My notes from the Great Emergence

Here are of my notes from the Great Emergence Event in Memphis. These are just cut and pasted in, no editing done so if they don't make sense, I'm sorry. I will possibly post more reflections later, however, I need to get to work on some projects for my dad so I will get back to blogging later. 

Session One

Image of the Rummage Sale - 

There is a playfulness to a Rummage Sale. 

When you are going through things for a rummage sale you often find treasures you forgot about and they become renewed treasures again.

The Church in First World Christianity: Latin Christianity

This is really the church in the Latin language, the Latin tradition. 

This is in opposition to Greek Christianity (Middle Eastern) and Coptic Christianity (Asian Christianity). 

This does not really have much to do with the 2/3 world experience. 

This is also going on in the Islam and Jewish world as well. 

This is something going on politically, economically and in religion, the religion being dealt with here is Christianity and we aren’t sure how this Christianity will emerge/change. 

Now that we are at our Rummage Sale we are not sure what people will call the version of Christianity that will emerge from this time. We are just trying to figure this out. We are truly reflecting our considerations of the world as Gen Xers in our religion. 

Our generation will hold at least seven different jobs in our lifetimes. We will also live further away from our roots than ever before. 

Emergenomics are one of the great impacts on the world today. 

The traditional family is a fig newton of James Dobson’s imagination. We follow a God who tells us to leave our family for Him. 

There is no such thing as a fact apart from those who are perceiving that fact. 

Religion is a social construct. 

Religion gives human society a 

Water Proof Casing = Story - this tells us who we are

Mesh Net = the Consensual Illusion - this is how we perceive things work, right or wrong, based on whatever the common agreement is

Strand One = Spirituality - 

Strand Two = Corporeality - all the Aspects of the World that points to the existence of an institution

Strand Three = Morality

Every 500 years there will be a break in the casing and the net and we will begin to play with the three strands. We will FIRST play with the issue of Spirituality (I am spiritual but not religious), second, Corporeality (priest scandals, child molesters, etc.) and finally Morality (abortion, Terri Shivo). 

Hinge Times in History

Great Reformation = rise of Protestantism 

Great Schism = drum out Greek Christianity

Fall of Rome = drum out Coptic Christianity

Shift to the Common Era = birth of Christ

Babylonian Captivity = fall of the Jewish state

Where will the blood shed be within our new reformation - the Great Emergence? Will there be a new faith that fights against the old faith or will it be something that fights against Islam? I think that perhaps this latter thought will be the idea of where the blood shed will come from. Has the bloodshed already occurred? Ireland? 

The only thing that can’t die here is what the Kingdom of God longs to be within us. 

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Session Two

Sola Scriptura - Scriptura Sola = the need for universal literacy 

27,600 different and distinct Protestant groups recognized by the IRS. 

Inherently in Protestantism is inherently divisive. 

1851 begins the change towards the Great Emergence

The Threats to Sola Scripture - 

1852 - Field Theory began with Faraday’s paper 

Matter, Electricity = Electro Magnetism 

1859 - Darwin’s Origin of the Species 

Was a very unhappy person

He thought he was going to glorify God by showing the world the patterns that God works by.

What was heard was not these patterns but rather that we came from monkeys which mean that God was a monkey

1855-65 - “the Recent Unpleasantness” (Civil War) 

There was a religious issue at the core of the slavery issue and churches split. 

The real issue here was on sola scriptura because if you believed this then slavery was of God. 

1917 - 21 - Women’s Movement

1945 - Divorce becomes more realistic

1969 - Ordaining Women (UMC - 1956?) 

Currently our issue is Homosexuality - she says it is a Corporeality issue and not a Morality issue. 

1989 - The Power of Myth - by Bill Moyers (on PBS) and Joseph Campbell

Comparative religions

If what they said was said in a pulpit they would have been called heretics, but being said on your TV with you listening on your couch, this changes things. 

