Church-y Things
I’ve been avoiding obviously church-y things for awhile. The whole of organized protestantism has been bugging me, and I cannot trust myself to be nice in those situations. Like Rich said to Rose when she came back from Africa full of social justice vengence — “I think you need to process what you’ve experienced more before you talk to ANYONE.”
But last weekend I dipped my toe into the church-y waters, and really, it was okay. I attended Off the Map’s “Inside the Missional Matrix” mini-conference and coached some folks on how to live in a Monkfish Abbeyish kind of way. All the people who were there were practitioners (not theoriticians), and all of them were truly interested on living a more Jesus-like life as an organization, as a church.
The keynote speakers were Rose Swetman, Todd Hunter, and Scott McKnight.
Scott — in addition to be an engaging teacher, and advoacte for Biblical equality, and a personable scholar– is an advid blogger, posting three times a day! You can read about his Missional Matrix expereince here.
The thing that stuck with me the most was something Todd said, which I can remember asking him about a couple of years ago when we (us post-modern types) were just beginning to struggle with the dichotomy between leading-vs-traveling together, inspiring-vs-manipulating. Todd said, “What does it mean to be leading people who are supposed to be following something else?” It was one of those questions that had to be answered in 3 minutes or less (Off The Map events move at a very rapid pace) and Todd wasn’t able to flesh it out very well for us. But I do rememeber him saying the the defining characteristic of manipulation is “giving the appearance of having a choice in the matter, when really there is none.” I wonder how often I still do that in my attempt to travel with the monks down the yellow brick road? Todd did say he’d written more on the topic in an article entitled “The Tension Over Intension.” I did a couple of quick google searches and couldn’t find it on line. If anyone lands on it, please post the link in the comments. I’d certainly appreciate it!
Hey sis -
If I remember right, he did that for Christianity Today. I haven’t found a copy of it either; I know I looked for it when we had that community-planters hanging with Todd thing at Rich & Roses a couple years back..
Good to see you again, and spend a wee bit of time. Mail coming on the gathering thing later.
Rachelle,
Is this the article? http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=54&page=1
I visited Shoreline Vineyard on Sunday to hear Scot. They have such a lovely space there. I really enjoyed having communion under the banner reading “Hope”.
Rachelle,
You certainly let yourself back into the arena of churchy things quite gently with an OTM conference! That is, it seems to me that OTM, while definitely further back toward the churchy end of the spectrum than monkfish, is definitely a long ways away from the really churchy end of the spectrum.
I got roped into attending Union on Sunday, which is definitely further toward the churchy than even OTM, but still a fairly kewl place. It was kind of funny, because we had rented a car for the weekend (don’t normally have one), and Renee, one of the pastors there and a friend of Meg, called at 9:45 to ask Megs to pray for her as she was speaking at the service. so Megan ran in and said “Hey, we have a car, let’s zip over to union and listen to renee. So we did.
Union skips sunday mornign church once a month and they all go out and do community servicish things all day sunday–no evangelism, just stuff like picking up trash in denny park or painting a house for habitat. I thought that was pretty kewl.
Renee is very kewl. You’d like her. She’d like you. In fact, I shall have to get her to come over to monkfish sometime, she’d fit right in, which is probably pretty rare for pastors. She preached the whole sermon on Sunday without saying a single thing which struck me as stupid or wierd, which is also pretty freaking rare for pastors.
The article was posted on Next-Wave a while back as well…
http://www.the-next-wave.org/stories/storyReader$625
So, Rachelle, how about an update on women in the emerging church? Your Feb 04 article was a little bleak. Are things any better these days?
Thanks for the offer Charlie, but I’ve been out of the Emergent world the past year. My only real connection is attending and speaking at the conventions and since they were on hiatus last year I sort of lost touch. Some friends of mine are still in the fray though, via Emerging Women, and would be good contacts for articles. I’m thinking especially of Kelly Bean and Debra Llyod. Email me if you’d like their contact info. Blessings! R