Thanks everyone!

Thanks to everyone who came out for the Doug Pagitt Live Occurrence event. It was a great time, and we really enjoyed meeting everyone and hanging out. A special shout out to the folks at Jacob's Porch for allowing us to use their space. Also, it was great to see our emergent friends from the Dayton Cohort and the Akron Cohort! Thanks for dropping by!

You can see a few more pictures from the event on our facebook page here:

Doug is coming this weekend!

In case you forgot, Doug Pagitt is coming to Columbus on Sunday, July 19th. You can see more information here, and I've embedded a video below that has a little preview. I'm really excited for this event and I hope you and all your family and friends will be able to make it.

XWB Discussion Post #2

This post is a part of the online discussion about Doug Pagitt's book "A Christianity Worth Believing in anticipation of his visit to Columbus."

A Hellenistic Faith?

The following is an excerpt taken from chapter 5 in which Doug uses the story of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 to show that in the 1st century, the new faith of following Jesus Christ was meant for different people of different backgrounds, races and lifestyles. He proceeds in the chapter to discuss how Christianity became more "set in stone" along with the development of Greek and Roman culture.

"So the Jewish believers were asking the Gentile believers to do whatever they could to make it possible for the two groups to meet together. The first few centuries of the Christian faith were all about this balance between diversity and unity.

But then something changed...Christianity started moving from a faith committed to multicultural unity to one requiring monocultural uniformity. In other words, Christianity began settling into one particular culture and worldview, and all adherents had to convert to that worldview if they wanted to follow Jesus. Strangely, that mandatory worldview was not the Hebrew worldview of the Jewish people. It was the Greek worldview of the Gentiles. ...

... By the time Christianity became the official Roman religion under Constantine, it was so deeply a Greek expresion that not only had the Jewish heritage faded, but many Christians were fearful of the Jews, and deep conflict between Jews and Christians was common. This marked quite a change. The influence of telling a dynamic Jewish story in and through multiple cutlures was replaced with a Greek monocultural expression of Christianity. It is from within this fully Greek worldview that much of our 'official' modern Christianity arose. ...

... Augustine and many who followed him needed to create complex theologies to smooth out the questions raised by all of these competing worldviews. Their theological explanations are brilliant for their situation, but they are just that - situational explanations. They are not in and of themselves the story of God. This is why it's important for us to recognize the cultural encoding that takes place every time a theology is created. every theology is grounded in a culture and set of culturally based assumptions and concerns. To hold to these theologies in the fifth century was to be faithful, for they were created as explanations for the understanding of the world at that time. But to hold to those same conclusions today, when the worldview that demanded them has expired, is simply foolish."

In my opinion, one of the most common mistakes religious people make is that they experience God in a meaningful and real way, and then they aim to replicate that experience with everyone else they know, regardless of any differences in background, personality or experiences. It seems almost contradictory to have a "flexible" or "changing" religion, because inherent in the concept of religion is a set of beliefs and systems that are unchanging, permanent, absolute.

But as we all know, the world - and the people and the ideas in the world - are all changing, and very rapidly. The faith of the 21st century, in many respects, is not the same faith as the 20th century, and certainly not the same faith of the 5th century when Augustine wrote.

But on the other hand, we have the creeds, we have the Scriptures, and we have the traditions of the Church. Does it all need to change? Herein lies the difficult interpretative task: Which beliefs are culturally bound and necessitate revision? And which are more permanent, more foundational and should not be changed at all?

Possible questions to discuss:

• In what ways do you see the ancient influences in the Christian faith?
  
• What parts of your current Christian experience do you feel are more being held over from cultural experiences of the past, and aren't really central to the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus?
  
• How do we determine what parts of our faith are cultural and what parts are permanent? Can we make such a division?
  

XWB Discussion Post #1

This post is a part of the online discussion about Doug Pagitt's book "A Christianity Worth Believing in anticipation of his visit to Columbus."

Introduction: "I want to believe differently."

The following is an excerpt from chapter 1, taken from here. You can also listen to a reading of the chapter or download a .pdf of the whole chapter here.

I am a Christian — a theologically trained, church-planting, evangelizing, Jesus-loving Christian. I trust in resurrection, and I seek to join with God in the world. But I have problem, an internal conflict that has only gotten worse in my twenty years of following this faith. It’s the kind of problem I tell others about with great caution and no small amount of anxiety.

I am a Christian, but I don’t believe in Christianity.

At least I don’t believe in the versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years, the ones that were perfectly suitable in their time and place but have little connection with this time and place. The ones that answer questions we no longer ask and fail to consider questions we can no longer ignore. The ones that don’t mesh with what we know about God and the world and our place in it. I want to be very clear: I am not conflicted because I struggle to believe. I am conflicted because I want to believe differently.

