Thursday, August 27, 2009

Emerging Church

I listened to this podcast by Diana Butler Bass yesterday, "Mainline Churches engage the Emerging Conversation", while trying to work, which means it'll need a relisten; however, what did filter through was very interesting. My only critique is that every once in awhile condescending language escapes from her.

Emerging church has been happening in the UK for over a decade, and if you live in SA area St. David's is beginning to experiment with the concept.

For myself, perhaps I'm a bit a of low church traditionalist (anglo-catholic) who believes in the precepts of emerging church as the way for mainline churches to engage the post-modern world. Emerging church is the radical hospitality way of meeting people where they are at. Even the emergent leaders themselves see emerging/emergent in slightly different lights, which I think is good. It's flexible.

One of my emergent thorns is this belief or statements that pastors over 40 don't get it. As a near 40 something I take offense. Youth doesn't automatically make you clever or somehow more "hip/cool/sick"...plus many of the "known" emergent leaders are no longer spring chickens themselves. So, yeah comments that smack of ageism irritate me.

I think as mainline churches continue to struggle with declining numbers it is my hope that new possibilities of being church emerge.

7 comments:

Lee said...

Can't speak to this one. Sorry, I downloaded it and then realized that the reason it wasn't opening was because I'd just uninstalled iTunes. Is there some other software that will play podcasts?

Read this gals take on Ted Kenedy's death and possible legacy. It was under Progressive Revival. Pretty good too.

Hugs!
Lee

jsd said...

Lee: When you click the link and it takes you to the page with the mp3 link (Here's the mp3 file for download) select Windows Media Player from the Open With option.

Lee said...

Thanks JS, I tried that but what I basically got was nada so I switched rendering engines to use Firefox and opened the link and voila, it played in Quicktime. LOL I'd gladly get rid of IE but the darn thing comes in handy from time to time. Sigh!

Think I've fallen love with k.d.Lang's Hallelujah. Wow!

Hugs!
Lee

murat11 said...

20 minutes in and she's still full of shit (and herself); I'll see if I can eke out the rest...

jsd said...

murat: she is indeed full of herself, which makes hearing the interesting things she's gleaned harder to hear -- it's like she can't help but be a snob...but her quote around the last 2-3 minutes is worth hearing.

San said...

I began listening to the woman's talk. And one of our artists came in and he and I had a nice conversation, so I missed out on much of what was said. Ironically, the artist is Jewish.

That "over 40 don't get it" bugs me though. I'm about to turn 56. And I get it. Although I'm not a pastor, I get it. At least I like to think I get it.

jsd said...

san: getting past all Ms. D's -isms was bothersome...but once she got it out of her system the rest of the thoughts were interesting.

did you get to the piece where she had a snippet of Jewish emergent synagogue (at least I think it was in this talk)?

I'm glad you had a good conversation with your fellow artist. sometimes i think people are afraid to start conversations, then they might just have to care.

when so much is placed on the under-something crowd to be the saving grace, it's like throwing Sophia out the window with the bathwater.