danielleshroyer.com

I have spent some time reflecting on the recent Sojourners article about the emerging church conversation being a primarily white (and male) conversation.  I have heard this critique many times in the past, and I highly doubt this last attempt at jabbing the emerging church for its perceived hip white maleness will be the last.   I will agree with those who have said that it’s becoming obvious that the latest cool trend is to declare something negative about Emergent, and I am not remotely surprised that people are using this trend to sell magazines and bolster blog traffic and whatever else people do with fads.

I will also say, for the record, that I found the cover art appalling and sensationalist.  I felt that it chose for the purposes of emotional reaction (which then garner buzz and profit) to ignore the many people I care about in this conversation who happen not to be white.

So my first retort is to say that there are countless people who consider themselves part of the emerging church conversation who happen not to be white.  There are so many, in fact, that I believe it strange for anyone to be able to write an article so thoroughly ignoring them.  (There is, of course, the matter that the article in question does in fact quote women and minorities throughout, which others have mentioned as ironic double-speak.)  I also feel the need to offer a reminder that in our American cultural melting pot, it may be best not to take everything at perceived face value.  Though one may not count me as a “minority” at first glance, my mother is Lebanese and a first generation American.   In plenty of everyday ways, I can give you examples of how I am still learning what “mainstream American culture” does because we’re still fairly new at it.   In terms of my mom’s religious heritage, we are brand new to the Jesus family, and much of our extended family still remains Druze Muslim, so we don’t have the first clue about “white Christian culture” either.   We spent the last thousand or so years NOT being Christian, and we only have about fifty years of practice behind us, if that puts it in perspective.  All of this is to say, many of us come from families who straddle two worlds and cultures and religions, regardless of how “white” we may look on the outside.  To write an article that seemingly places us all in an evangelical white person category is entirely unfair.  I, for one, am neither of those things.

My second comment:  At no point in this movement did any of the much-maligned white male leadership declare that the shift that is taking place in our culture is primarily or even predominantly American, white, middle-class, evangelical, or whatever other moniker one would like to add.  OTHER people have said that; but those of us invested in this conversation have never said it about ourselves.  Just because we may be speaking from one or more of the previously mentioned categories in our own contexts, it does not follow that we have any designs to define the entire movement as such, or even to totalize our own experiences and conclusions about the movement.  The emerging church conversation is not and never has been a totalizing conversation.  It is about seeking to make sense of the global shifts taking place by finding common themes, but it is also about listening to a wide spectrum of voices so that those common themes do not become one note over and above the rest, but a symphony of notes that combine to declare new music altogether.  That begins, as any thought does, inside one’s own context, but the intention has never been to stay there and set up camp.  The longer a person has spent in this conversation, the more aware they become of the conversations going on in Africa and Australia and Latin America and Europe and in countless small communities of faith across this globe that are working to make meaning out of our increasingly complex world.  As Phyllis Tickle often reminds us, this religious rummage sale is more far-reaching than most people first realize.  We may speak from an American perspective, but we speak into a global conversation.

On a more theological note:  I believe in the global Church, meaning that I see those of us who follow Jesus as one large organism called to live in community with one another.  I realize that for much of our shared ecclesial life, we have constructed borders like denominational lines and theological doctrines and yes, geographical boundaries including cultural identity.  In some ways, these borders are real, in that they help us make sense of the ways we are different.  In other ways, these borders are false, because they often mask how much we hold in common.  Clearly, I am of the mind that even our Christian borders present a false reality if we really follow the One who has redeemed all of creation, so boundaries are not particularly my favorite thing.  The story as I see it, and as I wrote, is usually about us being the ones who put lines in the sand and God being the One who lovingly walks through them anyway.  Because God is this way, we ought to be people who by now have learned to see one another, not as “types” but as fellow travelers, even if we disagree with how someone else happens to be traveling at the moment.  So theologically speaking, I find the argument about the exclusivity of the emerging church movement to be confusing, as every friend I have in the conversation shares this belief in the global Church, and in the difficulty of human-constructed boundaries, and in our hope to become people who listen to one another as we travel the road.  That by no means implies we have lived fully into that desire, but it does attempt to say that we truly desire it.

