danielleshroyer.com

This April I’ll be speaking at the Sustainable Faith conference in Florida.  I’ll be joined by Shane Claiborne, Spencer Burke and Cheri Honkala.  The primary question around which we’ll be gathering is, “How can we be sustainably committed to justice over the long haul and not become overwhelmed by the enormity of it’s scope and size?”  I’ll be delivering one of the keynotes, tying in themes of hope, God’s boundary-breaking faithfulness, and of course, Moltmann references.

If you are planning to come in (which you should!), be sure to consider coming in a day early for the trip to Immokalee, a site of recent controversy regarding the treatment of immigrant farmworkers.  Shane will be coming along to help us dialogue with them, hear their stories and contemplate what justice looks like in this Florida town.  I applaud their attempt to marry conference conversation (a good and helpful thing) with concrete action and contextualization (the goal of any good theological conversation).

Florida’s great in April- no matter where you currently reside!  So book your tickets and join us.  It will be a worthwhile and encouraging few days.

I’m diving into a number of places where the term “mimetic” and “mimesis” keep coming up.  I will have to talk about that more later, but for the time being, you must read this article.  It is about mirror neurons, which apparently are highly adaptable cells that allow your brain to actually imitate the actions of what you see.  For example, when you watch football on television, if you had wires connected to your brain, it would scan as if you are playing football.    (WHAT?!?!)

These kinds of studies both delight me and send me into existential crises.  (I feel much better however now that I have a neurological excuse for why I get so unbelievably bothered by movies, and why I could not sleep for DAYS after watching Hotel Rwanda.)  Angst aside, I’m passing this along to you today because it’s Lent, and I thought those of us who are trying to do something differently with our lives could all use a big pat on the back that it’s really worthwhile.  You giving up the TV is good stuff, because every time you watch CSI you are apparently killing people somewhere in the recesses of your brain, and it does actually make you prone to be more violent in real life.  (Does this mean we should all get streaming video of monks chanting prayers or people doing social work?)  (Also, I’ve never actually watched CSI, but it sounds like a show where people would be killing people…crime scenes, right?  But perhaps, also being trained as top-rated detectives?)

What we spend our days doing actually does matter.  It affects us, even when we believe we are somehow “above” it.  So let’s get responsible and start watching the people and things we actually want to imitate.  (I will be taking the red-eye to Germany to have tea with the Moltmanns.)

So thank you, Mom.  We called you lame nicknames behind your back when you sang us that song about being careful with our little ears and eyes, but apparently you were way ahead of the neurological researchers who have now proven your point.

I watched a Lenten documentary tonight.  It wasn’t about Lent, technically, but it was one of the most powerful descriptions of our human condition that I have seen in quite some time.  The documentary was called Pray the Devil Back to Hell and tells the story of the courageous and powerful women of Liberia who banded together to bring peace to a country bloodied by war.  The film was directed by Abigail Disney (yes, that Disney) who was present at the screening and afterward engaged in a Q&A session with us.  To hear her describe how people in Bosnia and Jerusalem and Burundi and Washington D.C. have seen the film and been empowered by it was powerfully hopeful.  It felt a little like Easter, actually, partly because I felt I had just experienced the fullness of Lent.

Lent is the forty days we use to get reacquainted with ourselves, and this has both negative and positive connotations.  The negative side of Lent’s coin is that we are ugly, that we are broken, and that we have often done terrible things.  To hear the stories of women in Liberia tonight who were held at gunpoint and raped is to acknowledge at the very depth of our being that humanity is capable of horrific atrocity (and historically women and children have paid the highest price).  We are not allowed to run away from that sobering fact in Lent.  We are instead required to publicly acknowledge it.  This is why we become, rather intently, people who confess.  We confess that we have done things we should not have done, and that we left undone those things we should have done.  We confess that we have not faithfully followed the One we so valiantly claim to follow.  And in these confessions we get to know ourselves again, behind the veils and the lies and the masks of our own desired sense of holiness.  We have to see the ugliness of who we really are, the terrible capacity we have for a world of evil.

