Kaleoscope September 22, 2005
Posted by Patrick in : Christianity, Reading , trackbackDrew Goodmason has good insight about the emerging church’s identity. He helped flesh out some of the incoherent thoughts that spiral through my head. Here’s a little excerpt:
To make a Kingdom-impact on your local community and the world-at-large, you must move from Deconstruction to Kingdom Building…The common denominator is that instead of reacting against, they are building towards something. If you are an emerging church, what is your identity? As I attend ‘postmodern’ or [sic] churches that would say they are ‘emerging’ they usually can tell me what they are not. We don’t have central leadership, we don’t sing old-school hymns, we don’t have traditional worship, we don’t…[fill in the blank]. In the long run, I don’t think you can rally too many people to this cause and anti-identity.
This idea of how a church defines itself (or an individual for that matter) is crucial. If you continue to define yourself as what you are not, you are really left with an ‘anti-identity’ (as Goodmanson puts it), or no identity whatsoever. Take away those things that are anti-you, and there’s no more…you.
Lately, I’ve noticed this attitude become more and more prevalent, in myself and others. Many of the emergent blogs that I read, continue to compare and react towards the traditional/modern church. It makes me question if that helps or hurts us. Do these reactions split the two camps and alienate those on each side? Someone might say that we need to define how our movement is unique against the rest. But, then again, why define ourselves on what we are not? Let’s identify who we are and practice it.
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this raises a good point. it’s sorta like the deomocrats in our current political system. not saying what they will do, just saying they are against bush’s policies. this, also, is a challenge to me, so thanks. i know it’s super old but im bored and looking through your old stuff….
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