Tag Archives ⇒ evangelical movement

Predictions on the ‘new evangelical’ movement

March 24, 2011
· Martin Kelley

Read­ers over on Quak​erQuak​er​.org will know I’ve been inter­est­ed in the tem­pest sur­round­ing evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor Rob Bell. A pop­u­lar min­is­ter for the Youtube gen­er­a­tion, con­tro­ver­sy over his new book has revealed some deep fis­sures among younger Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by this since 2003, when I start­ed real­iz­ing I had a lot of com­mon­al­i­ties with main­stream Chris­t­ian blog­gers who I would have nat­u­ral­ly dis­missed out of hand. When they wrote about the authen­tic­i­ty of wor­ship, decision-making in the church and the need to walk the talk and also to walk the line between truth and com­pas­sion, they spoke to my con­cerns (most of my read­ing since then has been blogs, pre-twentieth cen­tu­ry Quak­er writ­ings and the Bible).

Today Jaime John­son tweet­ed out a link to a new piece by Rachel Held Evans called “The Future of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism.” She does a nice job pars­ing out the dif­fer­ences between the two camps squar­ing off over Rob Bell. On the one side is a cen­tral­ized move­ment of neo-Calvinists she calls Young, Rest­less, Reformed after a 2006 Chris­tian­i­ty Today arti­cle. I have lit­tle to no inter­est in this crowd except for mild aca­d­e­m­ic curios­i­ty. But the oth­er side is what she’s dub­bing “the new evangelicals”:

The sec­ond group — some­times referred to as “the new evan­gel­i­cals” or “emerg­ing evan­gel­i­cals” or “the evan­gel­i­cal left” is sig­nif­i­cant­ly less orga­nized than the first, but con­tin­ues to grow at a grass­roots lev­el. As Paul Markhan wrote in an excel­lent essay about the phe­nom­e­non, young peo­ple who iden­ti­fy with this move­ment have grown weary of evangelicalism’s alle­giance to Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, are inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing social reform and social jus­tice, believe that the gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and are eager to be a part of inclu­sive, diverse, and authen­tic Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties. “Their broad­en­ing sense of social respon­si­bil­i­ty is push­ing them to rethink many of the fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal pre­sup­po­si­tions char­ac­ter­is­tic of their evan­gel­i­cal tra­di­tions,” Markham noted.

This is the group that intrigues me. There’s a lot of cross-over here with some of what I’m see­ing with Quak­ers. In an ide­al world, the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends would open its arms to this new wave of seek­ers, espe­cial­ly as they hit the lim­its of denom­i­na­tion­al tol­er­ance. But in real­i­ty, many of the East Coast meet­ings I’m most famil­iar with would­n’t know what to do with this crowd. In Philly if you’re inter­est­ed in this con­ver­sa­tion you go to Cir­cle of Hope (pre­vi­ous posts), not any of the estab­lished Quak­er meetings.

Evans makes some edu­cat­ed guess­es about the future of the “new evan­gel­i­cal” move­ment. She thinks there will be more dis­cus­sion about the role of the Bible, though I would say it’s more dis­cus­sion fo the var­i­ous Chris­t­ian inter­pre­ta­tions of it. She also fore­sees a loos­en­ing of labels and denom­i­na­tion­al affil­i­a­tions. I’m see­ing some of this hap­pen­ing among Friends, though it’s almost com­plete­ly on the indi­vid­ual lev­el, at least here on the East Coast. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this shakes out over the next few years and whether it will bypass, engage with or siphon off the Soci­ety of Friends. In the mean­time, Evans’ post and the links she embeds in it are well worth exploring.

Peace and Twenty-Somethings

October 17, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Over on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’ve post­ed some­thing I orig­i­nal­ly start­ed writ­ing for my per­son­al site: Where is the grass­roots con­tem­po­rary non­vi­o­lence move­ment? It asks why there’s no the kind of young, grass­roots cul­ture around peace like the net­works that I see “else­where on the net.”

The piece speaks for itself but there is one point of con­text and a few obser­va­tions to make. The first is that the grass­roots cul­ture I was think­ing of when I wrote the piece was the “emer­gent church,” “young evan­gel­i­cal” move­ment. Thir­ty years ago the kids I’ve met at “Cir­cle of Hope”, a Philadel­phia “emer­gent church” loose­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Brethren could eas­i­ly have been at a Move­ment for New Soci­ety* train­ing: the cul­ture, the inter­ests, the demo­graph­ics are all strik­ing­ly similar.