The positive side of Lent is that we are also called to confess that we are made in God’s image, and therefore both capable of and responsible for acts of love, peace, forgiveness, and beauty.  For my part, I nag about this under-developed side of our story frequently, because without it there is only despair.  There is both danger and possibility in what we are, and in what we could be.  And I saw what we could be tonight when those Liberian women linked arms and forced an entire compound of power-hungry warlords and government officials and heads of state to find a roadmap to peace or stay locked up in that room, hungry and in need of a bathroom, until they did.  Those women used their voices and their passion and their commitment to life and to peace, and against all odds, they won.  Humanity is capable of stunning acts of goodness and justice that defy every limitation we considered final.

Abbie Disney said afterward that the biggest gift of this documentary has been the ability to show humanity our true selves.   Although this story was extraordinary, it did not require women with superhuman powers, but simply women who were willing to do what they were capable of doing.  I know she meant it probably exclusively in this positive sense- that we are capable of changing even dictatorial governments through peaceful means. (And amen to that!)  But I also hear the fullness of that Lenten statement resonating in my heart.  This is the full picture of humanity, both of which are necessary for us to have a chance at truly knowing ourselves enough to invite transformation.  We are capable of dire evil, and we are capable of incredible good (and of course everything in between).  Lent affords us the opportunity to look intently at ourselves and ask who we have been, and who we want to be.  Our human actions can be used either to destroy this world we have been given or to hold it up as the world Jesus rose to save.  I pray the despair of the first always leads us to the transformational hope of the second.

It seems popular these days for people to virtually ponder and verbally process where we all are in the conversation/movement/revolution/whatever-name-will-not-offend-you-and-create-another-retaliatory-blogpost called emergent/emerging/emersion/emergence.  And though I’ve certainly not read all such posts, I have read enough of them to notice a trend in the language to describe this shift.  (Disclaimer:  I mostly gleaned this from blog posts with whom I agree.  Although, I don’t recall hearing metaphors from most detractors, which may in and of itself be worth noting.)

There seems to be a common understanding that wherever we are now, we are not only standing against something (which is where all good revolutions/reformations begin) but we are now standing in a space that is more positively defined.  And wouldn’t you know it, this space is attempting the difficult and creative task of being defined by its inherent openness, rather than its stark boundaries or newly-drawn lines.  (Clearly, from the title of my book, you can guess how I feel about this sort of thing.)  If there is anything that makes this movement somehow different or more nuanced than those that might have come before, it is because of this.  Some metaphors I have read and with which I’ve resonated:  JRD Kirk has applied Tom Atlee’s metaphor of “story fields.”  Derek Koehl (former Journeyer before moving to Atlanta) has a guest post here describing the emerging space as the place where many spheres converge in open space.  Kathy Escobar likened her place in this new realm to that of being a (mostly) contented mixed-breed mutt.

All of this is pointing to what those of us who met last April to discern where/whether EV had a future horizon have been calling the Village Green.  I realize my more concrete friends don’t always appreciate the slippery nature of things like metaphors, as if they therefore do not mean anything, but in my estimation all of these posts show that the Spirit is prompting us all toward this way of inhabiting the space in which we live.  It is, to use a phrase we often toss around at Journey, not an issue of doctrine but of posture.  How do we posture ourselves in the world?  This is not a simple task.  It actually requires much more rigorous consideration than doctrine, where one could conceivably stand in the same way all the time.  (Imagine the Tin Man, getting rusted solid and needing a bit of oil at the joints to begin moving freely again.) Posturing in this space we call emergence requires us to pay attention to the whispering of the Spirit, and the poetic words of Scripture, and those beautiful voices of tradition, and the face of the person in front of us, and the culture in which our feet are rooted, and our own evolving senses of identity.  It requires us to acknowledge where our joints have gotten a little rusty.  Posturing requires all five of our senses.  It requires us to live a fully embodied life, as Jesus did.  And when we posture ourselves in such a way, we open up a space where other people can encounter this Jesus as well.  (Or, perhaps more metaphysically accurate, we recognize and live into that space that is always there, whether we notice it or not.)

