December 8th Meeting

It seems that more people have Dec. 8th available, and to keep it easy to remember, we'll meet at 8pm. Everyone and anyone is welcome to our house in Grove City. If you plan to come, send me an email at schroeder.jesse@gmail.com and I'll give you our address and directions.

I'll post a discussion topic soon, or if someone else would like to suggest a topic that'd be great too!

D. A. Carson

I've recently picked up D. A. Carson's book, "Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church." It is a very informative read. Carson writes in a very straight-forward manner, not masking anything. I feel like I'm sitting in one of his lecture classes.

Carson attempts to offer a survey of the emergent church movement, although I'm not sure if he focuses too heavily on authors like McLaren, and also lumps some authors such as Kimball into the mix that would separate themselves a bit from emergent (granted this book is about two years old). In his summary, Carson highlights what he feels are the strengths of the movement. However, he also points out what he feels are its greatest weaknesses.

Carson continually returns to what he sees is the Emergent movements blanket condemnation of modernism and everything associated with modernism. He thinks that Emergent is too quick to write off modernism and too quick to jump into postmodernism, which he debates is even an accurate description of the current cultural movement.

Further, Carson seems to isolate the shift of postmodernism to strictly region of epistemology. I'm surprised by this, because by reading and listening to various Emergent thinkers, I find that epistemology is only one area in which a cultural shift is noticed. There are also changes in ecclessiology, missiology, understandings of salvation, and much more. I think Carson ignores a lot of this.

Has anyone else read/listened to any D. A. Carson? If so, what did you think? Any reccomendations for online resources? I know Carson's book, "Becoming Conversant..." was originally presented at Cedarville University as a series of lectures, and as such a response was posted online here.

December Gathering

Hi all you central ohio "emergents" -

It's been over a month I think since we've all hung out, and if we wait until after the holidays, it'll really be a long time!! So I'm suggesting an emergent get-to-getha' sometime before Christmas. Once again, I'll open up my house down in Grove City, which I know might be a little bit of a drive, but I'd love to have you all over.

So here are some suggested dates, and as always, vote for which one fits your schedule best:

- Thurs. Nov. 29 (evening)
- Sat. Dec. 8 (afternoon or evening)


Basically any other Thurs. or Sat. would be best for us, so just let me know!!

- - Jesse

Mark Driscoll and Emergent Church Criticisms

Hey all -

You may be familiar with Mark Driscoll, this has been my first introduction. The Emergent Village posted a weblog regarding Mark's talk at a Southeastern University Conference. It certainly sparked some thoughts for me. I could only get the actual podcast from iTunes, and it is rather lengthy. However, I think it could be fuel for some interesting discussion, if anyone is interested. Specifically, I would raise questions regarding:

- The value and dangers of theological "conversation" (which Driscoll basically labels as demonic, ala Gen. 3)

- The roles of such emergent leaders as Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Rob Bell and of course, Brian McLaren

- The concept of a "timeless" truth but a "timely" message. This seemed to really be the heart of Driscoll's message: We should not (cannot) change the Gospel, but we can change how we communicate it to our immediate culture. However, I can't help but wonder how much our understanding of the Gospel (meaning God, sin, salvation, etc.) has changed over the centuries. If we are in an age when information is disseminated more broadly and rapidly than before, should we be surprised or concerned that theologians are presenting new ways to think of, conceive and understand "orthodox" Christian theology? It seemed to me that Driscoll is primarily trying to preserve orthodox evangelicalism, and he criticizes the emergent church (or revisionists as he says) for changing the terms, opening up to new ideas, and re-envisioning the "old old story." But isn't orthodox evangelicalism something that was a revision to begin with? Even Driscoll refers to the Reformation in his talk. So why should we be surprised that we are continuing to reform our theology?

Those are some of my thoughts. As always, everyone is welcome to chime in.

- Jesse

Next Meeting Delayed

Well, so far there has been a very limited response in regards to a meeting this week. So I think we should just postpone another meeting for another week or so. If anyone has a strong feeling about a good time, feel free to join in the discussion, otherwise perhaps we will look into the second or third week of October.

Also - I recommend we read this online posting of a chapter from "Soul Graffiti" - I thought the chapter presented good material for discussion of how to really live the life of Christ in our world, and what some of the consequences might be. You can find it here: http://www.soulgraffitibook.com/2007/09/25/chapter-four-experiments-in-truth/

Jesse

Cohort Meeting #4

So at the last meeting, I offered my house (in Grove City) as the location for the next Emergent Meeting - so I'm taking the initiative to set up a meeting date/time. Here are the options, and as always, vote for what fits your schedule:

- Thurs. Oct. 4th - around 7pm
- Sat. Oct. 6th - possibly in the afternoon, like 4pm; or later like 8pm

Also - to my knowledge there was no topic determined at the end of the last meeting - any suggestions? Preferably if we could read something online, that way we could all access it before the meeting. Or we could watch another movie like we did the last time, which was pretty interesting. One more option: Listening to a podcast and discussing -

Ok America - time to caste your vote.

