Emergent: First Thoughts

Emergent.

This is a term that I have recently run across in my theological wanderings. It is a term that both scares me and exhilerates me.

What scares me? It feels like it could too easily become a new mask for me to hide behind. It is too close to the worldview that has entrapped me for so many years. I am scared of falling whole heartedly in love with this movement and being shaped too much by it. Much of the language is so similar to the language I have been speaking that no longer has meaning for me- though certainly it exhists with different interpretation in the emergent context.

Having said that...

What exhilerates me?
The knowledge that there are people out there who are asking the same questions out there. There are people who are not only asking the same questions but are not satisfied with cut and dried traditional answers. There are people out there who are not looking for a specific set of answers but are instead more interested in the conversation that the questions demand. To me that is very exciting. The questions I have would be trivialized with easy answers. There are people out there who are more captivated by the journey than the destination.


There are people out there who understand that living into the teachings of Jesus is not a part timed job, but is instead something that takes our whole being. It mandates that we be different in every aspect of our life from our community to our conversations- but does not have a emposing moral agenda.


There are people out there who believe it is there responsability to make a difference in THIS world. To be offended by poverty, racial injustice, prejudice of all kinds, and who believe that we have a responsibility to be kind to the earth we live on.