This has rather endless atoms of possibility, but to lift up one that has the power to alter much of how we live our lives together:  this village green/story field/sphere of openness/happy home of mutts and mixed breeds allows a significantly higher amount of voices to be heard.  One does not have to be male, or have a title, or be ordained, or (to attempt a little poke at the newest universalizing accusation) have voted for Obama.  Mike Clawson pointed out quite wisely in the comments section of Jonathan Brink’s recent EV post that one of the reasons this movement seems less “up front” is because it is emerging in places that aren’t on the most trafficked highways.  One does not have to be in an urban metroplex to find space on this Green, either.  I ran into a woman a few months back who attends a very small rural mainline church, and she told me enthusiastically that her Sunday School group was using my study guide while reading through Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence.  Just because even the “flat” blogosphere does not pay attention to a 50-year-old faithful Methodist woman and her ten friends doesn’t mean what is happening there is not highly significant.  This space is being created everywhere.  And we would be wise to recognize the way it is changing our religious and cultural landscape.

Again, the task of cultivating the space of what my friends and I have been calling the Village Green is not a clear and definite as blog posts describing why someone else’s theology is wrong.  It doesn’t mean we don’t have our opinions; but it does mean that our opinions won’t have much merit if we can’t figure out how to hold them well in this new space.  And in this new space, perhaps the biggest lesson of all is that we can listen to one another, opinions strongly intact, and actually even learn a thing or two.

If people like Pete Rollins, Chris Haw, Karen Sloan and a bunch of neo-monastics are your kind of people, you need to go to the Peace by Piece conference in two weeks.  It’s incredibly affordable, and you can find cheap fares on Southwest if you’re anywhere nearby.  I’m really looking forward to my time there, eager to hear from small communities doing the kind of quietly noble things that get few headlines but churn out a remarkable amount of justice, peace, grace, and other such gifts.   I’m also really excited about experiencing VOID, an experimental faith collective (similar to Pete’s IKON community in Ireland) located in Waco and facilitated by my friend Adam.

I’ll be offering up some thoughts of my own in two sessions- one on managing conflict and practicing peace in community, and another on doing sustainable justice in small faith communities.  Otherwise I’ll be scribbling notes and soaking up some fresh perspectives on how to go about the daily work of guiding a group of Jesus followers- and trying to live like one.

So what are you waiting for?  Go register, come meet new people, and come hear stories of hope from the front lines.

We’ve been discussing the Didache at Journey, and last night we had an interesting conversation about the verse “Abstain from fleshly and bodily lusts” (1:4).  I know-  you think you can guess what follows this.  But you’d be wrong.  Here’s what the Didache says immediately following that verse:  ”If someone strikes your right cheek, turn the other also, and be perfect.  If someone forces you to go one mile, go two.  If someone takes your cloak, give also your coat.  If someone takes from you what is yours, don’t ask for it back.  You really cannot.”

Leave it to the early church to remind us that retaliation, violence, hoarding and greed are “fleshly and bodily lusts” unbecoming to Jesus followers.

Another strand of our conversation came around the idea of these “forces” of discord, conflict, ungraciousness being described in a way that one of our community members, Misty, called “primal.”  We are like tigers crouching, eager to pounce in our attempt to gain power or control over any number of things.  One look through the headlines and in our own mirrors and this sounds about right.

Just to balance that sobering reality with a little hope (you know me, I’m in the hope business), here’s another thing about us that is primal:  altruism.  My husband forwarded this NY Times article to me and I found it quite fascinating.  Here’s a snippet:

Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. A team including Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.

The implication is that we are hard-wired to be altruistic.

