interesting conversations

Not long ago, I had an exceedingly interesting conversation with a long time acquaintance about being a songwriter/artist and the tension between faithfully expressing one's art while living out one's faith, while trying to balance marketing and commerce. (we'll call this artist, "V".)

Our conversation took a turn down a rabbit hole of assessing and discussing mutual concerns and critiques (and criticisms) of the protestant church of today. I found myself on the receiving end of a passionate diatribe of the dismal state of the church. Now, for the most part, I agree with V. However, I’m usually the one getting all worked up over this sort of thing and spewing all over somebody else. This time, I found myself trying to assure her that things were bad, but not hopeless. I found myself defending the pockets of promise that I’ve seen and hope for that keep me holding on to the idea of church. Weird…

I’m so critical and cynical. I hate to align myself with virtually any ideology or philosophy because I know that any ideology or philosophy will always be incomplete or in some cases, even wrong.

There is a movement in Christendom termed “Emergent”. The funny thing is that most of the major proponents of the ideas represented don’t like accepting the branding either. But, for lack of better terminology, we’ll use it.

I’ve found about 3 primary responses to all this “emergent” talk in many believers that I know:

1) The response of people a little bit older than me, or people of maybe a little bit more conventional faith than me, regard emergent talk as something they’ve already considered and dealt with and found a way to live with. It’s just “the same old thing” put into a newer language that is somehow sparking the passion and imagination of some “younger” believers.

2) Another common response repeated by some older believers, but even more often people that seem to be a few years younger than me, is a response that all this emergent stuff is just the new church fad. It’s just dressing everything up new and different and trying to make church “cool” and “relevant” to the current generation just like all the “adult contemporary” services in the ‘80s & ‘90s were trying to do.

3) The final response that I’ve actually seen much less than I expected to see is one of distrust and fear of all this emergent stuff. Some of the emergent stuff, when taken superficially flies in the face of what many (myself included) have always been taught and have always believed. In many ways and many times, some of the emergent stuff could be perceived as watering down and softening the truth of the gospel.

As I (poorly) tried to articulate these responses, they seem less different from each other, but practically the same, with just minor shifts in motivation. Mostly, all 3 seem to exhibit either some ignorance or else flippant disregard for the ideology.

The first response seems very benign. It’s not denying anything, is pretty positive, and seems to allow the emergent seeker to continue his own path without hindrance. My issue with this is that this emergent talk fires me up and stirs passion in me for things to be much much different than the way they are. If you’ve already considered all this and wrestled it to the ground, either you and I are understanding the whole thing a lot differently, or you’d be fired up and passionate about wanting things different, too. And if you did understand it the way I seem to, you would be helping me try to make it different instead of patting me on the head and saying, “That’s nice. Someday you’ll come to the place of serenity and wisdom, like me.”

The 2nd response, which I teeter on the brink, seems very critical and very cynical and not really helpful. However, I know that I don’t want or need things to just look different on the outside. The things I’ve read seem to point to a subtle, but profound shift in perspective that, when grasped, seems to protect the implementation of these ideas from just being faddish. I hold on to the belief that there must be SOMEBODY out there who thinks in similar ways that I do. And where else would I find them without realizing that there will be “posers” in the emergent movement just like anywhere else?

As I said, I’ve seen much less of the 3rd response than I expected, but I think that sometimes the first 2 responses are used to mask the fear underneath. I have one friend who, to my knowledge, has yet to read any of the books I’ve suggested, but who has sent me a number of links and articles actively renouncing the very authors I’m promoting. I don’t hold this against him, and I’ll still love him even if he never reads any of these books. In fact, the articles he’s sent me just seem to illustrate an ignorance on the part of the critics.

Ugh. Sometimes this blog shows me just how much my writing has atrophied. Good thing I’m not really interested in trying to go back to school. Or seminary.