(MNS was a nation­al but West Philly-centered net­work of group hous­es, pub­li­ca­tions, and orga­niz­ing that forged the iden­ti­ties of many of the twenty-somethings who par­tic­i­pat­ed; Non​vi​o​lence​.org is arguably a third-generation descen­dant of MNS, via New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers where I worked for six years).

The obser­va­tion for Friends is that retro-organizing like the relatively-new “Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work” [web­site URL long since dropped & picked up by spam­mer] will have a real­ly hard time act­ing as any sort of out­reach project to twenty-somethings (a main goal accord­ing to a talk giv­en my month­ly meet­ing by its direc­tor). The grass­roots peace-centric com­mu­ni­ties that were thriv­ing when the Net­work spon­sors were in their twen­ties don’t exist any­more. Rather pre­dictably, the pho­tographs of the next two dozen speak­ers for the Pen­dle Hill Peace­build­ing Forum series show only one who might be under forty (maybe, and she’s from an exot­ic locale which is why she gets in). I’m glad that a gen­er­a­tion of sixty-something Quak­er activists are guar­an­teed steady employ­ment, but don’t any Quak­er insti­tu­tions think there’s one Amer­i­can activist under forty worth lis­ten­ing to?

I think the best descrip­tion of this phe­nom­e­non comes from the mil­i­tary. They call it “inces­tu­ous ampli­fi­ca­tion” and define it as “a con­di­tion in war­fare where one only lis­tens to those who are already in lock­step agree­ment, rein­forc­ing set beliefs and cre­at­ing a sit­u­a­tion ripe for mis­cal­cu­la­tion.” I sus­pect that peace activists are so wor­ried about their own rel­e­van­cy that they have a hard time rec­og­niz­ing new peers or changed circumstances.

These num­bers and the lack of speak­er diver­si­ty explain why I rarely even both­er with Quak­er peace con­fer­ences any­more. I would­n’t mind being over­looked in my peace min­istry if I saw oth­er activists my age being rec­og­nized. But I can’t take my invis­i­bil­i­ty as feed­back since it’s clear­ly not about me or my work. The homo­gene­ity of the speak­ers lists at most con­fer­ences sends a clear mes­sage that younger peo­ple aren’t want­ed except as pas­sive audi­ence mem­bers clap­ping for the inspir­ing fifty- to seventy-somethings on stage. How much of cur­rent retro peace orga­niz­ing is just self-stroking Boomer fantasy?

The in-group inces­tu­ous­ness has cre­at­ed a gen­er­a­tion gap of rel­e­van­cy. When insti­tu­tions and move­ments become myopic, they become irrel­e­vant to those locked out­side. We have to go else­where to build our identities.

The inter­net is one place to go. From there it’s clear that the insti­tu­tion­al projects don’t have the “buzz,” i.e., the sup­port and excit­ment, that the Gen-X-led projects do. The inter­net alone won’t save us: there’s only so much cul­ture one can build online and computer-mediated dis­cus­sions favor argu­men­ta­tion, ratio­nal­i­ty, and ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ness. But it’s one of the few venues open to out­siders with­out cash or insti­tu­tion­al clout.

But what about the con­tent of a twenty-first cen­tu­ry twenty-something peace movement?

Many of today’s twenty-something Quak­ers were raised up as sec­u­lar peace activists. Our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often de-emphasize con­tro­ver­sial issues of faith and belief to focus on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny as the uni­fy­ing Quak­er val­ue. Going to protests is lit­er­al­ly part of the cur­ricu­lum of many Young Friends pro­grams. Even more of a prob­lem, old­er Friends are often afraid to share their faith plain­ly and ful­ly with younger Friends on a one-on-one basis. The prac­tice of per­son­al and Meeting-based spritu­al men­tor­ship that once trans­mit­ted Friends val­ues between gen­er­a­tions is very under-utilized today.

