conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

emergent?

I have been finding myself in these conversations online. Perhaps I need to start thinking of myself as "emergent." Yay! Look, honey, I discovered another lable for myself today!

Lucky me. Urggle.

Here are a few links worth noting.

Karen linked to these words of critique from evangelical Christians on the emergent movements in the protestant churches in America. It would seem that the emergent are a threat. Odd. Evangelicals and Orthodox alike reject the emergent types and for the same actions.

He also argues that the Emerging Church Movement frequently fails to use Scripture as the normative standard of truth and instead appeals to tradition.

Emergent No spoke about the article briefly. What is interesting is in the comments...a list of folk who are affiliated with the emergent movement. Cool.

And, according to Barna, there is another emerging trend in the American church. This is good for me to read. Mostly I spend my time with people who are choosing Orthodoxy or playing in the Emergent Church movement or what have you. To know that most people are going in the opposite direction is humbling in many ways.

A Perspective On The Unchurched

Having studied church attendance patterns for more than twenty years, researcher George Barna suggested that the consistent resistance to church life in recent years is indicative of a historic shift in the nation’s spiritual vision. “To view the plateaued level of the unchurched population as simply an indication of stagnation in religious behavior is naive. There are, indeed, millions of unchurched people who want nothing to do with organized religion or spiritual development. The more important trend, however, is that a large and growing number of Americans who avoid congregational contact are not rejecting Christianity as much as they are shifting how they interact with God and people in a strategic effort to have a more fulfilling spiritual life. This data, combined with other studies we have recently been conducting, suggests that we are on the precipice of a new era of spiritual experience and expression.”

Barna expects the percentage of adults who are unchurched to grow during the coming decade. “For the past few years the percentage has leveled off,” he explained. “However, the emergence of a national body of spiritual leaders who are assisting unchurched people in their quest for spiritual depth through means and relationships that are outside the usual institutional vehicles is significant. We anticipate substantial growth in the number of people who are not connected to a congregational church but who are committed to growing spiritually. It would not be surprising to witness a larger slice of the born again population shift from the ‘churched’ to ‘unchurched’ column of the ledger over the next ten years. What’s amazing about the coming transition is that it is likely to occur without any real decline in activities such as Bible reading, prayer, tithing, family faith activity or service to the needy. The people involved will be altering the locus of their activity without diminishing the intensity of their commitment to God and to their faith.”(full article)

This might also explain the poll results about evangelicalism and the Schaivo case. We are an individualist society. Right or wrong, Biblical or not, Christian or not, we are. We do not trust the institutions we create. We live as individuals and not collectives or communities. We value our independent action more than anything else. I cannot tell you how often I hear this from Christians of all stripes at the hospital: No one has any right to critique or lead the spiritual journey of another. There is one God. Get there however you get there. I hear this from Protestant, free-church evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox alike. I have no formal survey work to back it up, but it is curious to me.

Posted by tripp at March 28, 2005 03:09 PM