emergent - what's that?

i've had some very interesting conversations over the past few days. one was friday night at dinner with a group of folks who had loosely organized the authors michael frost and alan hirsch to come to pgh for a day-long conversation of "the shaping of things to come". their book does a great job at illustrating what it means to be missional in today's context and some practical ways to live that out. i really appreciated the ways that they are rethinking church, doing great work in ecclessiology. they are both practioners, committed to living this stuff out. the dinner on friday night and the conversation on saturday were thought-provoking and encouraging. it was great for me to see so many folks who i know understanding this stuff in deeper ways.

what threw me for a loop was how so many folks did not equate the emerging church or emergent with being missional. there were comments like, "well, i've tried the emergent church but its not working. maybe i need to be missional." or "candles and baroque art are great, but they aren't the missional church." there was critique that emergent wasn't missional, that people were talking about being missional but not living it out, continuing in leadership structures that are less-than-helpful for missional activity to take hold. the other side was also present - that the 'emergent' convesation was so heady that it "was no earthly good." the critique came from a number of folks. i asked a number of questions, trying to understand the critique. but honestly, i was amazed, hurt, and challenged by the negativity that was present when folks uttered the word "emergent."

why is that?

1. could it be that people use the term 'emergent' much like people use the term 'postmodern', thinking that there exists a common definition between those present when in fact to many people the term means different things?
2. could it be that somewhere along the way emergent became an adjective for new, alternative forms of worship, beit alworship, co-opting liturgy, and candles and baroque art when, in fact, at least according to my definition of the phenomenon, that doesn't even describe emergent?
3. could it be that when folks from young leaders network turned terra nova turned emergent the 501(c)3 org were talking about the theological and philisophical shifts that are taking place in an emerging context that people only heard what they wanted to hear, meaning that many folks just wanted a "model" that would work instead of doing the difficult work of contextualization/ethnography/cultural studies in their own context?

i must admit, one of the many things that attracted me to get involved with emergent, and - tho i'm not tony jones or doug pagitt or brian mclaren and even tho i'm a woman (gasp) - i consider myself part of emergent, was a rethinking of church by practitioners in a way that is incredibly missional, incredibly outward focused, incredibly focused on the whole of the gospel for the whole of the world today.

like i said, the past couple of days have been great. i am deeply saddened by the brokenness of the body of christ and whatever it is that causes us to critique others in a way that, i must admit, does not seem generous to me. and i am proud to be part of emergent - that bizarre, amorphous generative friendship between missional christian leaders, whatever that might mean.

god, help us to be generous. and missional.

peace,
the holly