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

June 1 , 2006

WELCOME

"We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book [The Da Vinci Code] is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church."

—Brian McLaren
From an interview in SojoMail (see below).

THE BUZZ

Brian McLaren on The Da Vinci Code

An interview by Lisa Ann Cockrel
Source: SojoMail

The Da Vinci Code recently went from the bestseller list to the big screen. Pastor and writer Brian McLaren talks about why he thinks there's truth in the controversial book's fiction.

What do you think the popularity of The Da Vinci Code reveals about pop culture attitudes toward Christianity and the church?

Brian McLaren: I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church. Why would so many people be disappointed to find that Brown's version of Jesus has been largely discredited as fanciful and inaccurate, leaving only the church's conventional version? Is it possible that, even though Brown's fictional version misleads in many ways, it at least serves to open up the possibility that the church's conventional version of Jesus may not do him justice?

[read the full article]

ON THE LINE

Sites of Interest along the Information Highway

Ship of Fools
Ship of Fools is a happily off-beat site that sends "mystery worshippers travelling incognito" to evaluate the worship services of churches around the world. Their report on Canadian churches features mostly Anglican churches (Metropolitan and Trinity-St. Paul’s in Toronto are the two United Church entries), but it’s interesting to see how these congregations rate in welcoming, comfort level, preaching, and other qualities. It makes you wonder which congregation they might visit next.

Church Marketing Sucks
Some may have a problem with the title of this website, though it’s certainly attention grabbing. This site critiques the state of church marketing, which as you might guess, it finds wanting. To help improve it, the site offers a wide-range of fascinating articles and discussions on all aspects of faith-based marketing and advertising. If your church is planning a media campaign this is a good place to find wise insights from people who have been down that road before.

PULSETAKING

See more of what our readers are saying in the PulseTaking section of our website.

from Rev. Anna Christie, Gilmore Park United, Richmond, B.C.

Gilmore Park United has an evening service that targets young adults, yet most of our "draw" are people in the Emerging Spirit age range (30-45). We have a letter-sign outside our church that we often use to "advertise" what's happening in the evening service, but never has it had such a huge appeal as last night. In fact, our average attendance had dropped to about 20, and we were looking at only doing it once a month in the fall. But for the past three weeks on the sign we advertised the following:

SUNDAY, MAY 28 AT 7 P.M.
REV. ANNA VS. ATHEIST DR. CHRIS NICHOLS

(He's a scientist/atheist young man who grew up in our congregation who has an IQ of 200 and is now a professor of chemistry. I know him fairly well.)

We had 60 people show up, many of whom were "off the street," for this service which was our regular Sunday night fare of our band playing "songs of social justice" and prayers. Instead of a drama, multi-media, or multi-sensory experience, the service featured a 30-minute dialogue between me and the atheist. After the service, our fair trade coffee house was full of people mixing and talking about the subject matter. They could barely keep up with the number of lattes ordered and consumed. It was unreal.

At my husband's law firm downtown the sign was apparently the buzz of the staff. They talked about it, but we didn't see any of them at worship.

How do we duplicate this!? (lol - atheists can apparently attract quite a crowd.) I think it's indicative of folks' spiritual seeking.