I especially appreciate Doug's honesty here, right at the beginning of the book, clearing confessing his faith, but admitting to his unbelief in the prevailing systems of Christianity and struggle to believe differently.

Have you felt this tension before, between loving Jesus, but not loving Christianity? Where has it led you? What particular parts of the "versions of Christianity" do you struggle with, disagree with, or give you problems? Is it possible to be a Christian but not believe in Christianity? How will that affect your involvement in church and with other Christians?

Perhaps the most important questions are, if you have felt this tension, how have you successfully resolved it or found answers? Where do you find hope, even within Christianity? Obviously in the book Doug goes on to offer, as the subtitle states, "a hope-filled, open-armed, alive and well faith for the left-out, left-behind and let-down." But it may be important first to recognize that there are many who love Jesus, but are feeling beat down and disappointed with the versions of Christianity that are commonly offered.

"A Christianity Worth Believing" Online Discussion

I'd like to start an online discussion about Doug Pagitt's book "A Christianity Worth Believing," leading up to his visit to Columbus July 19th. I'll try to post links to chapters you can read online, discussion questions, and generally introduce a few of Doug's ideas that I think are compelling and interesting.

Each post will be titled "XWB Discussion Post #**" These posts will not correspond with any particular cohort discussion session, but rather will be held solely online so hopefully for people can interact and get excited about Doug's visit. Please feel free post comments, ask questions, and engage in the online discussion.

For now, check out Andrew Jones' review of the book here, and peruse Doug Pagitt's own blog that offers links to free chapters online as well as audio recordings of him reading various chapters. If you'd like to pick up your own copy of the book, I got a paperback version from B&N (in town, Lennox) for $14.99, and the Columbus Public Library owns several copies as well.

The COEC Welcomes Doug Pagitt!!

Please mark you calendars for another special event this summer - Sunday July 19th we are hosting Doug Pagitt, author, speaker, pastor, seminal leader in emergent village, and future politician? Doug will be sharing his "Christianity Worth Believing" Live Occurrence (see more info here) - Also, see the facebook event page here.

The event will be from 3-5pm and will be hosted by Jacob's Porch, located at 45 E. 13th Ave. There is limited parking behind the building, free meter parking on 13th Ave, and inexpensive parking at the nearby Gateway Parking garage.

I have read several of Doug's books, and they are available from the Cols. library and at local book stores (I would highly recommend both "A Christianity Worth Believing" and "Church Re-imagined"). I'll be putting up some posts soon on the COEC blog with selections for reading and discussion.

I'm confident this will be another great author/speaker event for Columbus!!

What is the Emergent Movement? An analogy....

Alright, I've offered analogies before, and you have all been kind enough to offer critiques. I know the question "what is emergent" is going to come up at this little breakout session at Xenos on Thurs., and I want to be able to offer a better answer than a chuckle, a smile, and something like, "No one really knows..."

I'm not sure why I thought of it, but I was thinking about this crazy optical illusion that my dad sent to me one time. Please take a look at it here before you read on.

So the idea is that if you stare at the small cross in the middle, the blinking dot turns green, then eventually all the other dots go away and all you see is the green dot moving around the circle. It is such a clear example that what we see is not always what is there...but then when you *blink* or look away for a second, the other pink dots show up again.

So here is my analogy: The emergent movement is like *blinking* - When we are so focused, so set in our theological ways and opinions, so consumed with the absolute truth we see before our eyes, we may very well be missing something else that is also there. Doug Pagitt in his new book, "A Christianity Worth Believing" (which is surprisingly good, by the way, and you should read it) says there are 31,103 verse in the Bible. So if we memorized 300 of them (which is a lot), we'd only have 1% of the Bible. What about the other 99% What are we missing when we only focus on what we are so certain we can see, and don't step back, *blink*, and take a look around the rest of the Bible.

For me, the emergent movement is about getting a fresh look at the Bible and correcting my vision a little bit. It's being willing to admit that what I think I see may not be what is actually there. It's about allowing other verses, other perspectives, other voices to speak and to inform so I can get a better overall picture. Admittedly, after several years of looking at it this way, I'll have to blink again, and get a fresh view again. But what the optical illusion tells me is that my human nature if prone to block out what I'm not focusing on, or what I don't want to see. So sometimes I have to step back and getter a broader view, even if it messes with what I thought was really there.

Alright, what do you think? How would someone who is not favorable toward emergent respond to this analogy? Obviously it isn't the whole thing, but for me, it hints at the core - any thoughts?