It's the end of emergent as we know it...and i feel fine

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Please forgive me, I never knew that, As a legal non-profit (501(c)(3)) corporation, Emergent has had a Board of Directors and an annual business meeting, as required by law, for several years now. I guess this isn't true for all things emerging outside of the US. First, I must say, this is so NOT postmodern. But now this, Tony Jones, Emergent-U.S. National Director, no, strike that, Coordinator. The spin from these systematizing anti-systematizers couldn't be beat by any politician from Washington D.C. Just when I'm getting ready to write about the birth of a new denomination/affiliation/movement with the requisite gatekeepers and doctrinal fences, I get another gift from these guys. I know the meeting happened last month but emergent-us isn't part of my regular rounds of emergent's blogdom. I actually ended up there from Andrew's blog on the ec's tension points where someone mentioned the trashing a, presumably, orthodox Presbyterian minister named tooaugust on emergent-us's comment board at Mclaren's post-meeting reflections. So this guy frustrates some other people who resort to calling him a loser and phony and more graphic/worldly names. So much for the conversation.
So this is how i see it all playing out over the next couple years. As the wagons circle up, people will go back to their established churches with resources and try to bring some emergent flavor there, some will go off the deep end and start emergent cults, emergent churches deepen their affiliation by defining more who they are with only positive statements. Prominent people who are able to agree with those statements by redefining the terms or hovering in the loopholes will be asked to step down from prominent positions. Eventually a mechanism for disassociation will be called for and negative statements will be developed. Power will be concentrated. And then emergentus looks like what they didn't want to be.
The whole hell issue might be the thing that drives this development. Mclaren is relationally right in the middle of things. But he also will drive a wedge between ec and the conservative churches these 1st gen leaders all come from.
For the contrary position go here.

Comments

Geoff Gordon said…
Question: why the uncharitable posture toward Emergent? I understand disagreeing on points here and there but the way you talk about it creates an Us vs. Them dynamic. Do you see echoes of flawed systems that I don't see. Where does the cynacism come from? I have been really helped by a lot of the thinking that has come out of the "dialogue," Brian McLaren's books, etc., but I want to understand where you are coming from. I'll grant that you've been an early critic of things that deserved critique before.
July 11, 2005
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