Emergent, Po Mo, Organic, Vintage, Revolution, and Relevant

I am sick to death of the vernacular of my culture. By my culture, I mean those of us who are out on the front lines trying to do church as well as all of those who want to be a part of my culture, those who are thinking about my culture, those who are conversing about my culture, and even those who are rejecting my culture. There is an entire lexicon of new language and terms that have risen up to define and describe church in this day and age. It is very common for me to hear statements like: "I have been a contributor to the emergent dialogue and a strong proponent of de-constructing the systemic paradigms that resist the revolutionary, organic movement to reclaim a vintage, epic understanding of how to traverse the postmodern landscape and be intentional in bringing our ancient-future faith to all people in a way that is counter-cultural and relevant."

Praise the Lord, Brother. I have no idea what you are talking about, and neither do you, but Praise the Lord, anyhow. You Generation X'ers are pretty cool!

Look, I am in no way slamming the movement of people called "Emergent". We are working to change church and make it a true expression of our faith to which people can connect. I am completely in favor of these efforts. I just struggle with the language stuff. I believe in making sure people really grow in their faith and relationship with God and one another. I believe in educating people and giving them a language for dealing with all of this complicated faith stuff. When I teach and dialogue with my community on Sunday mornings, I do not dumb things down. I want people to have a healthy approach to Scripture, faith, community, and God. I avoid "Christianese" and trite Evangelical sayings that only alienate people. This does not mean that I avoid theology or theological terms with which people of faith should grow to be familiar. I do believe, however, that "cutting-edge" terms that really have no basis in reality and were made up simply to be "cutting-edge" and to make their users look "cutting-edge" have no value and should be discarded. Much of this language has been developed to supposedly replace Christianese and to be more accessible to the average seeker of truth. As anyone can see by the statement I wrote above, this language is even less accessible than the "Praise the Lord, Brother" stuff I wrote right after it. It's a sham and another example of the kind of consumer Christianity that the Emergent culture is trying to reject.

Language is a tricky thing, because it is difficult to talk about God. God is so far beyond our language and so mysterious, that our arbitrary sets of phonetic arrangements don't begin to touch the Absolute. This does not mean, however, that we should stop talking. We are limited, but we have to keep trying, as long as we can live in the mystery. Our language can never contain God, but that's a good thing. If we could define or explain God linguistically, He would cease to be God. What I propose is that we stop trying to be cool and start trying to connect to God and each other.

Is my church an emergent church? Yes, if that term is defined as: "different from the traditional Evangelical model of church". Did I set out to build an emergent church for the purpose of being able to call it "Emergent"? No. I suck at following God by myself. I started a church to surround myself with people who are on a similar journey of faith and discovery. They walk this out with me. We are simply trying to build the church we like. A church where we connect to each other and collectively touch the Sacred. So, join us sometime for some foot-stompin', snake-handlin, Praise the Lord fun! Bring your shofar and your Holy Spirit tambourine as we wave flags, flop on the floor, and attempt to organically reconstruct our gatherings for relevant interfacing with this postmodern culture. Hallelujah, my emergent brother/sister!