Ron's view of emergent

Ron emailed his thoughts on "What does emergent mean to me?" Feel free to comment on Ron's post or add your comments to the prior post.

Hi Larry and all,

As you requested I am offering some of my thoughts regarding emergent. I hope you can find something in the following that will help you add to the scheduling of future topics for our Cohort Group discussion. In trying to offer a reasoned response to your question "what emergent means to me", I have come to realize that it will be necessary for me to distinguish between Emergent and emergent.

In my thinking and discussions of Emergent (with a capital "E"), I am usually referring to a rather nebulas Spiritual movement that was started by Protestant Christians but is currently made up of people from various faith traditions throughout the world; no one is directing, controlling or limiting this movement. I have found it to be a convergence of people who are focused on hopeful and liberating themes. It can also sometimes be a refuge for disillusioned individuals who have found the customary & traditional orthodoxy and dogma of their particular denomination is lacking in the creditability, nourishment, and support needed to practice their personal beliefs in the material world in which they find themselves. For example: The exclusion of women, the politicization of religion, the
iconization of a God who is all spirit, the exclusionist tendency of truth claims, a religion of scarcity instead of a spirituality of abundance, etc.

Some see the Emergent Church movement as yet another expression of a great shift or dramatic transition from one stage to another that seems to happen in Western culture every 500 years or so. (See: Phyllis Tickle's "Great Emergence") A historical look at the Christian church in Western cultures would certainly support the idea that "the church" has always been emerging.

Emergent people have a lot to talk about and realize they have even more to learn from one another. We seek to sit side by side at Cohort meetings and in other independent communities, listening to the hard questions that come from other's perspective. We usually leave these gatherings more informed in our own beliefs as well as more respectful of one another's views. Maybe even more shocking, we deal with real questions. Not pious platitudes. Not political drivel.

Emergent people are engaged in understanding the puzzle we must put together if we want to see our visions of peace and justice for people everywhere, of all religious and spiritual traditions, become reality. We represent the important ways of integrating personal and communal journeys into an ongoing commitment to make a difference in the world. Emergent people are intent on discovering the world we live in and our responsibility to it.

Because the Emergent Church movement is relativity new, definitions and concepts used within the language of the movement are still being discerned and refined. Therefore, Emergents often find it easier to say what the movement is NOT; a new church, a new religion, etc. The Emergent Church movement is clearly not a gathering designed to create or to discover new religious documents, dogma, or to teach parochial truths. Because the Movement is so new and continuing to develop within primarily Christian groups, it is still difficult to say exactly what will eventually evolve. Religion continues to be a vital force in contemporary society. For me, the Emergent Church movement is a promising new component within the religious perspective.

When I think about emergent (with a small "e"), I think more in terms of a process; a new, more holistic philosophy informed by what we are learning about the patterns of creation, life, death, and resurrection that we observe and experience in the Kosmos* - in other words, how the Creator seems to go about fashioning His on-going creation. We can learn from patterns like the evolvement toward more complexity, sophistication, and diversity that we recognize in the vast spectrum between the astronomical and quantum levels of this manifest material reality. When I think about
emergent in this way, I include spirituality of course, but I try to look beyond specific religious faith traditions and movements - I try to incorporate a more integral perspective. I consider what I think being emergent may mean as we try to make our lives square with what we say we believe about God. I also think about what it means to be a person living in God's ongoing and evolving creation, on this small planet, in a vast Kosmos. I also think about my responsibilities & obligations as conscious co-creators of the future.

A radically inclusive/integral consciousness seems to be developing around the world - not just in spiritual realms but across the entire human spectrum - politics, economics, the natural environment, social systems, etc. In developmental psychology terms, one might say that we are seeing individuals in our species appear to be moving from one level of consciousness to a higher level. (Using the Graves/Beck Spiral Dynamic development model, one would say from Magic/Mythic through Rational to
Integral/Holistic or said another way, from Egocentric through Ethnocentric to World/Kosmocentric) Our species has certainly not reached a critical mass in this movement toward a more holistic/inclusive perspective, but there is growing evidence that more and more people are recognizing the failings and inadequacies of their current world view.

As a person who received a formal education in the natural sciences, and as a citizen who lives in a society that habitually honors scientific truth (empirical evidence, reductionist methodology) above everything else, I find this ongoing and developing study of the evolution of human consciousness, often expressed in the Emergent Church movement to be both challenging and rewarding. I am coming to believe that our individual and collective emergence to a higher level of consciousness (however it is labeled and expressed in our space/time limited reality) is the next step in the continued evolution of the Kingdom. I feel it is being driven by a creative evolutionary impulse (Holy Spirit); it is part of our species' continued development toward a greater realization of our unity with our Creator God, the Original Source, the Transpersonal Consciousness, and The Ground of Being.

* Kosmos (with a "K") is the word the ancient Greeks used to denote a universe that includes not just the physical reality of stars, planets, black holes (which Cosmos usually means), but also the realms of conscious mind, soul, society, art, Spirit - in other words, everything.

What does emergent mean to you?

We started a discussion at the last meeting about what it means to be an emergent follower of Jesus? Take a few minutes to think about what being emergent means to you and post a comment below. This could be the basis of our January conversation.