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Holy Week resources and reflections

You say “emergent” and I say “emergence”

Words matter. Perhaps that’s why we spend so much time arguing over them, debating them, and, at some point, attempting to concretize them.

Two such words, “emergent” and “emergence” were discussed and explored through dialogue at Columbia Theological Seminary’s Emergence Now Conference January 26-28 — both by the 120 or so attending in Decatur, Ga., and those who participated virtually via Twitter.

The conference’s four speakers included—Phyllis Tickle, Tony Jones, Philip Clayton, and Bruce Reyes-Chow—along with conference preacher Barbara Brown Taylor.

The goal of the conference, according to Sarah Erickson, Columbia Seminary’s director of lifelong learning, was to continue the conversation begun in 2007 when Columbia hosted a conference on Emergent Church practices. Erickson noted that this year’s event drew folks from a variety of geographical (19 different states represented), denominational (mostly Presbyterian but also Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, and even Roman Catholics), age, and “technological” perspectives.

Phyllis Tickle was quick to point out the distinction between emergence Christianity and emergent Christianity—two groups that do not, she admitted, like each other sometimes. “Most emergent Christians will also say that they are emerging, but many emerging Christians do not want to be emergent—they are far too liberal,” she explained. Tickle, an Episcopalian, has been religion editor of Publisher’s Weekly and has written more than a dozen books, including The Divine Hours and The Great Emergence.

Emergence Christianity is a “big thing” according to Tickle, composed of multiple sub-sections that are becoming more and more distinct from one another. Emergence Christianity is not so much a movement as it is a description of something that seems to be bubbling up across denominations.

It is a phenomenon that happens every 500 years and marks a significant upheaval. “Each time this has happened the faith is spread by the pushing off of what has become institutionalized and the spread of what is new,” she explained. These periods of change are generally defined, according to Tickle, by about 100 years where it is difficult to figure out what is going on, 250 years in which it is finally understood and accepted, and then 150 years in which what is gets once again un-established.

Using analogy to try to explain the phenomenon Tickle put it this way: “It’s not that you want to get rid of grandma—you want her there so you can show your kids where they came from. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to live with her.”

Author/theologian Tony Jones took a more contrarian view of the current church situation.

“I’m very critical of a lot of the way that the mainline church does business,” admitted Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and theologian-in-residence at Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis. He sees the problem as a matter of current practice — systems are now keeping the church from doing its theological work.

Our story is not all that unlike Peter’s response to the transfiguration of Jesus — what can we build, how can we memorialize this “thin place?” “In the story of the transfiguration Peter did what was natural,” asserts Jones. Our response to these thin places, or experiences of the holy, is to build a church, a seminary, a denominational headquarters. “Jesus didn’t have time for that — he kept moving,” Jones pointed out.

For Jones, emergence is about moving onward, shedding the structures that we’ve used in the past in order to follow the Jesus who didn’t stop to create a structure for the luminous, but who kept moving.

This applies to the congregation as well. “Why is it so important that your parish survives another generation?” Jones challenged.

Learning from nature

Philip Clayton looked to science and the natural world to suggest an ongoing pattern of emergence. He holds a triple appointment at Claremont School of Theology in the department of religion, the department of philosophy, and as Ingraham Professor at Claremont.

“The story of the universe is a story of constant emergence,” Clayton suggested, backing up his claim with physics, biology, and chemistry. The natural world presents us with an example of an amazingly emergent system that is characterized by novelty, change, and development from which to form a foundation for the emergence thinking beginning to permeate the not always porous walls of churches.

Clayton denied being an “emergence evangelist.” “If the term becomes so essential so that we bow down to the term, that seems stupid,” he argued. But what if, he wondered, the term could become a helpful tool of art that helps to organize and focus our thinking, our attention and our action?

Again nature provides by example — through patterns.

“When I begin to pay attention to a pattern it focuses me and it draws my attention to certain things I might otherwise overlook, Clayton said. In a world in the process of emerging, one pattern to look for is a fear of that which is new, different, or changing. “The first step is to recognize the response of fear, to let the fear go, and to move toward the difference with understanding and acceptance,” said Clayton.

“I offer this to you as the spiritual practice in an emergence world — to recognize that I gravitate toward what I know and what is familiar,” he suggested. Such a spiritual practice allows the church to recognize these differences. It’s not an attempt to tear down all existing structures, but rather learning to pay attention to radically new things that are unfolding.

The most pressing challenge is learning how to navigate the ambiguity and look at how to “institutionalize fluidity,” said Bruce Reyes-Chow, pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco, and (current) moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

For Reyes-Chow, it is not a question of methodology. Rather, it is about being in the midst of something and moving, adapting, navigating. “You and I have to be whatever form of church and community we are called to be — we can’t just sit back and think about it,” he said.

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