New resource out there for pastors. Its called Pastors Toolbox and they must be OK because they refer to my blog. But why am I always boxed up as “emerging church”?
Technorati Tags: church, emerging church
Pastors Tool Box online
New resource out there for pastors. Its called Pastors Toolbox and they must be OK because they refer to my blog. But why am I always boxed up as “emerging church”?
Technorati Tags: church, emerging church
Think of it as a helpful descriptor rather than a box… 😀
But why am I always boxed up as “emerging church”?
Don’t knock it Andrew, at least you get a mention.
Putting my childish jealousy on one side, whatever box they put you in, I’m glad to see you getting mentioned as that way God’s mission to the wider world gets some profile too.
so which tool are you? 🙂
Sorry 😉
Have you considered being the emerging pope? You could change your name to something way cool with a number after it and wear awesomely strange clothes.
I’d like to be an archbishop. Call me.
It’s because of your hat.
I mean, how many pastors wear sharp headgear like that nowadays?
hey – i’ve been wearing hats like that for almost 20 years. and i’m serious about the emerging church sterotype – its becoming quite limiting.
Andrew (or Pope Skinny),
Asking a question out loud…I honestly do not know the answer. Is it good that the emerging church is segregated into its own arena on sites? Is it better to be included with others? Is the emerging church being set apart, or set aside? I’m not sure and as a newbie to this arena I’m sort of curious. In my two years of reading your blog it seems to me you have more “legitimacy” than a lot of non-emerging church leaders I run across. It seems to me that it is not so much you, but the emerging church that is not given its due.
I probably just stated the obvious…
In my opinion? Limited in scope and knowledge of you and never having met you?
Seems like you’re not hardcore emergent, you’re hardcore Jesus, and how people connect with him.
Your passion for that devine/human connection causes you to do whatever you need to do, to help that to happen. Whether its to take your family to the other side of the world, and live with limited resources, or to go online and tell the stories of those just getting to know Jesus, or even connecting and encouraging people through an online room you’ve rented in Habbo Hotel. 🙂
Some people, and I say this without malice, simply find labels easier to use than taking the time to get to know what’s behind the label.
I’ve read enough here to understand that emergent isn’t all you are about. You do love the church, in all her glory and even in her moments of un-grace, and I suspect that sometimes that costs you dearly. Even in terms of how you are seen.
Perhaps you are also mentioned in the same breath as emergent, because those in the rest of the body see grace coming from you, and if they are going to point to anything emergent they will point to you, because you are someone they can work with.
But that my (unmet) friend is my very limited opinion.
It’s a good point Andrew – at what point does the label become a ‘label’ – a boundary rather than a descriptor?
Just over a year ago I mused about whether The Emerging Church Would Become a Denomination and I’m still thinking there’s a danger that in a few years Emergent will just be the new Vineyard, with Mac as Wimber.
Not that people want this to happen… The denomination, the naming, can happen from the outside, not just from within. So I’m not sure there’s much you can do to shake off the label other than play the usual Trickster and keep sneaking in unawares to other networks.
why am I always boxed up as “emerging church”?
The iphone post is a dead give-away 😉
Andrew,
I feel for you, I remember misunderstanding your position in a post on my blog because I put you into a specific emerging box and you replied with a point of clarification (something I am grateful for.)
I find it slightly ironic that a movement born out of postmodern angst within the Church didn’t realize that in being labeled “emerging” we became tied down to many of the limiting factors our (maybe my – I don’t know any more) angst was trying to get away from.
The core of the early discussion was all about engaging anew the world in which we live (YS and other conferences in the late 90’s 00’s.) This (to me) is still the point, the point is neither seminars nor books with “emerging/emergent” attached to them, but the point remains helping the people inside and outside the Church experience the life of Christ more fully in their current and changing context.
This goal is something deeper than a label – and after seeing what happened to emerging church, I pray that it never gets a label. I don’t know if this is quite the same way you feel, but this post dovetailed nicely with a conversation I was having with a friend on Sunday… that happened to be about our growing discomfort with the emerging/emergent label.
I don’t know what I am any more (I actually removed the word pomo from my blog tagline,) but I am certainly guilty of boxing you in. You on the other hand, have constantly engaged us out here on the web with your posts and for that I am grateful. Please keep posting, keep wearing your hat, and keep strong in Jesus.
Let’s say someone was going to put a link to your site in a prominent location in their brand new website? How would you prefer to be labeled?
Andrew,
Be careful.Ihope I don’t read about you in the ‘Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions’or Factnet.
Seriously: would you mind if everyone thought being part of the emerging church was a wonderful thing?
In other words, is it being labelled that you mind, or that people might jump to negative conclusions about you based on the label? Or both?
charlie
emerging church is fine, again. dont mean to complain.
i actually like the name and people generally know what it means.
and many countries are still getting milage off it or just starting to use it more.
i told my group (BGCT) to drop the postmodern in my title many years ago . I no longer have the title or that job, but i can do a few more rounds under the emerging church banner – as long as people realize it is a global movement of millions of people in hundreds of networks and not a little conversation happening among white seminary trained American males with large churches and million dollar budgets.
Well, Andrew, I am not sure what people realize about it. I started using the term because I thought it was descriptive of what God is doing: There is a Spirit-inspired movement that is bubbling around the world that has very little to do with conversations and lot to do with people following Jesus. The keepers of this flame are mostly apostolic types who are generationally a little older than those who will actually lead and inspire the movement in the years to come…
Many blessings as you continue to do what you are doing…
Maybe the words to a song from the ’70’s will help; “You know I’ve been to the desert on a movement with no name…in the desert you can’t remember your name…” Maybe you don’t like the label because you are having a hard time incorporating all the things that ’emergent’ must accept. It’s going to go where it’s going to go. You are only truly defined by your personal relationship with God. Who cares what others say when that one is right?