Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Radical...

Three posts in one day? I'm on some sort of mission. Or maybe it has to so with the fact that my wife believes my first two posts today were actually her property even though she never actually posted them.

Anyways...I don't think I'm emergent. I don't think I even know entirely what it means. Maybe that, in and of itself, makes me emergent. Either way I've never had an overwhelming desire to delve into the whole emergent movement thing. But somewhere along the line I picked up some books and started reading them. Then I started pondering. What resulted was and interesting little journey that has me more intrigued/curious about church in general.

I finished "The Radical Reformission" by Mark Driscoll and I will say that I enjoyed his straight-forward, sarcastic, edgy commentary on how we as a church need to rethink the way we are currently trying to reach people with the Gospel. He's got some good thoughts to ponder.
I'll have to pull this one down off the shelf again and go through the questions at the end of each chapter a bit more thoroughly. But until then, I can finally cross another book of my "must-read-before-I-buy-anymore-books" pile.

5 comments:

Nick said...

Knot Face,
Emergent?

Define that for me. No I haven't been hiding under a rock I just want to know what you think about it all.

-Nick

Unknown said...

His follow up "Confessions of a Reformission Rev" is pretty good, too.

Unknown said...

Slow down...I can't keep up to the Blogging machine...

I hear you on the whole emergent thing...it is one of those areas that is foggy and probably the best thing to do is define it for yourself since everyone defines it differently. You can see my post on it here:

http://www.incipiosermo.com/2006/07/etymology-of-emergent.html

These are the conversations I miss having with you in the office next door...by the way, it was great chatting with you on the phone last night.

Anyway...now I am overwhelmed with blogging guilt and need to blog again...

Unknown said...

Nick, I don't think I can define it. But I'm under teh impression that it has more to do with engaging in a conversation than it does about being "untraditional". I've just heard too many churches and people going AWOL from the traditional church because they believe that in order to be "emergent" that they need to do the exact opposite of the traditional church.

Either way, I like your advice Bryce to define it for myself. That way I can't be wrong right? But then does that make me emergent?!?!

Theo...that was the book I was actually trying to buy, but couldn't find. It's next on my list of "books-I-shouldn't-buy-until-I-finish-the-current-pile-of-books-I-still-have-to-read-before-I-buy-new-books" pile.

Jon Coutts said...

i'm a bit behind on my mike blogging, sorry. emergent can be one of two things:

1) Seeker Church in GenX gear.

or, much more interesting

2) Trying more intentionally to recover some of the ancient church goodness and shrug off some of the modern church badness while meeting the new world head on with the gospel

either stream of it is refreshing to me although the 2nd option is by far the most worthy of getting excited about. i mean, i'll be happy to ditch boomer worship but if that is all emergent is about then its pretty shallow. but this other thing excites me theologically, ecclesiologically, pastorally, practically, etc....

(read the Younger Evangelicals. that's the best take on it I've seen)
jon