Of course, I attribute this to being created in the image of an altruistic God.  This doesn’t mean that we still don’t have struggles with the crouching power-hungry tiger that often lives inside of us, but it does mean that we are absolutely capable of choosing, in the Didache’s words, the way of life.  And wouldn’t you know it- we are even happier when we do so.

Every once in a while, when I’m doing something I do regularly, I’ll have this moment where I realize how strange and odd it is that I am doing it.  This morning it happened in yoga class.  I go there every week.  I’ve practiced yoga for years.  But today, for whatever reason, I was sitting there exhaling (you know, when you make the noise that shows you are exhaling properly and it sounds a little like ghosts screaming at a low pitch), in a group of forty people I don’t know, wearing minimalist clothing, and I thought, “This is absolutely the craziest thing.”  And yet, that is what makes yoga class worthwhile.  I might do sun salutations at home by myself, but no home exercise routine will ever match the one I have when I sweat alongside strangers for ninety minutes once a week.  There is something categorically different in the way I practice just by choosing to do this very weird thing of practicing in front of mirrors with other people.

Sometimes, my husband will be sitting on the couch in the evening and he will look at my dog and then look at me and say, “Seriously- we have a small furry animal who lives in our house.”  That has nothing to do with yoga, or church.  But isn’t it true?  Who thought of such a thing?!  And yet, we love having strange animals creeping around our house.  We think nothing of it.  You may let your pet sleep in your bed- your BED!  Furry animal who used to live in the wild long ago- snuggled up against you and shedding their furry hair onto your sheets.  And you don’t even bat an eye.

I feel this weirdness sometimes while singing at Journey on Sunday nights.  Think about it- you are sitting in a room with people singing songs about faith and God and other important things about life.  Together.  Out loud.  Even if you have a bad voice.  And nobody thinks it’s weird.  People don’t normally sing together like that from day to day.  Aside from concerts or the occasional flash mob, we don’t find it normal for people to just start singing aloud together en masse.

And when do we ever go around reciting the same words together like we do when we pray together? (Maybe taking the Pledge of Allegiance as a child? Or that oath of sportsmanship my son says before he plays soccer?)  At any rate, these are weird things people do in groups- things that otherwise would be noticeably strange, but have become routine and ordinary for our communal life together.

I have friends who believe these things are strange enough as to not be worth their time any longer.  One time a friend said to me, “I don’t need to sing with people I don’t know to follow God.”  I can see her point.  But I can also see the point of doing weird things in groups.  Whatever dynamic it creates is powerful enough to pull me to yoga class and our community gatherings every Sunday.  Being together changes the way I practice my yoga as well as my faith.  Something happens when I join the chorus of ghost-hums with strangers around me while in a pose.  I get stronger, I can hold the pose longer, I can push a little more.  Something happens when we cobble our voices together into the air on Sunday nights and dip our little bits of bread into the same cup and place our hands on people while closing our eyes and talking out loud to a God we can’t see.  Something happens when we all grab hands (weird!) and stick our chins up in the air and hear words that send us out to be bearers of love in the world.  We are breathing together, pulling our lives together with the lives of the people around us, gazing in the same direction, even if just for a brief moment.  I get stronger, and a little more hopeful, and I feel this embodied sense of support as I try to walk the way of life.  I enjoy looking around the room and knowing that, for this moment, we are all holding each other together, even though we will spend much of the week apart.

I’m sure I’ll still have moments when I find it weird (because it is)- but I hope they are followed by moments where I remember it is also mysteriously wonderful.  Like having a small furry creature wandering the halls of our house.

