Categories: uncategorized
Date: 04 August 2005 19:43:17
Whilst I was away I bought the odd book (and yes you can probably read odd in both ways). Two of my key purchases, which I've worked my way through already were A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren and Stories on Emergence Moving from Absolute to Authentic by a range of authors including (the late) Mike Yaconelli, which links into the emegent YS site.
The connecting theme here was they are both books relating to Emergent forms of faith. Now I have to be honest here and say that Emergent as an idea seems to be exciting, and culturally relevant from what I have heard / seen. However, as an actual networking / outworking it appears to be a way of keeping evangelicalism up to date, in some ways and very elitist - in terms of a clear framework of engaging leaders, but not, practically engaging with your average "bum on seat" grappling with the same issues of faith. Well, this was my view before I started reading these texts.
To a certain extent, it is still my view. However, I have moved on and see that these people are honest in their moving forward, grappling with the difficult problems and honestly trying to build communities which reflect an authentic type of Christian faith where dialouge and openess are the key. It seems that part of the reason that there is the lack of connection with the "bums on seats" is the fact that culturally many of those sharing their stories and developing this way of living Jesus are culturally very similar, pastors or people working in seminaries, etc, etc and predominantly, although certainly not exclusively, Anglo-American. As such those they are naturally going to be sharing stories and experiences with are going to be similar. (In the same way that there are clear similarities between a number of us on the wibsite, sharing our stories).
Overall I would encourage people to read both books, as much as anything to encourage you that moving out of the comfort zone and on with the journey is not likely to be comfortable or easy, but is likely to be worthwhile if you stay the course - although you never know where God will lead you.