Meeting 3

Okay, so let's meet this Friday, the 21st at our place, 1270 Courtland Ave. If you have questions send me an email at johnson.3178@osu.edu

Next meeting

You guys all sounded interested in checking out the DVD's I have at the next meeting so this youtube clip has a couple clips from some of the different sessions I have.

If any of those look particularly interesting to you then we can watch that. Hopefully it'll generate some good ideas and discussion. Looking forward to this next meeting.

Planning next meeting

Okay everyone, let's vote for our next meeting time: Friday, Sep. 21 or Tuesday Sep. 25. Use the comment below to cast your vote!

The 7 Jesuses I Have Known

I just finished re-reading the chapter from Brian McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy, and I had a few things to throw out to our cohort (current and future members). The 7th Jesus McLaren discusses comes out of "liberation theology." I had heard, at least vaguely, of the other 6, but this one was completely new to me. Of course I thought it was pretty much crap when I read it, because I handle anything unfamiliar very critically. I had a difficult time picturing Jesus as a universal Ghandi, a spirit transcending history and time, leading the oppressed into freedom. There seemed to be no spiritual element - this Jesus focused purely on the plight of living in this imperfect world. But then I realized that it was mainly this Jesus that McLaren discusses in The Secret Message of Jesus. If you haven't read it yet but are interested in the "Jesus of the Oppressed," I would recommend it. For the first time someone explained to me a possible line or reasoning for why Jesus had to die, and even more to die exactly as he did. I've believed in Christ pretty much my whole life and from time to time I would wonder why the Good News had to be so gory. Couldn't the Messiah just have come, given his message of hope, and then set up camp as the new king of the world? In the latter book I mentioned by him, McLaren presents Jesus as overturning the way humans ran the world - not just on the large-scale, political level, but our need to forcibly manage other people and submit to others only when it benefits us. (At least this is the way I read the book; admittedly it has been awhile.)

This Jesus of the Oppressed fights oppression at any level, even between individuals. I am also reminded of Don Miller's many mentions of his lifeboat theory in Searching for God Knows What. Miller says that after being a Christian for several years he discovered something terrible about himself, that Christ's gift should have freed him from feeling the need to struggle against his fellow man for higher placement (in God's eyes, materially, intellectually, etc.), but that somehow he seemed in this respect to be just like those that hadn't come into a relationship with Christ. He compares it to jumping a sinking ship, finding oneself safe on a lifeboat, but then continuing to fight for placement on that lifeboat, even though it doesn't matter. This metaphor really hit me over the head because I realized that I too had completely failed in this area. We humans seem have a need to feel superior to as many other people as possible. Maybe the reason I knew Christ for so many years and yet continued to treat others in this way was because I thought of him as the one born to die for my sins, giving me admittance into heaven and a personal relationship with God (the 1st of the 7 Jesuses). Maybe if I had learned about Jesus' successful attempt to overthrow the status quo in his life and death I would have spent fewer years trying to shove others out of the boat and taunting those that thrashed in the water...

Meeting 2

We are going to have our second meeting on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 7:30. Please contact Nick at johnson.3178@osu.edu if you are interested in attending. Everyone is welcome.

Meeting 1 - Report

We had five people at our first discussion session, and though it was a small group, it went very well. We mainly just spent some time getting to know everyone and talking about our backgrounds and what not. We have a very diverse group! We decided to try and meet every two weeks either on a weeknight or a weekend. In a couple days I will post some possible days and once again we will vote on which day works for the most people. If you are interested in joining us, please contact me at johnson.3178@osu.edu. We would love to have anyone and everyone join our discussion.

For our next meeting we will be discussing, among other things no doubt, the first chapter of McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy (the chapter about the seven Jesus's - I don't have the book with me right now). So, start reading that and thinking of wonderful things to share.

We're actually going to meet!

Okay, so we are going to meet on Saturday, August 14th at 8:00 at our house, 1270 Courtland Ave. It will be a mostly informal thing to just get to know people. Please come and bring everyone you know that might be interested in this sort of thing. My email in johnson.3178@osu.edu, so let me know if you would like to attend and I can get you directions and phone numbers and all of that good stuff.

Re-emerging part 2

Okay, my last post has been up for awhile and I have indeed received some emails from interested people. This is an invitation to everyone who is interested to come to a gathering Saturday, July 7th at 7:00. This is mainly going to be an informal thing and will give us a chance to get to know each other.

My wife and I live at 53 King Ave. in Columbus. If you are interested or have questions please email me at johnson.3178@osu.edu. We look forward to meeting anyone who can attend.

Reemerging

Greetings Central Ohio Emergent Cohort, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nick Johnson and my wife Jane and I are both Ph.D. students at OSU in musicology. We are very interested in getting involved with or starting up a discussion of Emergent issues here in Columbus. We might know a few people that are interested and we wanted to see what is already going on so we can join in, or if nothing is happening right now we can start things up again. We would like to meet sometime in a month or so, and we wanted to give this post some time for people to notice it. If you are interested in being involved, please contact me at johnson.3178@osu.edu. Once we know how many people are interested we will start trying to pick a time to meet either at our place or at a coffee shop or something. We look forward to a vigorous, open discussion about how to follow Christ in the post-modern era.