This weekend my husband and I went to go see the movie Avatar.  Neither of us had high expectations, other than that it was to be a virtual feast (literally) of cinematic tricks.  On that expectation it delivered far beyond what I could have imagined; the world of Pandora was absolutely breathtaking.  I distinctly recognized a feeling of delightfulness and awe very similar to the one I remembered feeling when watching The Neverending Story as a child.  (Remember that scene where Bastian is riding through the sky on Falcor?)  And yes, I realize this only proves what many of us heard on NPR- that Avatar is a conglomerate of pieces from stories and movies we’ve heard before- but what isn’t?  The genius of the movie is that Cameron combines these elements in such compelling fashion.

This morning I saw this article reporting that some people have suffered depression after watching the movie.  As it turns out, Pandora is a compelling place to want to move, and the fact that it cannot be accessed in reality has created tension and depression for people who feel discontent with the life they do have.  Of course, in the article (and in the subsequent Tweets and FB posts about it) this is spoken of in such a way as to be considered either ludicrous or silly.  I’m not convinced.

I could probably write a number of posts about my theological musings during this movie (and yes, I am geeky enough to watch movies and dissect them theologically, all the time, ad nauseum).  The story of a struggle to find one’s rightful identity, even when it’s among people who could not be more foreign to you, sounds rather akin to Epiphany, for starters.  It’s always shocking to find your home somewhere that seems so very far from where you came- and to risk so much to travel there without knowing how it will turn out.

Part of what those people in the movie theater experienced was tension with parts of the world they didn’t want to be part of anymore.  And though none of them were specific, I’d guess the list would be things like greed and imperialism and a total lack of humility.  Why would it ever be bad to feel a deep, almost depressing desire to move away from that and toward something more life-giving?  Isn’t this why each of us has taken up the path of faith?  Isn’t this what “conversion” means- to turn from one way of life towards another way of life?

Granted, I don’t find the idea of running away from the reality of our world helpful.  I don’t think playing hours of the Avatar video game is going to do anything helpful for anyone.  And I certainly refuse to say that this world, despite its flaws, is beyond changing.  If we feel that tension, it is our responsibility to resolve it not by walking away but by engaging and pushing and trying.  But I want to affirm that these inclinations, this desire for a better kind of world, even and maybe because it looks so different from the one in which we live, sounds a lot like the quest for that place where the Realm of God is made complete among us.  It sounds like the first step in conversion, where it dawns on you that a better way is possible, and you may not be currently walking that better way, and you may be ready to start trying.  I wouldn’t want to relieve that tension for anyone.  That’s holy tension, and without it, the world would never change.

The idea of a place where we seek to live as those connected with God and with all that God has created is not exactly a new idea, James Cameron.  But thank you for igniting our imaginations with strange, tall, blue people who remind us that it’s beautiful enough and compelling enough to actually try to make real.

Three cheers for Epiphany!  Today is the day we remember the story of the wise men/magi/camel-riding, gift-bearing mystery men from the East who traveled halfway across the known world to visit the Christ Child.  I love the day so much I devoted an entire chapter to it in my book.  Here’s a snippet:

“Most people who know this story [of Epiphany] zoom right past it, as if it’s a window display they have seen before.  They have not stopped to peer inside, to notice the details, and to consider what it indicates about where the story of God might be heading.  For most, these men and their camels are simply pieces people use to populate their nativity scenes, making the Jesus-in-the-manger barn scene look more crowded and important.  Very few realize what a grandiose political statement it is to place ceramic painted figurines of pagan men holding gifts in front of this Jewish king.  It is not simply holiday cheer; it is a prophetic statement about the kind of world God is creating.  …Epiphany is the declaration that God is not just God of the Israelites but God of foreign pagan astrologers, too.  Though God’s activity in the world began with one family, Jesus’ kingship begins with one world.”

W.H. Auden’s poem “For the Time Being” is quite long, but part of it chronicles the story of these strange travelers from the East.  The last line of that section says, ”To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.”  Despite all that separates us- time, geography, culture, even in this case religion- we all find a common home under our quest to live wholly human lives.  This Epiphany eve, I’m giving thanks for the Child who brings us together in such beautifully unexpected ways, and who shows us the way home to true humanity.

