I’ve read enough about the Emergent Church to ask the question, “What does emergent mean” in the context of a parish church?
A dictionary defines emergent as something that is either coming into being or coming into prominence. Another dictionary defines emergent as newly formed and arising unexpectedly. A business dictionary defines emergent as only being knowable when the whole system is seen and understood. This Emerging Voices blog describes itself as a voice of Emerging Christianity, “riding a new wave of emergence.”
When I look at all the possible definitions for emergence, I am struck by the idea of emergence as something that happens gradually, even slowly, as a trend rather than as a sudden event in a moment in time . . . although the bias when talking about emergence is that it happens suddenly. My suspicion is that it is the noticing of the emergent trend that happens in a swift moment of recognition. However, the connecting of the observation with the recognition of what has been observed is what leads to the profound thought that “this is emergence.”
One could also ascribe a characteristic of being countercultural to the “return to basics” movement, since USAmerican culture generally tends to discard the old in favor of the new in its national obsession with consumerism, which espouses striving to discover new things to consume, and consumerism’s accompanying built-in obsolescence. Yet, St. Stephen’s has chosen to step backwards in time in order to reach out to a new generation of seekers. The use of labyrinths to aid prayer in Christian churches dates back to the early 4th century C.E.
From that point of view, the business definition of emergence is an apt model. It says that the church’s emergence will only be knowable when the whole process that the church undertakes to transform itself is known and understood. In other words, we cannot divide and parse all the moving parts of being church and elevate or separate one part from the others. Being church and being the emergent church ultimately has to be about honoring our core, foundational principles, and viewing who we are and who we have become as a whole.
And being “Emerging Voices” on this blog is about each of us 31+ bloggers telling the story of Emerging Christianity from our own part of the whole, recognizing that it is only when the whole is encountered, recognized, and honored, that we are then truly part of the “new wave of emergence.” Each of us has the potential to add energy to that new wave.