October 13, 2011 Conversation

These thoughts were compiled by Clay Youngblood after the recent "Four cornerstones of emerging churches" seminar in Dallas. We'll discuss these thoughts Thursday evening, October 13, 2011. Suzanne Stabile -- Liminal Perspective ... Background 60, Educator, SMU professor One of the creators of ... Life in the Trinity Ministry Married Joseph Stabile, who left the priesthood to marry Suzanne Mother of 4 (one who is gay, one who had a child out before marriage - all very spiritual!!) We are all searching (spiritually) for two key things .. Meaning Belonging Hunger for Meaning ... (3 spheres of increasing awareness ...) This is ME I have rights I have a need to my rights This who WE ARE We have responsibilities We collectively react as a group based on certain values This is the GREAT I AM I have responsibilities tot he Kingdom We are all in Liminal space ... At the threshold of something we can't see, a transition space In between where we've been and where we are headed The beginning of a journey - uncomfortable to some degree ... State of increased consciousnesses Church today is in liminal space ... Question: "Are you a fan or a follower of Jesus?" Concern: "I want to leave a church for my children ... right now I'm not sure what that is ..." Three questions to ponder ... Does the world need for you to be fearless? (Note: fear is the opposite of love ...) How will you name yourself? Can you bear witness to what it is? How do you offer manifest your worth? Several things to consider ... "God has the ability to to join us in our darkness to take away our fears that we can't let go off ..." "The church (as we have known it) is dying ... we're now in liminal space ..." Uncomfortable and exciting at the same time Nadia Bolz-Weber Background Early 30's Ordained Lutheran Minister (priest) Passionate, gorgeous very elaborate tattoos - everything a "gray hair" is not Out of the box, almost irreverent, passionate, ... yet very effective Established the inner city church in Denver ..."Church for Sinners and Saints" Most of her presentation material was a video of last year's Easter service Full traditional liturgy - Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Lay people all took active roles in delivering the "Easter message" -- traditional, but through their eyes ... Lay people play a big role in scheduling and delivering the service - Nadia is involved, but does not do all the "heavy lifting ..." Local Lutheran diocese supports her efforts Question: "Is the church dying?" No, not if you are focused on ... Teaching the good news gospel Reaching the lost sheep Bringing the grace and compassion of God to those in need Yes - for the institutions we've known in the past Highly market focused Corporate in approach Everyone over 50 seems to want to "target/market" a population for salvation versus working together to grow and build something ... Simply doesn't connect with the Gen-Xers / Gen-Yers - their suspicious of your motives and approach - they don't see anything different ... Today's church is an unnecessary display of wealth, power and authority - think of all who could be helped .... Nadia's perspectives ... How can you be a producer versus a consumer You will search for the truth regardless of what authority has led you to believe ... Church plant efforts need to be more focused on the sociological factors than marketing approaches Brian McLaren Brian started out his presentation with a reflection on VacLav Havel's The New Measure of Man Vaclav Havel First president of the new Czech Republic Writer, reformer, "thinker" ... Helped end the Warsaw Pact with peaceable approaches Compared to Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela Recipient of various peace awards The New Measure of Man (July 9, 1994; Ne York Times article) ... There are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something is being painfully born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying and exhausting itself itself while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble. The distinguishing features of transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements. Today, this state of mind, or the human world is called post-modernism. For me, a symbol of that state is a Bedouin mounted on a a camel and clad in traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans, with a transistor radio in his hands and an aid for Coca-cola on the Camel's back. McLaren suggested that instead of "Four Cornerstones" there were actually "Four Wheels" of emerging Christianity ... Return to active community Fresh vision of Jesus Renaissance of spiritual practices Engagement with social justice Active Community Ethics, doctrine, a witness to our mission Ethics are the practice of community Safe place Place where you can ask questions Differences are held Greater friendship Liturgy "Convivality" ... " ...not our fault, but our opportunity ..." (i.e., the way we find things today ...) Lot of work to do in this area ( i.e., Active Community) - we are very immature at this type of community interaction We shouldn't punish ourselves for the way we find things today (with the church) - we now have the opportunity to change and move forward ... Generous Orthodoxy / Everything Must Change Fresh Vision of Jesus We need to place more emphasis on how Jesus' ancestors saw him versus the views of his descendents Their views reflect the magnitude of his message AGE Scriptures a very different and compelling when we take this perspective .. Few examples Exodus: Liberation and Formation Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation Secret Message of Jesus / New Kind of Christianity Renaissance of Spiritual Practices Liturgy Prayer (all forms: group, reflective, open, ...) Seasonal calendar reflective of key events in Christ's life Finding Our Way Again Engagement with Social Justice Integral to our mission in the emergent church We'll be judged by the way in which we promote and accept change Everything Must Change