Despite the Christmas vacation away from my computer screen, I’ve followed a bit of the blog banter around Andrew Jones’ (aka Tall Skinny Kiwi) blog post declaring the end-date of the Emerging Church Movement.  What I say below is in no means a way to throw criticism back in Andrew’s face, as he has brought up thoughts and questions I’ve shared in the past year.  Rather it’s a way of processing what this point in our history as a movement means for all of us—those of us who have been around a while, as well as those of us who are just beginning.

I stumbled into this conversation as an eighteen year old college freshman in Waco, Texas.  A few short years later, I felt as if I’d accidentally been placed among a fabulous group of people who happened to be sitting on top of a revolutionary volcano.  It was thrilling, and sexy, and I quite literally believed that we were going to change the world.  I can recall that feeling like it was yesterday.

Since then, I’ve gotten a seminary degree, had two children, and I now pastor a church that just celebrated its tenth year as one of the first independent emerging communities of faith.  This is the part of the love story where you begin to wear your proverbial curlers to bed.

The truth is, everybody loves the beginning of a revolution.  (Well, at least those of us who enjoy playing the part of the revolutionaries!)  You have the distinct honor of experiencing and witnessing a slew of firsts- and sometimes being one, too.   You get the thrill of telling people ideas they haven’t heard before and watching their expressions as little fireworks go off in their heads (for better and for worse).   But no revolution stays in its honeymoon period forever.  At some point, you have to come home and start the hard work of actually making a life together, and you have to do it out of the banality of everyday things like  grocery lists and flu season and tax day.  You have to hold a church gathering when you’re feeling uninspired to create new cutting-edge stations.  You have to figure out a way to make ends meet on a shoestring budget.  You have to find pastoral words of wisdom not for yet another person going through a postmodern faith crisis (“I’ve got plenty of thoughts on that!  I can help!”) but someone who just lost a loved one to cancer.  None of those concessions mean that you are giving up the revolution any more than returning from the honeymoon means you’re giving up the marriage.  It means you believe in this thing deeply enough to stick around, even when the thrill of that first kiss has dissipated.

I’ll freely admit- I went through a time of mourning that the sexiness of the new revolution is likely behind us.  Those were some great moments.  But then one day, something beautiful dawned on me:  the reason why it doesn’t feel as new and cutting edge anymore is because it worked.  These new ideas actually infiltrated such strange and previously unheard-of places as Bible colleges (who would have thought in 1999 that ANY place, much less a Bible college, would offer a degree in emerging church studies???) and denominational headquarters (whoever would have thought we’d gain the appreciative ear of the Archbishop of CANTERBURY?!) and the shelves of Barnes and Noble (who’d have guessed this conversation would produce stacks and stacks of books that publishers wanted to buy and readers wanted to purchase?!).  Who knew that there would be so many communities of faith across the GLOBE putting this theology and ecclesiology into practice for people trying to find a way to follow Jesus?

If Andrew thinks that 2009 is the year the emerging church conversation ceased to be controversial, it’s because we have convinced enough of the status quo that we’re right.

I remember a moment in 2004 at the National Pastors Convention/Emergent Convention in Nashville when Doug Pagitt and I were walking down the hallway.  The evening general sessions were both underway, and as we walked past the door of the NPC session, we noticed there was an artist painting live on stage, and a camera was showing his work and displaying it up on huge video screens overhead for all to see.  We looked at each other, wide-eyed.  Even though we may not have understood how they were using art in their main session, the fact that they were using art was a remarkable sign that they had been listening to us.  We realized that our call for having the arts become a more recognizable part of our worship life together struck a chord with people, and as such, there would be no way to control how/why others would apply this to their own lives and circumstances. There is both awe and frustration in a realization like that.