Almost all of these Friends stop par­tic­i­pat­ing in Quak­erism as they enter their twen­ties, com­ing back only occa­sion­al­ly for reunion-type gath­er­ings. Many of these lapsed Friends are out explor­ing alter­na­tive spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions that more clear­ly artic­u­late a faith that can give mean­ing and pur­pose to social action. I have friends in this lost Quak­er gen­er­a­tion that are going to Bud­dhist tem­ples, prac­tic­ing yoga spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, build­ing sweat lodges and join­ing evan­gel­i­cal or Roman Catholic church­es. Will they real­ly be won back with anoth­er lec­ture series? What would hap­pen if we Friends start­ed artic­u­lat­ing the deep faith roots of our own peace tes­ti­mo­ny? What if we start­ed tes­ti­fy­ing to one anoth­er about that great Pow­er that’s tak­en away occa­sion for war, what if our tes­ti­mo­ny became a wit­ness to our faith?

Why are a lot of the more thought­ful under-40s going to alter­na­tive church­es and what are they hop­ing to find there?

Don’t get me wrong: I hope these new peace ini­tia­tives do well and help to build a thriv­ing twenty-something activist scene again. It’s just that for fif­teen years I’ve seen a suces­sion of projects aimed at twenty-somethings come and go, fail­ing to ignite sus­tain­ing inter­est. I wor­ry that things won’t change until spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tions seri­ous­ly start includ­ing younger peo­ple in the decision-making process from their incep­tion and start rec­og­niz­ing that our focus might be rad­i­cal­ly different.

Post­script
I share some obser­va­tions about the dif­fer­ent way insti­tu­tion­al and out­sider Friends use the inter­net in How Insid­ers and Seek­ers Use the Quak­er Net.

UPDATE: The Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work was laid down in late 2005. The cit­ed rea­son was “bud­getary con­straints,” an emp­ty excuse that side­steps any respon­si­bil­i­ty for exam­in­ing vision, inclu­sion or impli­men­ta­tion. It’s forum is now an adver­tis­ing stage for “free mature porn pics.” It’s very sad and there’s no joy in say­ing “I told you so.”

UPDATE: After twelve years I laid down Non​vi​o​lence​.org and sold the domain. I nev­er received any real sup­port from Friends.

Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal

September 6, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A look at the generational shifts facing Friends.

I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals: Fac­ing the Chal­lenges of the New World, which exam­ines the cul­tur­al and gen­er­a­tional shifts hap­pen­ing with­in the Chris­t­ian Evan­gel­i­cal move­ment. At the bot­tom of this page is a handy chart that out­lines the gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences in the­ol­o­gy, eccle­si­as­ti­cal par­a­digm, church poli­ty that he sees. When I first saw it I said “yes!” to almost each cat­e­go­ry, as it clear­ly hits at the gen­er­a­tional forces hit­ting Quakerism.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly many Friends in lead­er­ship posi­tions don’t real­ly under­stand the prob­lems fac­ing Quak­erism. Or: they do, but they don’t under­stand the larg­er shifts behind them and think that they just need to redou­ble their efforts using the old meth­ods and mod­els. The Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion in charge knows the chal­lenge is to reach out to seek­ers in their twen­ties or thir­ties, but they do this by devel­op­ing pro­grams that would have appealed to them when they were that age. The cur­rent crop of out­reach projects and peace ini­tia­tives are all very 1980 in style. There’s no recog­ni­tion that the sec­u­lar peace com­mu­ni­ty that drew seek­ers in twen­ty years ago no longer exists and that today’s seek­ers are look­ing for some­thing deep­er, some­thing more per­son­al and more real.

When younger Friends are includ­ed in the sur­veys and com­mit­tees, they tend to be either the unin­volved chil­dren of impor­tant Baby Boom gen­er­a­tion Quak­ers, or those thirty-something Friends that cul­tur­al­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly fit into the old­er par­a­digms. It’s fine that these two types of Friends are around, but nei­ther group chal­lenges Baby Boomer group-think. Out­spo­ken younger Friends often end up leav­ing the Soci­ety in frus­tra­tion after a few years.