September 8 2011 Conversation

The cohort will meet on Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 7:00 PM at ESCAPE in Allen. We'll start our conversation with a question Tony asked last month: If you start on the emergent journey, how do you avoid heresy? That should lead to some other thought provoking questions like what is heresy? What happens if my heresy is your orthodoxy? How does an emergent group (or individual) work out this issue? See you Thursday.

Brian McLaren will participate in a seminar in the Dallas area on September 30 and October 1. Here is a link to the page that has the details: http://lifeinthetrinityministry.com/ Click on the "Four Cornerstones of Emerging Christianity" link to get registration and location information.

August 11 meeting summary

After taking the month of July off, it was nice to get back together in August. Our group of eight included 3 first timers. Tony offered to set us up as a google-group, so you can participate in on-going discussions by going to north-dallas-cohort@googlegroups.com and joining the group. Thanks Tony. After spending some time introducing ourselves and catching up with each others' lives, we started a discussion about how to tell when you've gone too far in your quest for emergence...how can you avoid heresy along your journey? We'll pick up this topic again in September. Ken observed that we seem like a group that talks about emergence, but are we practicing emergence? What would that look like? Very good insight, Ken. That make me wonder, should someone who thinks they are emergent be an evangelist for emergence...or is it enough to just be emergent? Your thoughts?

No July meeting. See you August 11

We'll skip the July meeting and gather again on August 11. Hope to see you then! Have a blessed summer.

May meeting recap

We had a lively conversation last Thursday night. Thanks to Ron for facilitating the group. Several in attendance asked Ron for his answers to his questions. So he will post them to the blog, or send them to me to post - so watch for that resource to appear here soon.

Joseph is interested in starting small group discussions on emergent/transformational Christianity in the McKinney area. You can contact him at whitner@sbcglobal.net for more information.

Katherine suggested a web site and a movie to the group. The website is http://contemporarytheology.org/ which offers information and seminars along the lines of last Thursday's discussion. The movie she saw and recommends is "I AM."

Make your plans to join us in June...more about that to come.

The endless cycle...

The endless cycle

The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us farther from God and nearer to dust.

T.S. Eliot

Thursday, May 12, 2011

We'll meet May 12 at Escape in Allen. Ron Cheshire will facilitate the conversation and he asks that you read the section headed CONTEXT below, and then think about the questions he lists below. It should be a great evening. Hope to see you there.