Once a movement actually gets accepted into the mainstream, new problems arise.  Sometimes the controversial ideas get domesticated into institutional structures.  Sometimes the controversial theology stops short of making enough waves.  Sometimes we get lazy and think we’ve reached the finish line far too early on.  Sometimes the indie group hits it big and its original die-hard fans cry sellout.   We started a revolution, and we cannot control what people do with the ideas.  And sometimes, what people do with our beloved revolutionary ideas will make us want to pull our hair out.   But in that is a sense of accomplishment, too- we said something that has inspired action, even if it wasn’t what we had bargained for.

The revolution we now call the emerging church movement may  not be as sexy as it once was.  It may not be feeding our endless obsession for what’s new and what’s next.  It may not have arrived in current form the way we had wanted or anticipated.  It may not be stroking our egos as much as it used to, now that some random guy on the streets of Dallas can probably define “missional” without our help.  But it is far from over.

As someone who is driven by challenges, I like to look at our current chapter in this global emerging church revolution in a different way.  Now that we’ve gained a following, our challenge to be revolutionary is more important, and more difficult, than ever.   Now we must figure out a way to push the envelope in the middle of something that’s become familiar, to try to redefine church when everyone assumes they know the answer already, to speak poignantly enough so as not to be confused with the pre-fab, boxed kit, marketed products now sitting on the 50% off  table.  We got the audience we wanted, complete with a readily listening ear.  Now what will we tell them?

When women gained the right to vote, nobody said the suffragette movement was over.  They said the suffragette movement was successfully accomplished.  If 2009 is an end-date, it’s that our hopes of gaining influence among church leaders and Jesus followers has been rousingly, beautifully, Spirit-infusingly, globally accomplished.  All those women who were active suffragettes didn’t go home and put up their sneakers after their big win, either.  They sat down at a table with their friends and said, “Okay, one down.  Now what next?”  That’s where we are right now, and I personally believe we have plenty of work left to be done.  We have institutional structures that still desperately need reform.  (Just because the Archbishop likes us doesn’t mean we couldn’t say a few more words he needs to hear!)  We have theology that is broken and tired and unhelpful that desperately needs to be revisioned, rethought, reinvented.  We have communities of faith (and pastors leading them) who still need examples of how to live sustainably and holistically.  And I’m certain we each know plenty of people who are just trying to find a way forward in faith, still trying to ask the simplest, most important question of all (and I’d suggest it’s the question we all must ask ourselves, over and over again):  How do I follow Jesus faithfully in this world in which I live?

When I think of all the questions facing us as we enter the second decade of the 21st century, I get both giddy and dizzy at all the new ground we’ll get to cover- and that we’ll need to cover.  And I know, as we start to ask those questions and come up with our first round of answers, there will still be people joining this conversation who have yet to hear the word “missional” and others who could really use some help in re-envisioning their church gathering to reflect a change from hierarchy to web.  Somebody’s going to need friends to discuss how great the idea of perichoresis is and how brilliantly Moltmann applies it to our ecclesial shared life (and that person should call me!). Someone is going to read one of these Emergent books for the first time while browsing through Barnes and Noble and need a cohort of people to walk with through each of the questions it raises.   Someone is going to need a friend and fellow companion to walk this road.  And the beautiful, Spirit-drenched truth is that we have friends to recommend, and churches and communities of faith where we can send them, and books we can give them, and a map of cohorts we can offer up.  And as sexy as it was fifteen years ago, we didn’t have any of that on our side.  If our goal in this movement is to help people follow Jesus better in our current world, we’ve created entire networks of friendships and artifacts that can be of great comfort and help.  We’ve become that married couple who has the weight of all those beautiful memories on its side, even if it’s added a few extra pounds.

As I survey my own experience of this movement over the last decade+, there are some things I’d change and some things I hope to change.  But overall, I feel incredibly proud and humbled to have been a tiny, tiny part of what the Spirit is doing in our midst.  Our conversation may have taken flight, but our aerial journey is far from being ready to land.  Call me a revolutionary, but I’ve still got plenty of feathers I plan on ruffling.