Emerging Church Syncroblog: It's Like a Game of Ping Pong

There has been a lot of chatter around the interwebs lately regarding how the church emerging in this 21st century is a mostly white male phenomenon. On one hand, there is good reason for this discussion. Many of the bestselling authors and rockstar speakers still happen to be middle-class white guys with Evangelical roots, and it is easy to assume that the most visible players define the whole. Nothing against privileged white guys with big platforms, but most of us know that they are not the sum of (or the core of) what is stirring in the church these days...

...So on Monday April 19, I encourage you to post at your blog (or Facebook page) your thoughts about "What is Emerging in the Church."  - blogger and author, Julie Clawson

The Emerging Church Movement (ECM) is a phenomena of a kind of trend {or reformation, or pre-reformation?}  of rethinking and especially retooling of many of the sacred beliefs and traditional views about church forms and faith expressions in the current age we find ourselves in. Some consider the ECM a breeding ground of fringe heretics.  Others find the influential voices of the ECM to be annoying at best and downright dangerous at worst. Christians are very good - and very famous - for guarding doctrine as if they are holy relics full of mystical power.

WHAT IF... I Changed My Storyline?

Early last month I began this What If writing series. I have focused on asking What If questions about traditional beliefs within the Christian culture. Imagine my delight when I came up Portland author Donald Miller's blog who wrote a post titled, "The What If Challenge."   He even used the same What If graphic I did.

Here's a bit of what his What If is about:

So a few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the most powerful question you can ask: What if? The response was overwhelming. Comments flooded in that were both heartbreaking and inspirational. I’m guessing the post got a lot of people dreaming about the possibilities in life.

So here’s a challenge. What if we followed through on some of our what if questions?
In short, the blog post said storytellers, when they’re writing their stories, often ask the question what if to keep the story going. What if my protagonist falls in love, or quits their job, or adopts a kid? And those same kinds of questions can radically change a story in a persons actual life, too. But the only way the question can actually have power is if you follow through.

I love the direction that Don's What If question travels. I chose to use this powerful question as a trailhead to exploring ideas beyond the borders of Christian traditionalism;  he uses it to inspire his readers to explore their own imaginations, and in doing so, perhaps find a new story within themselves about themselves.  

Reading his post about the What If's of my own life is perfect timing. There has been a whole lot of What If'ing going on in my life lately.  Here's the comment I left at his post:

What if at age 45 a cleaning woman with no formal education applied to Marylhurst University? What if she got accepted? What if she did get the funding to go for it and what if she actually got that degree in religion and communications? What if that education helped her to become the most effective communicator she could be? And what if she shared that power of communication for the sake of others? 

Yes, this is what I did last month when I asked myself the question, "What if I just go ahead and apply and see what happens?"

Running to Stand Still

 I have a new article up over at Communitas Collective, a collaborative cyber way station for those Christ followers who are trying to sort out their spiritual lives outside of what is referred to as the institutional church.  My post is exactly 777 words.  (cue Twilight Zone music.....)    I dip my toe into the murky water of religious fervor as another kind of addiction that keeps a person from feeling the pain of the fears they carry about themselves.


Here's an excerpt to tease your appetite:

The woman lost herself in the grip of her religious fervor. She took the words of the bible literally that said things like, “Die to self,”  and “God must increase but I must decrease.”  What she could not realize and would not know for many more years was that she had traded her addictions to drugs and alcohol for an addiction to religion. Faith was a fire in her, for sure, but the dysfunction of addictive tendencies ran with it and made it yet another escape for the woman, an escape from the one thing she had been trying to outrun her whole life.

Click HERE to read the whole thing.   If my out of country readers can't access the link, shoot me an email and I'll cut n paste it to you.