As far as ecclesiology goes, I believe the emerging church, and Emergent Village in particular, advocates a Really Big Tent.  We are happy to debate a matter of theology, but we do so by first seeing both parties as under the same Tent.  In the past year those of us at Emergent Village have been using the metaphor of the Village Green as one way of describing and encouraging this Really Big Tent-ness.  The Green is a place we can gather for conversation and shared life.  There are no gates on the green.  No secret handshakes or passwords, no preferred cultural identities.  If you want to come out and play on the Green and share how God is showing up in your own story, you are more than welcome to do so- you are encouraged and invited to do so, even.   And we hope to continually find ways to foster meaningful connections with one another while we are all there, expanding our understandings of how big this story really is and how there is room for each of us to play our unique part.  For my part, I would love to meet as many of you as possible.  And if one of you happens to begin asking others to leave the Village Green, I will do my best to smile and redirect you again to the Big Tent God we follow- a God who, surprisingly, even still makes room for white American men.

Dallas people,

This year Journey has partnered with Church in the Cliff for Good Friday.  Read below for details- we would love to have you join us!

DART Stations of the Cross is a community art project which links an ancient spiritual practice with mass transit. It is presented on Good Friday by two emergent churches in the Dallas area, Church in the Cliff and Journey Church. Participants are encouraged to arrive at the Mockingbird DART station between 6 and 7 pm this Friday, April 2^nd and to look for volunteers with black armbands.

Volunteers will provide a set of fourteen devotional cards comprised of original paintings and poetry reflecting on the traditional themes of the Stations of the Cross. Riding from Mockingbird to the end of the line in South Dallas participants are encouraged to flip cards as they pass through the stations and to consider the ways they encounter God’s presence, or absence, in the urban landscape. You will be asked to get off the train three times — at Pearl, Union, and Cedars– as a movement of solidarity with Jesus each time he falls. (At all of these stations volunteers will greet you, and at the first one you will have the opportunity to donate to the Stewpot’s Open Studio which supports homeless artists). Once you reach Westmoreland, the last stop on the red line, you will receive final instructions before riding the train in silence back to Mockingbird station.

All are invited to participate! Ride alone or gather with a group of friends. For more information contact Courtney Pinkerton at 214. 233. 4605 or email churchinthecliff@gmail.com.

April 23-24th I’ll be in sunny St. Petersburg, Florida along with Shane Claiborne, Spencer Burke, and a host of other fantastic people for A Sustainable Faith conference.  The question we’ll be gathering around there is “How can we be sustainably committed to justice over the long haul and not become overwhelmed or disenchanted?”  If you work in or volunteer alongside any nonprofit organizations, if you are someone who attempts to stay current on issues of justice, if you belong to an actively missional faith community, you realize this is not just a question but THE question.   We hope our conversations over the weekend will help us all find meaningful and life-giving ways to be the people of God in the world and to avoid the kinds of life habits that turn us into the people who have nothing left in their tanks.

If you can come in a day early, we are going to take a day trip down to Immokalee, Florida to meet with migrant farmworkers and hear their stories.  It will be a fitting backdrop to keep the next two days of conversation grounded in practical theology rather than abstract theory.

I hope you’ll make plans to join us in April for what is sure to be a great few days of conversation!

A Catholic friend of mine and I were discussing the act of excommunication recently.  He believes that the Church ought to exercise its right to excommunicate people more often, not for punishment’s sake alone, but as a necessary act to call for repentance and reconciliation.  He believes the Church should be able to say when someone has stepped out of bounds so that the person can be lovingly called back into community.

When described in this way, I can understand excommunication as a step in the process of reconciliation. We are required to speak the truth in love to one another, not to punish, but to restore.  This is particularly poignant during the season of Lent, when frankly, we spend six weeks similarly excommunicating ourselves by recognizing our own need for repentance and reconciliation.  My problem, as it relates to my Catholic friend’s Church structure, is that excommunication only goes one way.  What happens when the Pope needs to be excommunicated?

I didn’t ask this question in abstraction.  Quite seriously, I feel that as a fellow Jesus follower, I could have provided ample reason to have excommunicated Pope John Paul II (as beloved as he was, for a good many reasons).  His utter lack of responsibility and accountability in dealing with the issues of clergy sexual abuse is worthy of every form of excommunication we could imagine.  If as Pope his job is to uphold the values and theology of the Church, then he failed in every possible way.  There is nothing about his actions that show a value for the sanctity of human life  for which the Catholic Church is so honorably known.

