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

The Emerging Spirit project will officially end on December 31, 2010.

As part of the closing of the project we gathered those who had presented workshops, under the banner of the project, from all across the country. Not all could attend but 35 gathered at Church House November 23-24, 2010. This reflection formed part of the closing worship.

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During the past few years we have been proclaiming that the prime story of our time is not that the church is dysfunctional or in decline but that God is at work and inviting us to write a new chapter in the story of God’s people.

We have used, until it wilts from exhaustion, the quote from Loren Mead:

We are at the front edges of the greatest transformation of the church that has occurred for 1,600 years. It is by far the greatest change that the church has ever experienced in America; it may eventually make the transformation of the Reformation look like a ripple in a pond.

If it is true that we are being called forward, it will not be the first time that we, as the people of God, are called to be on the move. Our earliest stories are of a people on the move.

Part of the trouble with Emerging Spirit was not in its mandate or vision but in failing to appreciate just how difficult it is for local leadership to make significant shifts in a congregational culture. We probably should have known better - and maybe even did - but the timeframe was compact and necessitated certain choices.

By and large leaders were sympathetic to the project's analysis, message and call to radical hospitality. The challenge, in reality, lay in trying to balance the cost in time and energy it would take to engage that question with all the other voices demanding attention. No one says that improving a ministry of hospitality is a bad thing but where does it fit in the lineup of things we should do, like looking at the governance system, renovating the worship service, training leaders, meeting the budget, visiting the sick and doing all the things necessary to keep an old way of being church on its feet while being open to something new. For many there just wasn't time or energy even though we heard 'Amens' from their lips and spirits. (Part of me is still not convinced that making hospitality a priority really takes as much time as it does a commitment but more of that in another blog. For now, I concede the point that it takes time which leaders feel they do not have.)

Sojourners has posted a provocative article from their May 2010 issue asking, "Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only?" The discussion about this article on Sojourners' website, as well as on several other blogs, raises important questions and insights about diversity and the emerging church. Through these conversations, roiling at times, some potential new directions and areas of growth are beginning to emerge. And as they do, more attention is being given to the reality that the emerging church is much bigger than just what is happening in North America or the handful of well-known writers and speakers who are associated with the movement.

"Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only?"
By Soong-Chan Rah and Jason Mach, with responses by Julie Clawson, Brian McLaren, and Debbie Blue.

Sojourners has also posted a number of additional responses on their God's Politics blog, including Shane Claiborne, Soong-Chan Rah, Jarrod McKenna, and Julie Clawson.

Other blogs dicussing the article:

Tony Jones: Emergent's White Problem.

Tall Skinny Kiwi: The Future