Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

I have a friend who owns a restaurant. Actually, he is a Master Chef, one of about 400 in the world; he has been honoured as Chevalier de l'Ordre du Merite Agricole (like being knighted in France). Last week, he finally had a good restaurant review. Not that he's had bad reviews-in the past five years his reviews have been okay to good-but this one was great. It's not so much that the reviewer loved his restaurant, but rather that she understood what he was trying to do. Earlier critical reviews would say his was not a good bistro or that he failed to achieve modern synthesis; one reviewer didn't know Escoffier from Bobby Flay. My friend's restaurant is classic Parisian dining - not bistro, not roadhouse, not garlic-infused steakhouse. I think that his pleasure over the review was that the reviewer understood what the restaurant was trying to achieve - and had it been very critical, he would still have been pleased that they at least understood the concept and the goals.

Other than making me hungry and convincing you that I am a French cuisine snob, what does that have do with the Emerging Spirit?

Well, our mandate is almost up and we have no idea if or how we are going to continue. There have been lots of critical reviews and opinions expressed in The Observer, in other blogs, and to me personally. Much like food, everybody is allowed to have their own taste and the right to decide what they like or don't like. But if you go to a French restaurant and complain that they don't serve sushi, you're really saying more about yourself than you are the restaurant, don't you think?

I've read and heard some very good critical commentary about Emerging Spirit, but most of what I have heard seems to be misinformed. Or maybe, I've been missing the point this last year.

Allow me, if you will, to tell you what I think the primary goal of Emerging Spirit is and has been: It's not about getting those young folks into church, it's not about wasting money that could be used for public witness, it's not about equipping our churches with flat screens and PowerPoint preaching.

Let me repeat the first point: It's not about putting bums in seats... it's about learning how to speak to people who speak a different language than the one we speak in most of our churches.

Many--I would venture, most--20-45 year olds don't speak the way our parents did. They have different ways of looking at the world, exploring the inner self and responding to that still, quiet voice the calls them from within.

They are spiritual beings--all beings are. They are hungry--all beings are. But they are not coming to us to share and be fed because they really don't understand what we are saying. Sure, some of them simply don't trust us--for past mistakes or guilt by association (ours, not theirs)--but when we try to dispel the myths and correct the impressions they look at us the same way my dog looks at me when I am singing.... ("He's doing something, but I have no idea what it is, and frankly, it scares me, so I'll just go hide in the closet.")

Emerging Spirit, through ads and websites, brilliant blogs (some, anyway) and congregation training events, is trying to help. Not help our churches find new people to pay the bills, but to help those outside of the church discover that we have something of great value to share inside our church communities.

We are helping by teaching church folk to speak a new language, the language of people who will change jobs 17 times in a career, people who participate in the democracy of authority through Wikipedia and YouTube, people whose earliest shared memory is not the end of the war or where they were when Kennedy was shot--but maybe Paul Henderson scoring the game-winning goal in the 1972 Canada/Russia series or, possibly the final episode of Seinfeld. They don't speak the same language that most of us speak as our first language, and until we realize that, we are like Canadian tourists shouting English at a pedestrian in Rome, hoping that she will tell us where all the good churches are!

Regardless of what happens with Emerging Spirit at the end of its mandate, I believe that we have had great success. But I have only my experience and intuition to go by. The proof will come in future years as we see if those of us in the church are changing, daring to sing new songs, and try new ways or if we are simply focused on ecclesiastical palliative care. I've met people at Living the Hope seminars who have struck me as brave, daring, and spirit-filled enough to try new things--not the things that I was teaching, but the things that our teaching inspired them to imagine and create. It is in those people and the actions of the Holy Spirit, that our true success or failure will be revealed.

Until then--please don't say that we failed because we didn't increase your church membership this quarter. That was never our, excuse me, my goal.