Peace,
Jamie

Thanks for your input. Is the label “emerging” helpful? No, and thus we need fuller language. But, given its history, neither should it be ignored or minimized. It is a critical tension. My own stepping away from the language was, in part, due to this tension. Thanks again!

Peace,
Jamie

I’m not as invested in the emerging stuff as others. I feel like I’ve read a lot of the same foundational texts (Newbigin, Bosch, Guder, Franke, Grenz), but I’m not as involved in the more general emerging movement, so it’s good to read what you have to say about it.

Without being too invested in it, I get the sense that we’ve hit a few critical points:
1. We’re done with the reactionary thinking and rethinking and are trying to figure out an essence of what this is all about.
2. As we hit that point, there are a lot of issues and practices that are competing for our attention and what it means to be “emerging”.
3. With such a diverse group entering this conversation, labels seem to be more problematic than helpful. Is emergent about missional thinking? global emergence? LGBT issues? Renewing evangelical theology? I think there are different people with different priorities.

While I may have misread your post, my own thought after reading your comments and after making some of my own observations is that the emerging label doesn’t help much anymore because it stands more for diversity and forming theology in the midst of that diversity. How can we label that? I suppose that’s why I’m apprehensive about adopting that title for myself. Whether you’re for it or against it, emerging or emergent does sort of become a word for a kind of theological change conversation that many have participated in, but are now following to different ends. It’s not so much a break up as part of the natural course of things.

Just my $.02 or $.021 if we’re in Canadian currency.