With a heavy heart, I fear I may have to say the same about Pope Benedict.  As you may have heard, the same scandals that made headlines in the US are surfacing in Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the Pope’s home country of Germany.  News articles like this one and this one raise these questions once again- WHY is the Catholic Church turning a blind eye to these victims?  WHY are these priests being moved from one diocese to another, where they repeat the same crimes upon a new batch of innocent child victims?  WHY are our Catholic brothers and sisters not doing something to hold their religious authority figures accountable?

HOW MANY VICTIMS OF CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE MUST COME FORWARD BEFORE THE CHURCH RESPONDS?

Or, consider this:  when a car company was recently faced with the mounting evidence of a threat to human life,  despite their initial lack of thoroughness, they have now responded far more than the Catholic Church has, with far less evidence.   If Toyota can respond in such a manner (at no small financial cost to the company at what could be the worst possible economic moment), what does this say about the Church’s lethargic, even defiant reluctance?  Does Toyota have a higher moral code than the Vatican?  Does a for-profit global corporation have a structure more capable of responding to the endangerment of human life than all of Rome?

Sunday night I attended a candlelight vigil to stand with victims of clergy sexual abuse whose stories are surfacing around the world.  Many in attendance had suffered abuse at the hands of American clergy, and I was humbled by their bravery to give voice to their experience even as their own Church so vehemently denies it.  (Read this article from just yesterday.)  I was also deeply saddened, as I witnessed the eyes of those who fear that history will keep on repeating itself because no one seems willing to call for change.

As if the devastating effects of clergy sexual abuse are not enough, will we make them stand isolated in their suffering, with no intention toward justice or reconciliation in sight?  Who in the Church will call these priests and authority figures out of bounds by their actions (and unwillingness to act) so that they can be called back into rightful Christian community?

I was fortunate to meet Lisa Kendzior, the DFW leader for SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) on Sunday night.  If you know of anyone who has suffered clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic church or elsewhere, Lisa and SNAP are fantastic resources for healing and grace.  You can email her at lisa.kendzior@verizon.net and find out monthly meeting information.

Emergent Village recently posted an interview of Brian McLaren regarding his latest book by fellow Emergent Village Council member Melvin Bray.  Before Melvin begins the interview, he openly admits to a friendship between the two.  He reminds readers that this doesn’t keep him from asking Brian hard questions because for those of us in the Village, “friendship is a full-contact sport.”

Today I read Samir Selmanovic’s thoughts on Emerging Church dogma.  He wrote:  ”There is a hill on which we are willing to die, and it is called conversation. We don’t think of conversation as a method of communication. Or as an agent of change, or even as a virtue. We see conversation as the teaching, the truth, the doctrine. We confess it. Conversation is deeply biblical, rooted in Christian history and theology, and, importantly, in the life and teachings of Jesus. Conversation involves incarnation, life, death, and resurrection, both God’s and ours. If you think of faith as something that can be lived outside of a continual experience of living and dying through conversation with the divine and human other, we emergents maintain that you are wrong, terribly wrong.”

These two images have been quite beautiful for me this week.  And if Journey ever decides to write a doctrinal statement, Samir’s first sentence might be all that’s needed.  We are committed above all to respectful conversation- and that also means that we lay strong ground rules about how we engage each other fairly rather than ungraciously.  This is a conviction we refuse to set down.  We will dialogue with anyone, but we will not allow one conversation partner to belittle or dehumanize or degrade another.  (I for one consider it a spiritual discipline to walk away from those who will not play by these rules.  This rules out, sadly, what feels like half of the blogosphere.)

Friendship is a full-contact sport because when you have respect and trust between two people, robust conversation is not scary but life-giving.  It’s a game you can play without fear of losing your friendship.  You can play your hardest on the field, and go out for drinks afterward.  In an increasingly diverse world, I believe this deeply held commitment to respectful conversation is one of the most potentially transformational gifts we can offer the world.  One of my biggest hopes is for the Church to embody and practice the spiritual discipline of true conversation.  In a world where infighting, slander, name-calling, media manipulation and back room chatter seem to dominate, respectful conversation may be our most powerful form of witness.

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.