Emergent/Missional/Post-Evangelical Definitions for the Layperson
Still stuck in '08 reflection mode here.
I know most of you have moved on. Bear with me. I'm a little slow these days.
I can't get over the fact that we in the Emergent/Missional/Post-Evangelical community haven't been able to come up with some down-to-earth, man-on-the-street-level definitions for some key concepts. I mean, you can't ask every person curious about this whole movement to take a few months/years and catch up with the conversation to date. We're gonna have to come up with some one-liners, some attention grabbers, to get people at least into the ballpark...and maybe then they can take it from there, you know, if they feel "led" and all.
So, just off the top of my head, here are some working suggestions for 10 of the biggies.
10. Postmodern: Everyone's in it for themselves...and I mean everyone! Criticize accordingly.
9. Post-Postmodern: The cat's outta the bag; everyone can see the elephant in the room; the emperor's butt-neked...let's work with that!
8. Narrative: Can you adequately describe who you are in a few sentences?
7. Atonement: We're all messed up, but each of us in our own, unique way. The crazy thing about Jesus is not that he dealt with the mess-up, but that dealt with your unique messed-upness, and mine, and that guy's, etc., and thereby dealt with The Mess-Up.
6. Faith: We don't place our love and trust (both action words, BTW) in truths derived from an analysis of Jesus, but in the whole person of Jesus...and that's just as tough and rocky as trusting anyone else, especially when they're always right!
5. God: YHWH...you're just gonna have to figure that out for yourself.
4. Jesus: The embodiment of #5.
3. The Bible: The #8 about #5's history-long quest to achieve #7 via #4.
2. Authority: Belongs to God, given to Jesus, who crazily entrusted it to us, His people, though none of us is worthy of it and we all get it wrong...unless your name is N.T. Wright.
1. Emerging/Emergent: You know how Jesus kept talking about seeds dying and living things springing forth? OK, that's what Emerging/Emergent likens itself to. But here's the thing...a living thing doesn't have to justify it's aliveness, or the death of the seed from whence it came. If it is alive, and the seed is dead, all of that will be become self-evident. So if anyone ever tells you they're Emergent/Emerging, they probably aren't. But if you see somebody emerging, you won't be able to miss it.
Like I said, that's just off the top of my head. I might have 10 or 20 more lurking somewhere, but for now, I gotta get some sleep.
What're your thoughts on these?
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
I was remarked by Phyllis Tickle's words at The Great Emergence when she said we still have to figure out #7 (Atonement). There are still some wildly different opinions about it.
NT Wright has a new book coming out in May that may answer some of these questions.
Apart from "emerging/emergent" itself, there's no need to define the rest of the terms.
What confuses the novice is the name-dropping, and a guide to "who's who in the zoo" would be more helpful. So many blog posts I've read on the theme are about people I've never heard of. To take the previous comment, for example, who the heck is Phyllis Tickle?
And what are they famous/infamous for? People mention Tony Jones and I think I'm really getting good at recognising people, that's the nickname of the Tall Skinny Kiwi, and then I realise no, that's Andrew Jones, so I'm back at square one, well no, square two, because I did realise that it was wrong.
Steve,
If you already know the difference between Tony Jones and Andrew Jones, your well ahead of the curve, brother.
As for Phillis Tickle, she just wrote one the most masterful treatments on this whole Emerging thing, from a historical perspective, that you'd ever want to read. Highly recommended. It's called "The Great Emergence."
Grace and Peace,
Raffi