Monday, December 11, 2006

Finding our voices - maybe

At my fairly "normal" church (ARP, conservative Presbyterian), I've been trying to describe and explain emerging(-missional) churches [links updated] to a Sunday School class of about 50 people whose ages range from teens to 90s. It's been -ah- enlightening for all, and definitely a first for me. I'll try to post the slides as soon as I work through the copyright details.

The first week (Dec. 3) I successfully deferred discussion of the big "P" word, to focus on "people rethinking church" (regardless of self-consciously philosophical concerns). I borrowed liberally from Messrs. McKnight, Bolger and Gibbs, Baker, and especially Jones; but did add some fun things like a termite mound (emergent behavior), Gordon Cosby info [emerging church in 1947?], and "Babe, the postmodern pig"). Also threw in pictures of Upstream Communities, Vaux, Vintage Faith, Solomon's Porch, Grace, and local group The Common Table. So far so good; apparently a couple of people were concerned that we were going to start worshipping with parachutes but OK.

The second week (Dec. 10) we took a deep breath and looked at postmodernity and how to engage it as Christians. I borrowed from Wright, McLaren, Jones (again), and Rollins; and threw in some fun artifacts from Schultz, Launer, Ikon, and timetoturn. Unfortunately, I only got about halfway through my talk because a few folks had a strong aversion to the whole notion of skepticism. (And I didn't even get to the hard part [from Rollins], about how some skepticism about our own notions might be valuable!) So in closing, I skipped ahead to my favorite Peanuts cartoon ever (displayed here), explained the view that God is bigger than anything we could ever describe or imagine, ... and wished everyone a good week. To be continued.