planet telex

Was talking to Darren tonight (by the way head over to the business blogging awards site n vote for his “problogger”):

Darren: ‘what are your hopes and dreams for the emerging church’?

me: that it stops hiding behind teh emerging label and takes on the reality that it is The Church

me: its like the church saying that youth are the future of the church

Darren: hehe - thats my first point….

me: future = “you can have it when we’re finished”

Darren: lol - i preach on that all the time…hehe

me: i think the church is damn happy for it to keep being refered to as the Emerging because it keeps them in its place

me: i almost posted this today

me: because thevoiz n i were emailing all about it today…

Darren’s asked the question, “So what do you think? What do you think about the term Emerging Church? What are your Hopes and Dreams for the EC?” go over n answer him…

Speaking of thevoiz, heres an edited snippet from my email to Aaron:

Perhaps all the Emerging Church Literature is different people saying the same things to different people.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been saying the same things over and over again to people in the church here, sometimes I think they’ve just stopped listening to me and need someone else to tell them the same thing differently… and again and again and again.

Perhaps we have reached saturation point with the “how to do an EC” or “postmodernity for dumbies” or “how to explain missional churches” literature and we have had enough people writing the same thing. Perhaps all the literature has been necessary in order to try and hammer the church and other people over the head with the same information.

Then again, maybe we’ve done it to convince ourselves that we’re different to the church, from the “institution” heck, afterall we’re alternative, we’re emerging, we’re emergent…

I hope that soon the EC realise that they ARE The Church and stop trying to be “alternative” to it. It seems to me sometimes that the “real” Church keeps calling it the Emerging church for the same reason the Church calls young people the “future” of the Church.

When they say “the future” they only mean “you can have it when we’re through with it”

And I think the Church is quite happy for the EC to use the word Emerging and Alternative and Emergent because it means that they “can have it when they’re through with it.” It’s easier to control it that way, easier to protect itself.

When the Emerging Church becomes The Church I’ll be a happy boy…

Afterall, we need to realise that when we read the creeds we speak of the “one holy catholic apostolic church” not the “one holy catholic apostolic church and the seperate emerging thing thats happening somewhere else.”