CONTEXT:
From what I hear and have read, the Emergent Community in general, including
our own small group, has been exploring a less traditional view of the
Christian Religion, and its faith traditions specifically. While some of
these discussions and critiques have been quite critical of main stream
religion's management, marketing & administration, we all seem to have
retained strong spiritual beliefs and intuitions from our more traditional
beliefs that are still in our lives. To some, it may seem like with all the
talk of meditation, presence, non-duality, mindfulness, and consciousness;
God has become lost. A direct and personal relationship with God is almost
nowhere to be found in many of the spiritual conversations that we read and
discuss. Yet, there is no denying that many Spiritual people in the world
are recognizing that the new theologies are attempting to adjust to a new
understanding of the universe and human beings. These new developing
theologies and psychological insights are attempts to reconcile the
discoveries of science with the traditional concepts that have been
expressed in the various faith traditions around the world. Many of these
"new" ways of viewing, understanding, and talking about God, Jesus of
Nazareth, Religion, and Scripture in the Christian faith traditions are
precipitating changes in our traditional and historical images of God, as
well as our personal relationships to the Divine. The language around terms
like World View, Growth of Consciousness, Unitive Consciousness,
Evolutionary Panentheism, Morphic Fields, Stages of Human Evolution &
Development, Deep Time Eyes, and other terms are attempting to express new
understandings and interpretations of the ineffable "Mystery" we call God.
Yet, even a superficial appreciation of these new concepts and
understandings may lead us to entirely new questions regarding what we
actually believe - and more importantly, how we live out those beliefs,
understandings, and responsibilities within this new unfolding reality.
Simple science-rejecting creationism and faith-rejecting atheism are no
longer the only games in town. Tens of millions in the middle, represented
by people like us, see no conflict between faith and reason, heart and head,
Jesus and Darwin.

Now-and-then, as we attempt to integrate modern scientific discoveries with
our own life experiences of the Divine and our image of God, I believe it is
important to stop and take stock of how our beliefs are developing. In that
spirit, I invite us to explore some of our ideas that have been percolating.
Our society seems to be in desperate need for a new spirituality - a
spirituality that speaks to the present moment and the cultivation of a new
kind of confidence: a spiritual self-confidence.

QUESTIONS:
1. If we are moving away from talking about God in the traditional theistic
and anthropomorphic way - a super human or old man in the Sky image of God -
and toward an understanding of The Divine using more non-personal, process
orientated, scientific terms such as Consciousness, Non-duality, Energy,
Force, Source, Light, etc.; Can we still have a personal relationship with
God?

2. Does humanity's increasing level of creditable scientific information,
development of higher stages of consciousness, and overall growth in our
spiritual maturity do away with our need for a theological response (an
affirmation of God) to our questions about life?

3. Is the Christian concept of God as Trinitarian still essential?

4. When you hear or read terms like the "Second Coming" and "Kingdom of
God", what do you now understand that to be saying? How do the incarnation
of Jesus and His predicted triumphant return fit into your concepts of
evolution and faith?

5. If the Kingdom of God is an ongoing, "evolutionary project", what would
heaven on earth look like?

6. Can we integrate what evolution and science is telling us about the world
with our traditional understanding of Deity?

Minemergent

If you aren't a regular visitor to the Emergent Village web, they offer a daily thought by email called Minemergent. Here's a recent sample that you may enjoy:

Experiencing God in the here and now

Why are we so enamored with a side of God (His transcendence), an attribute we can't really wrap our minds around anyway, when there is so much of God we can experience right here, right now, with faculties God has gifted us with to know Him, to enjoy Him?

We want to know him in some abstract, spiritual way, when He is cooling us with a breeze and warming us with a sun ray. We look for God in miracles, in some out of this world (supernatural) phenomenon and we miss Him in so many, many ways every single day, every single moment. The question is not where is God, but where are we?



Florin Paladie

A peek ahead

Here's our tentative schedule for the next few months:

May 12 - facilitated by Ron Cheshire

June 9 - facilitated by Terry Cartwright

July 14 - take the month off and enjoy yourself!

August 11 - facilitated by Clay Youngblood

How (NOT) to speak of God

Join us April 14 for a discussion of Peter's Rollins book How (NOT) to speak of God. Meeting details are posted in the right hand column.

You won't need to buy the book, unless you want to, as I'll post some questions to spur the conversation...for example: Rollins says that rather than have the right belief (orthodoxy) emergents understand that it is more important to believe in the right way - a loving, sacrificial, Christ-like way. Do you agree or disagree? Check back for more questions.

Hope you can join us in April.

Pluralism

How should the followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions? We'll discuss this topic as we are almost ready to wrap up our discussion of McLaren's book on Thursday, March 10. Meeting details are listed in the right hand column of the blog. Hope to see you there.