1905 - Albert Einstien wrote 3 papers = gives us micro physics

First - Light = Light travels in bundles 

Second - brownian motion = when you put something on a still body of water and that thing begins to move the question of WHY comes about, Einstien says that the thing 

Third - theory of special relativity = there is no such thing as absolute space or absolute time, this leads to the principle of uncertainty which brings about the fact statement from earlier. 

Now you can not know where an object is and how fast it is traveling at the same time.

Forth - bending of time = created space travel and the walking on the moon, time can be slowed and potentially turned back

The brain appears to work on quantum physics. 

This gives light to The Quest for the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer (1905) and then the Jesus Seminar. 

1942 and 1949 - new discoveries of other documents of scriptures

1935, 37, 38 - Bill Wilson - beginning of Alcohol Anonymous

This meant you stopped going to the church and the addicted helping the addicted. 

The rebirth of the small group movement. 

They spoke of a generic God. 

How do you lead a full life was a thrust of the blue book

1939 - we sent off all our war equipment to Japan and then the returned it on Dec. 7, 1941. Now all we have to send off to war is the young men. 

1941 - Rise of Rosie the Riveter because we wanted to bring him back home. 

Women now have no third good place and women were getting bored because of the industrialization of the kitchen. And so the women got involved in the church = the heyday of protestantism in America. 

Little girls watched their mothers work and now wanted to be empowered. 

1963 - Birth Control Pill was available which meant the woman could now control the income and control her life. It leveled the playing field. 

Now the nature of the world becomes to conquer the world verses protect the home. Now parents went out to conquer the world, kids were sent to daycare and all came home exhausted. This also created generations that were Biblically Illiterate because they no longer were taught these values with mom and dad at home. 

Walter Rauschenbusch was the first to write about the coming change in Christianity

Paul Tillich and Wolhart Pannenberg followed and all were pointing to her chart on the four equal parts. 

Pannenburg’s Quadrents: 

Liturgical 

Social Justice (Panneberg called them Mainlines) 

Renewalists - Azusa Street Revival - 

Conservatives - basically fundamental evangelicals

Then these quadrants begin to merge and they discover the Ancient-Future Church. And we move beyond just talking about God with people from other quadrants and begin to move towards serving along side of others from other quadrants and we begin to mesh our faith. 

This creates a Rose - the New Rose

The Rose was a symbol of the Reformation and this is coming back again. 

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Session Three

Our Concern here is with the religion coming out of the Great Emergence. 

9-11 is perhaps our more defining moment for our generation. 

Out at the edge of the quadrants will come those who are completely ANTI emerging relationships. And within these traditions there are those people who feel like they have a divine calling to stop the change and movements. 

Emerging Church seems to be doing its theology in entertainment. 

The corner people are an important because they help keep us balanced and help us stay on a healthy track. The corners have the leaves for the rose. They are still a part of the rose and they are crucial the God and His forward movement of this movement. 

Eddie Gibbs and Rodger Bolger at Fuller Seminary, article on Established and Emerging relationships

Concentric Circles Towards Emergence:

Traditionalist - those in established Christianity who really have no idea what emergence is right now. Tend to point at this as a generational thing that people will grow out of it. 

Re-traditionalist - Diane Butler Bass has done a study on people who don’t want to be called emergent Christian but don’t want to be called Emergent Christians. 

These people are very techno understanding, etc. BUT aren’t emergent in thinking and such. 

Progressives - Phoenix Affirmation by Eric ------- 

Diane Butler Bass would rather call them the Generatives

They are some of the first people to begin to ask the questions of the emergence:

The nature of a theology of religion - how do I deal with my fellow citizens in a country that is increasingly religiously diverse? How do I hold true to my faith and not create divisiveness? 

Progressives are ACTIVELY seeking out these questions.

Hyphenateds - this is the edge of the pond. 

The church in Jerusalem was the mother of the fresh expression of the church in Antioch. 

We must accept the fact that we have a father and mother church and respect this and love them. 

What is the Authority? 

During the Reformation we lost the church as a community center in exchange for the individual self and only what we need as an individual. 

This is why I keep waiting tables - they teach me see God. Because they find themselves in the Gospel story.