my email is shatterblade@gmail.com

shoot me an email and maybe we can connect.

LOL! Me too. Read the 9rules PM I sent you about 5 minutes ago. I actually just abandoned the word “Emerging” all together. Why? I found it was shutting down conversations before they even had a chance to begin. That’s really a big chunk of irony, considering “Emergent” is supposed to be all about “conversation.” All it is now is another divisive wedge. I think that happened as soon as they built a website, started to organize, and created a brand to emphasize an ideology. Funny, those are the very things “Emergent” claims to abhor.

I think identification with the basic Gospel paves the way for authentic conversation with others. Emergent is just a door slam in the face these days. So, to be truly “emergent,” one should really stop being “emergent.”

That’s what I discovered in the city streets.

Like you said, it is, at the most, just another tool to be added to a much bigger shed. So, focus on the shed and let tools be tools.

We really need to connect in real-time, brother.

I can honestly really agree about the strawman theory. It kinda gets old after a while and I’m sitting wondering “Who have I ever heard who was really like that?”

It elevates an invisible antagonist within the Emerging community and draws further and unnecessary divide.

I usually don’t tell anybody that I’m Emergent or Postmodern just because it infers to most that I, too, am so iconoclastic. yet I’m quite the opposite. I love standing on the backs of my wonderful predecessors.

The thing in the book that was the most exciting to me was the scriptural commentary. A lot of the other stuff lost me. I love how certain scriptures come to so much more life when you can spend more time putting them in their context. Yet, I feel like i might need to test some of it more…

Maybe the most useful emphasis to me in the book is about changing our framing story. Our worldview is so important to how we function. I feel that its another tool I can add to my shed and use whenever the Spirit leads in evangelism…

That said, I actually agree with much of what McLaren says we should be doing, as Christians living on this planet. I just disagree wholeheartedly with the antagonist he created to “re-frame” the story. Every story needs a good antagonist; McLaren’s story is good, but its antagonist, this strawman church that only preaches one message (i.e., Jesus came so you could go to heaven), is very, very weak. In fact, it’s a serious distraction. A story’s antagonist is not supposed to ruin the plot. McLaren’s antagonist ruins the story because it just is not true.

You can read my review of the book here if you’re interested.

I’ve been a lot of churches that I totally disagree with, but not one - not one - of those churches could be accused of only preaching this message, and at the expense of basic discipleship (i.e., taking care of the poor, needy, and sick and being socially aware).

So, it seems like the book’s first really damaging strawman, to be honest. Eh, it’s a good read though.