It’s a shame. In my ten years attend­ing a down­town Philadel­phia Friends meet­ing, I eas­i­ly met a hun­dred young seek­ers. They most­ly cycled through, attend­ing for peri­ods rang­ing from a few months to a few years. I would often ask them why they stopped com­ing. Some­times they were just nice and said life was too busy, but of course that’s not a real answer: you make time for the things that are impor­tant and that feed you in some way. But oth­ers told me they found the meet­ing unwel­com­ing, or Friends too self-congratulatory or super­fi­cial, the com­mu­ni­ty more social than spir­i­tu­al. I went back to this meet­ing one First Day after a two year absence and it was depress­ing how it was all the same faces. This is not a knock on this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing, since the same dynam­ics are at work in most of the liberal-leaning meet­ings I’ve attend­ed, both in the FGC and FUM worlds – it’s a gen­er­a­tional cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. I have nev­er found the young Quak­er seek­er com­mu­ni­ty I know is out there, though I’ve glimpsed its indi­vid­ual faces a hun­dred times: always just out of reach, nev­er gelling into a movement.

I’m not sure what the answers are. Luck­i­ly it’s not my job to have answers: I leave that up to Christ and only con­cern myself with being as faith­ful a ser­vant to the Spir­it as I can be (this spirit-led lead­er­ship style is exact­ly one of the gen­er­a­tional shifts Web­ber talks about). I’ve been giv­en a clear mes­sage that my job is to stay with the Soci­ety of Friends, that I might be of use some­day. But there are a few pieces that I think will come out:

A re-examination of our roots, as Christians and as Friends

What babies were thrown out with the bath­wa­ter by turn-of-the-century Friends who embraced mod­ernism and ratio­nal­ism and turned their back on tra­di­tion­al tes­ti­monies? This will require chal­leng­ing some of the sacred myths of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. There are a lot that aren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly Quak­er and we need to start admit­ting to that. I’ve per­son­al­ly tak­en up plain dress and find the old state­ments on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny much deep­er and more mean­ing­ful than con­tem­po­rary ones. I’m a pro­fes­sion­al web­mas­ter and run a promi­nent paci­fist site, so it’s not like I’m stuck in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry; instead, I just think these old tes­ti­monies actu­al­ly speak to our con­di­tion in the twenty-first Century.

A Desire to Grow

Too many Friends are hap­py with their nice cozy meet­ings. The meet­ings serve as fam­i­ly and as a sup­port group, and a real growth would dis­rupt our estab­lished pat­terns. If Quak­erism grew ten­fold over the next twen­ty years we’d have to build meet­ing­hous­es, have extra wor­ship, reor­ga­nize our com­mit­tees. Involved Friends would­n’t know all the oth­er involved Friends in their year­ly meet­ing. With more mem­bers we’d have to become more rig­or­ous and dis­ci­plined in our com­mit­tee meet­ings. Quak­erism would feel dif­fer­ent if it were ten times larg­er: how many of us would just feel uncom­fort­able with that. Many of our Meet­ings are ripe for growth, being in boom­ing sub­urbs or thriv­ing urban cen­ters, but year after year they stay small. Many sim­ply neglect and screw up out­reach or reli­gious edu­ca­tion efforts as a way of keep­ing the meet­ing at its cur­rent size and with its cur­rent character.

A more personally-involved, time-consuming commitment

Reli­gion in Amer­i­ca has become yet anoth­er con­sumer choice, an enter­tain­ment option for Sun­day morn­ing, and this par­a­digm is true with Friends. We com­plain how much time our Quak­er work takes up. We com­plain about clear­ness com­mit­tees or vision­ing groups that might take up a Sat­ur­day after­noon. A more involved Quak­erism would real­ize that the hour on First Day morn­ing is in many ways the least impor­tant time to our Soci­ety. Younger seek­ers are look­ing for con­nec­tions that are deep­er and that will require time. We can’t build a Soci­ety on the cheap. It’s not mon­ey we need to invest, but our hearts and time.

I recent­ly vis­it­ed a Meet­ing that was set­ting up its first adult reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­gram. When it came time to fig­ure out the for­mat, a weighty Friend declared that it could­n’t take place on the first Sun­day of the month because that was when the finance com­mit­tee met; the sec­ond Sun­day was out because of the mem­ber­ship care com­mit­tee; the third was out because of busi­ness meet­ing and so forth. It turned out that reli­gious edu­ca­tion could be squeezed into one 45-minute slot on the fourth Sun­day of every month. Here was a small strug­gling meet­ing in the mid­dle of an sym­pa­thet­ic urban neigh­bor­hood and they could­n’t spare even an hour a month on reli­gious edu­ca­tion or sub­stan­tive out­reach to new mem­bers. Mod­ern Friends should not exist to meet in committees.

