Big Tent Christianity

I am finally getting around to posting some notes and thoughts from the conference I went to last month, Big Tent Christianity. It was a gathering of thinkers and practitioners in the Emergent Church movement. This gathering was the capstone of a project on which Philip Clayton, theology professor at Claremont University, has been working. There were about 200 people in attendance to hear 35 or so speakers. The crowd was made up of people from several mainline denominations, many progressive Baptists (it was held in North Carolina), and some non- and post- denominational folks. It was hosted by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, two who have been involved in the Emergent movement from the very beginning.

There was a lot to like about the conference and the speakers. I, like many, have found in the Emergent movement, helpful words to describe the direction in which we have been moving. My only complaint is a certain amount of cloying self-consciousness, a hipster "look at the coolness that is us" sensibility that is mildly annoying (yes, that is a pipe that 20-something is smoking). Beyond that, however, there was some good conversation and much food for thought.

For each of the next few days I will highlight one of the panel discussions. Some were more rich than others, some were more notable than others (in that there was stuff to take notes on), and some piqued my interest more than others, which accounts for the length and brevity of some of the sections.

The first session was Big Tent Christianity and included Phyllis Tickle, Brian Mclaren, and Philip Clayton.

Philip Clayton talked about the Big Tent metaphor, inviting us to imagine the old revivals held in tents. This is where many, including Clayton himself, have had a profound experience of the Divine. The other meaning he suggested is the bigness of the tent, a tent where as many as possible can fit.

He challenged those gathered to consider:
Revival: repentance, not just a personal revival, but something more complex
Renewal: not rejection, we don't have to reject everything. We can move away and come back to discover the tradition anew.
Revisioning: discovering new ways of being the church
Reflection: taking the responsibility for finding the words to describe our relationship with Christ
Respond: Clayton left us with a three-fold exhortation: 1. Called us to the discipline of living deeply, 2. Called us to practice Big Tent Christianity at home, 3. Be pioneering prophets.

Brian McLaren, who moved from traditional evangelicalism to  a more progressive or Emergent position shared what he had experienced on that journey:

1. Loss of members
2. Loss of friends
3. Loss of belonging
4. Loss of simplicity, certainty
5. Loss of rights
6. Gaining wounds and fatigue

and, conversely:

1. Members may have only been consumers anyway
2. New friends when you reach out to the "other"
3. Making space for others to belong
4. Something beyond dualism- a new simplicity
5. Opportunity to love our enemies
6. In being wounded, we lose capacity to inflict wounds

Phyllis Tickle, shared, basically, from her book The Great Emergence

She sees a great upheaval in religion and culture every 500 years, the latest, "The Great Emergence," happening now.

the Great Emergence in one word: de-institutionalized

"Emergence Christianity" is the overarching theme- but there are different emPHAsis on the sylABles: emergent, emerging, neo-monastic, missional

God Is Still Speaking, #1

Yesterday after church a group of folks gathered to discuss how we would organize our Sunday School after our Christian Education director retires at the end of October. It was mostly about mechanics and logistics, the comfortable discussions we fall into at these types of meetings: who is available to cover when, what is the procedure, etc.

But right in the middle there was a God Is Still Speaking Moment. Carol, our Christian Ed director, put in a DVD that is part of the curriculum. She told me later that it was not even the video clip that she intended to show first. It was geared for middle school students and it was a clip of a group of kids discussing Jesus' family tree. They were commenting on the variety of characters in Jesus' ancestry, how some were famous Biblical characters known for following God and how some were people that would not be considered at all "religious," or as one of the kids put it, not like he pictured "church people."

God used a Sunday school video clip to speak to me yesterday. I hope, if God was speaking to others beside me, they were listening as well. Jesus of Nazareth, the one sent to redeem and restore the world, came from a pedigree of bastards, murderers, prostitutes, and cheats.

God can use any of us to birth the Divine into the world. There is nothing we can do to disqualify ourselves. One is used by God because God chooses to use one, despite one's education level, title, station in life, social class, or criminal record. Of course, our life experience may make us more or less fit for particular ministries, but none of us are disqualified and, therefore, none of us exempt.

Wait a Minute, I Don't Buy That...

Last Sunday, a mother came up to me and told me that she and her daughter had been discussing the morning's sermon. I had preached on "We Belong to Jesus" and had mentioned that when we surrender to Christ, when we see ourselves as belonging to Christ, then we don't have to worry about things like others' opinions of ourselves or whether we have enough money at the end of the month.

Well, this sharp young woman's bullshit detector went off and she said to herself, "Wait a minute, that is not true. It doesn't match what I have experienced." And of course, it doesn't. She knows all sorts of good, church-going Christians that still have to worry about their mortgage.

And I found myself once again at the precipice of the huge chasm that divides religious talk and sermons and church stuff from an authentic relationship with Christ. A life surrendered to Christ, a life given to something more than just making it, does indeed lead us into an entirely different realm where the concerns of this life don't go away but become no more burdensome than gnats that we have to shew away from our face. However, I'm afraid that, at least as far as typical American church life goes, we can't get there from here. The systems we have not only don't lead people into this authentic relationship with God, in many ways they actively oppose it.

As I enter ordained ministry, I want my ministry to be about facilitating the wonderful transformation and freedom that can take place in individual lives and in society as one makes the decision to simply follow Jesus.

The Spirituality of Questions

Last Sunday afternoon was my Ecclesiastical Council for my ordination. In the United Church of Christ, it is not just the local church that ordains a woman or man for ministry, it is also a function of the wider church, since one is ordained as a minister of the entire United Church of Christ.

What this looked like for me is that 40 or so people, mostly from my church, but including people from other churches in the area, gathered to discern whether I had been called into vocational ministry. I shared briefly my spiritual journey, and my theological and ecclesiological understandings as they stand at this point in my life. And then the magic happened.

After my opening address, anyone gathered was welcome to ask me questions. And ask they did. "What is heaven and hell?" "What does it mean to be saved?" "Why does God allow evil?" "Will we ever evolve beyond our need for God?" And I didn't get the feeling at all that people were trying to trick me or even test me. It felt like those gathered were revealing the deep questions of their hearts.

In the coming days I may share my responses to some of these questions. For now, I want to honor the questions themselves. I left that afternoon convinced that we as the church need to be creating space for people to be safe in asking questions. For so long, the church has been the dispenser of the "truth" and we would all come on Sundays and get our cup filled. And because we weren't allowed or were too polite or were afraid about what would happen if we started messing with the cards in the house of cards. Our choices were to agree and fall in line or  disagree, keep our mouths shut, and leave or stay and pretend.

We need to question. We need to knead and squeeze our understanding of our truth so we can get it into a form that makes it efficacious for our lives.