"I am a graduate of Starfleet Academy. I know many things."

--- Worf, son of Mogh

The next generation of the emerging church is being called upon to re-imagine itself, and it is not pretty. It appears that vibes and ethoi don't have much of a shelf life, the road show bombed and American Christianity was underwhelmed with the whole postmodern fragrance. There was a lot of cussing, a lot of saying whatever they wanted and a lot of religious trinkets thrown about, many pictures of hip people in knit caps were published throughout the land, candles were lighted, but nothing really caught fire.

So they went to Washington, DC, to re-re-imagine. As for the shape of things to come we still have nothing official to report. I was hoping for some movement on the suggestion to let emergent die, but I shall wait patiently to see the color of the smoke.

In the meantime the participants are struggling with their feelings about it all. I think you should read a bit of it and get a sense of what life is like where the centre has not held and where under-educated people struggle with the English language.

Here are some of the feelings of selected participants, and I am on pins and needles to learn how this undisciplined gibberish might be incarnated in a functioning institution. When the time comes for function to bring forth form, it will be helpful to hold these thoughts in one hand and the shape of Emergent 2.0 in the other.

But as simple as it was beforehand to say that I was going to help discuss the future of EV, it is much more difficult to express what actually happened.

[...]

So we shared ideas and spoke of what emergent has meant in the past - the good and the bad. And we spoke of what values of emergent we truly do hold dear. We shared with each other what our wildest dreams were for what is emerging and how best to achieve those dreams. And there was debate, there was push-back, but there was also a lot of harmony as the group understood the language of the whole. I admit there were times during the process when I was scared. There were voices there suggesting that perhaps to achieve our dreams and avoid commoditizing the message we need to let emergent die.

[...]

We share and give away power and the voices of the many are heard. How that will look and which structures will be created or retained is yet to be determined.

--- Julie Clawson

Or maybe, a better way of saying it is that I have words but I'm afraid to write them for fear that they will be misheard, misunderstood, criticized or worse. I'm afraid that people will read them and consume them like a day old happy meal wrenched from it's chipboard box instead of scooped up with decadent care and enjoyed with the ecstatic pleasure I feel.

[...]

Today I am thinking of evdc09 in words and phrases that feel disembodied from the experience as a whole but are so vital to the experience.

Sacrifice the Self
Submit to the Process
Submit to the Collective
Release Expectation
Listen and Hear
Be Present
Engage Fully
Trust
Value the Spaces
Celebrate the Other

--- Makeesha Fisher

I'll share just one significant shift forward for now: it is clear to me that once again the vision of Emergent Village will be rooted deeply in generative friendships. This is a rooting in story, diversity, authenticity, vulnerability and co-laboration in an on-going incarnation of the gospel. There is a wonderful simplicity admist the complexity of relationships that is Emergent Village. In some ways this is a shift back to how this all began or perhaps a re-affirmation of what has been there all along. The story of Emergent Village will continue to be authored among soul friendships.

--- Tim Snyder

The Kingdom of God, breathing and naturalized among us, was dreamed outloud (to which the Spirit and the Bride say ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly'). Communities of restorative justice that lent themselves to transformative coalitions among groups that God is already using were birthed in the language of hope. The artist and dreamer were invited once more to cultivate their gifts and tend to the thing of beauty that is to come. Theology and Philosophy, those most subversive of all talents that Emergent has hoped to possess, were re-imagined as drawing from new and collective voices. These were the optimisms of the moment.

--- Brittian Bullock

The word for glory used by the Hebrews is akin to the word for "heavy." The heaviness of Yahweh landed on Mount Sinai to speak to Moses. The heaviness of Yahweh rolled through Ezekiel's vision of the moving worshippers of God. When that gift was given to us something deep happened for Emergent Village. I think (and here I'm taking editorial liberties) we found our collective voice of "Worship." I need to take a little rabbit trail here to make my point...

I am a novice in the healing arts of Tai Chi and Qugong. But I did it for a while at a church and now and then I run over to the YMCA to join a community in these ancient stretching, breathing, attending practices. Something happens in these disciplines to the connection between my body and my imagination and my spirit. They become more integrated. After a hard Tai Chi work out, when I put my right hand in front of my chest facing the earth and my left below it facing the sky and imagine I'm holding a ball, I begin to feel heat/energy/life between my fingers... The martial artist calls this energy "Chi." And sometimes you can push that energy between each other, you can feel something physical and yet not-concrete happening in the room. When we had surrendered Emergent Village, as we stood in a circle, I felt that energy in the middle of us all, but larger and teaming with greater life. Inside the hallowed out circle that once held our individual ideas and the dreams/ambitions of Emergent's founders had come the Presence of energy/life/wholeness. And we realized that God was near. It felt heavy. And our hands formed around that largeness as if our individual chi/lives had been consumed by Life Eternal. Now, no one else was thinking of Tai Chi but slowly folks hands came out of their pockets, off of their hips, or uncrossed. Some of our hands opened like the liturgist standing at the Lords Table reaching out in invitation, who says "the Lord be with you." And some of our hands raised like the abbot and preacher who sends a benediction to a congregation only we were blessing and being blessed by God. In that moment I (re)discovered worship in front of the glory/heavy of God. We were hushed, like the sound when snow falls. We were humbled like standing in front of Mt Rainer on that rare clear Summer day, or looking over the Grand Canyon, or hearing someone you've wronged say, ‘I know, I forgive you.' We were free like a mass of college graduates throwing their mortar boards into the sky or someone receiving the news that the tumor is benign or the news that grandma's long fight against dementia had ended.

It was thin space.

We were silent.

Michael Toy suggested we take off our shoes. We sang a song of praise...

--- Troy Bronsink