A renewal of discipline and oversight

These are taboo words for many mod­ern Friends. But we’ve tak­en open-hearted tol­er­ance so far that we’ve for­got­ten who we are. What does it mean to be a Quak­er? Seek­ers are look­ing for answers. Friends have been able to pro­vide them with answers in the past: both ways to con­duct one­self in the world and ways to reach the divine. Many of us actu­al­ly yearn for more care, atten­tion and over­sight in our reli­gious lives and more con­nec­tion with others.

A confrontation of our ethnic and cultural bigotries

Too much of Quak­er cul­ture is still root­ed in elit­ist wealthy Philadel­phia Main Line “Wasp” cul­ture. For gen­er­a­tions of Friends, the Soci­ety became an eth­nic group you were born into. Too many Friends still care if your name is “Roberts,” “Jones,” “Lip­pen­cott,” “Thomas,” “Brin­ton.” A num­ber of nineteenth-century Quak­er lead­ers tried to make this a reli­gion of fam­i­ly fief­doms. There was a love of the world and an urge for to be respect­ed by the out­side world (the Epis­co­palians would­n’t let you into the coun­try clubs if you wore plain dress or got too excit­ed about religion).

Today we too often con­fuse the cul­ture of those fam­i­lies with Quak­erism. The most obvi­ous exam­ple to me is the oft-repeated phrase: “Friends don’t believe in pros­e­ly­tiz­ing.” Wrong: we start­ed off as great speak­ers of the Truth, gain­ing num­bers in great quan­ti­ties. It was the old Quak­er fam­i­lies who start­ed fret­ting about new blood in the Soci­ety, for they saw birthright mem­ber­ship as more impor­tant than bap­tism by the Holy Spir­it. We’ve got a lot of bag­gage left over from this era, things we need to re-examine, includ­ing: our will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice Truth-telling in the name of polite­ness; an over-developed intel­lec­tu­al­ism that has become snob­bery against those with­out advanced school­ing; our taboo about being too loud or too “eth­nic” in Meeting.

Note that I haven’t specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned racial diver­si­ty. This is a piece of the work we need to do and I’m hap­py that many Friends are work­ing on it. But I think we’ll all agree that it will take more than a few African Amer­i­cans with grad­u­ate degrees to bring true diver­si­ty. The Lib­er­al branch of Friends spends a lot of time con­grat­u­lat­ing itself on being open, tol­er­ant and self-examining and yet as far as I can tell we’re the least ethnically-diverse branch of Amer­i­can Quak­ers (I’m pret­ty sure, any­one with cor­rob­o­ra­tion?). We need to re-examine and chal­lenge the unwrit­ten norms of Quak­er cul­ture that don’t arise from faith. When we have some­thing to offer besides upper-class lib­er­al­ism, we’ll find we can talk to a much wider selec­tion of seekers.

Can we do it?

Can we do these re-examinations with­out rip­ping our Soci­ety apart? I don’t know. I don’t think the age of Quak­er schisms is over, I just think we have a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline and church poli­ty that let us pre­tend the splits aren’t there. We just self-select our­selves into dif­fer­ent sub-groups. I’m not sure if this can con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly. Every week our Meet­ings for Wor­ship bring togeth­er peo­ple of rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent beliefs and non-beliefs. Instead of wor­ship, we have indi­vid­ual med­i­ta­tion in a group set­ting, where every­one is free to believe what they want to believe. This isn’t Friends’ style and it’s not sat­is­fy­ing to many of us. I know this state­ment may seem like sac­ri­lege to many Friends who val­ue tol­er­ance above all. But I don’t think I’m the only one who would rather wor­ship God than Silence, who longs for a deep­er reli­gious fel­low­ship than that found in most con­tem­po­rary Meet­ings. Quak­erism will change and Mod­ernism isn’t the end of history.

How open will we all be to this process? How hon­est will we get? Where will our Soci­ety end up? We’re not the only reli­gion in Amer­i­ca that is fac­ing these questions.

