a God who is with me through all of life, whether I understand it or not. This openness to mystery has given me the ability to savor wonder, as well as to humble me in realizing how amazing God is and how little I am. I hope it also makes me more approachable when I seem less sure I can prove it all, but am still fully sure of who God is and hold a firm belief that He wants us reconciled and walking with Him.

I've learned the concept of missionality and it so resonates with my desire to see Christianity touching the community and world around it. So many people find the church irrelevant - Christian and non- Christian, but I think if we, the church, can embrace this concept of missionality we can change that. I must admit I am still at the beginning stages of actually doing it.

I have learned a greater appreciation for context. I like the high value Rob Bell and others place on the Jewish culture and the setting in which much of the Bible took place. Considering others context also helps me understand how they arrive at the conclusions they have come to. I hope it makes me a more thoughtful person when I can think through the context that has shaped me and how I arrived at my own conclusions - by design or by default.

I have learned that story touches people's heart because all great stories reflect the truth of the ultimate story. Note: There is an ultimate story so the story is not taking away from that Truth but rather presenting it on a level people can connect with even if they are not ready to own the story.

I have learned so much about relationship and am still waiting to see how it all plays out. Propositional Truth matters, but it will never be realized, learned or accepted apart from the concept of relationship. We (evangelical Christian community) have always known that if we can get people reconnected to God then we don't need to worry about the lifestyle, because God will take care of that, but I think many of us forgot to apply that to ourselves. We can live our Christian lives on the basis of that which we know to be true intellectually, and what the Bible says about origin, meaning, morality, and destiny, but not allow it to change our hearts like a relationship can. We can learn to follow the rules, and we can learn to think biblically correct on any subject, but it feels a bit cold and empty if that is all it is. There is a God who passionately loves me and wants to invite me to be involved in what He is doing in His world - it needs the guardrails of a strong knowledge of scripture but it invites me to walk through life moment by moment interacting with a God who is there. Life in relationship with God is something infinitely more exciting to call people to rather than four points to agree with to be saved. Not sure I am expressing this one well, but it is a work in progress.

Too much context and too much political junk gags me, but I'll admit I have started thinking about how often the church has bypassed its role to help those in poverty. It is about more than staying in community with one another and taking care of those within the family of faith. While I often disagree with the extreme environmentalist left, I do agree that we Christians have an obligation to be stewards of God's creation. Being stewards of creation is nothing new but I think we have loosely determined the definition of stewards and have been happy to focus more on the dominion mandate than we have been willing to focus on what being a steward of creation means here and now.

I still have much to learn and will look forward to reading new and old, but my emergent friends have passed on a healthy dissatisfaction with the way things are and I look forward to being actively involved in my local mega church to be a small part of a relevant Church.

Strangely enough, my not particularly emergent pastor seemed to utilize some of the best of the emergent philosophy last Sunday. He preached about how we as the church need to be a place where sinners want to come because they enjoy being among us, and they feel comfortable in our presence. He shared stories and he did a great job of sharing the Jewish context of some common parables. He was authentic and humble and told the non-Christians present that we don't have it all figured out but we have found a relationship with our heavenly father. It illustrated to me how one could incorporate some of the strengths of the emergent church into an existing, not particularly emergent culture.

A friend forwarded an interesting article to me the other day. It dealt with some of the issues I raised last week and so I thought I would post a few paragraphs for those interested.

by David Batstone

...
"Maybe because I spent so many years in poor regions of the globe I could never accept the prayer-in-blessing-out approach to faithful living. Straight to the point, I have known too many devoted Christians for whom life did not bring them material blessing. Their children still died of infectious diseases that plagued their village. They could not avoid the violence that dictators and ideologues so often use to cow the powerless. Their territory did not expand because their only path for survival was a daily labor with their hands. Yet they did not lose faith, or cease praying for God's blessing.

As I ponder on their lives, I find a more fitting theology for God's presence and action in the world to be laid out in the book of Hebrews. There we are encouraged to have "faith in things not yet seen," and are offered models of individuals who tried to lead devoted lives that honor God. We read that some of them did receive great material blessings, while others ended up in the dens of lions or stoned due to their principled living. We learn, in other words, that God does hear their prayers and loves them profoundly, but it does not always bring them material riches or expanded territory."

This coming week I am hoping to look at examples of blessings in the Bible and see what I can learn there.

Blessed or...

I am curious if anyone else has this little argument going on inside their head…it is how we use the terminology blessed and how we attribute things to God's goodness. I hear people, all the time, say things like the weather was horrible, but God was good and our flight left on time. I also find myself saying, "I am so blessed that "X" did not happen to me" but then for the rest of the day I am disturbed by having said it and I wonder if I inferred that the person who had "X" happen to them was not blessed. For example, I was having a conversation at the therapist's office with another mother and we were lamenting the fact that it can be challenging to get multiple therapies in for our children, week in and week out, but on the other hand we felt so "blessed" that our children are as functional as they are. I do feel blessed to have my child and I am happy he is in as good of shape as he is, but I do not think I would be any less blessed if my child were less functional. I am blessed because God walks with me through life, and He has provided a way for me to be in a restored relationship with my creator that will last forever. God is good whether we make our flight or miss our flight, and the logic follows in even more serious cases. God is still good if our loved ones suffer injustice, disease or even death.

I know part of the answer to my frustration with this terminology is that we tend to be flippant with using the phrase "God is good", and we also tend to use blessed in strange ways, but another part of me says a dilemma still exists. How do we express our gratefulness for our circumstances without feeling like we are grateful to God only because of the good things He has done for us and hence infer that our response might be otherwise were our circumstances different?

Ideas?

I have one idea but am not sure if I am satisfied with it. My only thought would be to say that I am free to use "God is good" and "I am blessed" as long as I continually remind myself that God is good all the time regardless of what I see around me, and that I am blessed regardless of my circumstances. I need to live with the reminder of what blessed truly means and with a reminder that I do not fully know all that is going on around me and how it will play out eternally. It allows me to say "God is good" with a good perspective, but it does not seem like an expression of gratefulness because it is what I would have said regardless of the circumstance. I guess I could just say, "God I am really grateful for this, and I know you would love me just as much even if you had not given me this gift, but I am grateful and say thank you for what you have given me."

I am not saying that we should not say we are blessed, or proclaim that God is good. I am saying I want to be intentional with my speech and my thoughts about being blessed. I am also admitting that I am trying to think through how to authentically thank God when something particularly good happens to my loved ones or me.
I know, I know, I think too much!