UPDATE: I’ve emailed all of our “regulars” about this, but wanted to let anyone else know about the latest attempt to find a mutually agreeable time for us to meet. After conversing a bit over email, it was suggested that we give this coming Saturday, March 14th, a try for this month’s cohort meeting, as it might be a date when everyone could make it. So, that’s the plan. We’re shooting for this Saturday, March 14th, 7pm, at the same place- Pancho’s in Green. See below for directions, etc.
I hope to see you there!
Hello all,
Several of you have commented that the switch to the third Friday of the month hasn’t worked out so well. We made that move for one of our cohort members- Bob Robinson- for whom the third Friday was better, and at the time nobody said the third Friday was bad. However, since that time even Bob hasn’t been able to make it. So, we’re going to switch back to the second Friday, which will make our March meeting a week from this Friday- March 13th, 2009. As before, we’ll meet at 7pm at Pancho’s Southwestern Grille, which is located at 4325 Massillon Road (SR241) Green, Ohio 44232.
As for our topic, we have several options. Tony had a great discussion prompt for us for last time, which we didn’t really discuss because most of our group didn’t show up. We could simply pick that up (see the post regarding last month’s meeting). We could also discuss the recent “Dear John” letter to Emergent by John O’Hara that some of you may have seen. I think there’s a lot there for us to possibly unpack; so I’ve copied it below:
Dear John Letter to Emergent (TM)
Dear Emergent,
I guess by now it’s obvious — we’ve grown apart. I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault. When we first met, I was just getting over my relationship with evangelicalism and you seemed to arrive out of the blue and at just the right time. I remember when we first met, you were talking about postmodernism and all the ways church has become an inbred cultural enclave of American consumerism and I was like, “you had me at hello.” You showed me a seemingly endless sea of blogs and podcasts, revealing a whole new world complete with its own heroes and encoded language. Soon enough I was quoting McLaren and debating epistemology everywhere I had the opportunity. Hoping to flip some Christians worshipping at the throne of Mod, I’d extend invitations to the PoMo frontier to everyone I thought had some potential.
I still think there’s tremendous credibility to the arguments you first presented to me when we first met. I’ll forever be indebted to you for opening my mind to new horizons and possibilities. At the same time, I’ve been spending more time with people who haven’t had the luxury to keep up with the assigned reading, people who are immersed in the epochal shift represented by terms like “postmodern” and “post-christian” and, yes, even “emergent;” yet who aren’t in the club and haven’t been to Glorietta and still want to be people who follow Jesus in the dirt where they’ve landed and commune with their Creator, body-mind-soul-strength. They want to love their neighbor and challenge assumptions about what neighbor even means.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is goodbye. I’m not going to try and be a hyphenated-whatever, because I don’t see the value in making the connection stick. It’s not because I don’t love you, Emergent. It’s quite the opposite: I love you enough to extend the conversation beyond the culture you’ve built around yourself. The world is changing far too fast, and the urgency for the mystical Body of Christ to be revealed in the world far too great, for me to carry the banner of Emergent. I haven’t outgrown you as much as we’ve outgrown what we once were to each other. Maybe it’s time for both of us to move on and embrace a larger piece of history.
Peace, my friend. I know we’ll be seeing each other often, in new contexts and shifting manifestations. Perhaps then we’ll recapture the spark that drew us to each other in the first place: that space where old things pass away and new life springs up from the soil of the past.
Finally, in serendipitous fashion, I’ve been made aware that Brian McLaren is debating the future of Emergent at Malone College towards the end of the month. Here are the details:
Emerging or Diverging: In What Direction is The Emerging Church Movement Headed?
The Johnson Center at Malone College, Canton, Ohio 7:00 p.m. Monday, March 30th, 2009
Proponents: Brian McLaren, Author, Speaker Pastor, and Activist
Bryan Hollon, Ph.D.,Assistant Professor of Theology,
Malone University
Moderator: Suzanne Nicholson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies, Malone University