Tra­di­tion­al
Evangelicals
1950 – 1975

Prag­mat­ic
Evangelicals
1975 – 2000

Younger
Evangelicals
2000-

Theological
Commitment

 Chris­tian­i­ty
as a ratio­nal worldview		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as ther­a­py Answers needs		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as a com­mu­ni­ty of faith.
Ancient/Reformation
Apolo­get­ics
Style 		Evi­den­tial
Foundational		 Chris­tian­i­ty
as meaning-giver
Experiential
Per­son­al Faith		 Embrace
the metanarrative
Embod­ied apologetic
Com­mu­nal faith
Eccle­sial
Par­a­digm 		Con­stan­tin­ian
Church
Civ­il Religion		 Cul­tur­al­ly
sen­si­tive church
Mar­ket Driven		 Mis­sion­al
Church
Counter cultural
Church
Style 		Neigh­bour­hood
churches
Rural		 Megachu­ruch
Suburban
Mar­ket targeted		 Small
Church
Back to cities
Intercultural
Lead­er­ship
Style 		Pas­tor
centred		 Man­age­r­i­al
Model
CEO		 Team
ministry
Priest­hood of all
Youth
Min­istry 		Church-centred
programs		 Out­reach
Programs
Week­end fun retreats		 Prayer,
Bible Study, Wor­ship, Social Action
Edu­ca­tion
 Sun­day
School
Infor­ma­tion centred		 Tar­get
gen­er­a­tional groups and needs		 Inter­gen­er­a­tional
for­ma­tion in community
Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty
 Keep
the rules		 Pros­per­i­ty
and success		 Authen­tic
embodiment
Wor­ship
 Tra­di­tion­al Con­tem­po­rary Con­ver­gence
Art
 Restrained Art
as illustration		 Incar­na­tion­al
embodiment
Evan­ge­lism
 Mass
evangelism		 Seek­er
Service		 Process
evangelism
Activists
 Begin­nings
of evan­gel­i­cal social action		 Need-driving
social action (divorce groups, drug rehab		 Rebuild
cities and neighborhoods

See also:

On Quak­er Ranter:

  • It Will Be There in Decline Our Entire Lives. There’s a gen­er­a­tion of young Chris­tians dis­il­lu­sioned by mod­ern church insti­tu­tion­al­ism who are writ­ing and blog­ging under the “post-modern” “emer­gent church” labels. Do Friends have any­thing to offer these wea­ried seek­ers except more of the same hashed out institutionalism?
  • Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?, my obser­va­tions from the Novem­ber 2003 “Indie Allies” meet-up.
  • Sodium-Free Friends, a post of mine urg­ing Friends to active­ly engage with our tra­di­tion and not just selec­tive­ly edit out a few words which makes Fox sound like a sev­en­teen cen­tu­ry Thich Nhat Hanh. “We poor humans are look­ing for ways to tran­scend the crap­pi­ness of our war- and consumer-obsessed world and Quak­erism has some­thing to say about that.”
  • Peace and Twenty-Somethings: are the Emer­gent Church seek­ers cre­at­ing the kinds of youth-led inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties that the peace move­ment inspired in the 1970s?

Elsewhere:

  • From Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west comes an emer­gent church” church plant­i­ng project called Sim­ple Church­es (since laid down, link is to archive). I love their intro: “As your peruse the links from this site please rec­og­nize that the Truth reflect­ed in essays are often writ­ten with a ‘prophet­ic edge’, that is sharp, non com­pro­mis­ing and some­times rad­i­cal per­spec­tive. We believe Truth can be received with­out ‘curs­ing the dark­ness’ and encour­age you to reflect upon find­ing the ‘can­dle’ to light, per­son­al­ly, as you apply what you hear the Lord speak­ing to you.”
  • The emer­gent church move­ment hit the New York Times in Feb­ru­ary 2004. Here’s a link to the arti­cle and my thoughts about it.
  • “Ortho­dox Twenty-Somethings,” a great arti­cle from TheOoze (now lost to a site redesign of theirs), and my intro to the arti­cle Want to under­stand us?
  • The blog­ger Punkmon­key talks about what a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith would look like and it sounds a lot like what I dream of: “a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith is a liv­ing breath­ing trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ty of faith will­ing to get messy while reach out to, and bring­ing in, those out­side the cur­rent community.”