The next gathering of up/rooted.rockford will take place at Katie’s Cup on Monday, June 29th at 7pm. It looks like some folks who’ve been unable to attend for a while because of scheduling conflicts will be able to join us on the 29th, so mark the 29th on your calendar!

In the meantime, check out the collaborative google map below being generated by friends of Emergent Village. If you’re so inclined, plot yourself or your friend of emergent faith community (click here to do so). I’ve already plotted up/rooted.rockford.

The next gathering of up/rooted.rockford will happen next Monday evening, May 18th, at 7 p.m. We’ll meet at Katie’s Cup and continue our ongoing conversations about the church that is emerging.

For next week’s gathering I’ve suggested that people read Emergent Village‘s “Values and Practices” as a potential starting point for our conversations.

As always, any and all are welcome. Please feel free to show up unannounced; just walk into Katie’s and yell for the up/rooted cohort. Someone will flag you down! Or, email me at uprootedrockford@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you end up at the right table.

Blessings,

Matt.

I never read Brennan Manning’s now legendary The Ragamuffin Gospel. At its apex in the 1990s, it seemed everyone I knew read it and found in it some thread of commonality that tied them all together. That thread, however, seemed unfortunately thin because it translated Ragamuffin into Stuart Smalley’s words of affirmation. The problem was that we all weren’t OK. We were obstinately legalistic and self-righteous, posturing as pious believing that posture of grace-fueled-works justified us. So Ragamuffin became a code word, a way to indicate that we felt that something was wrong, but a wrong which we had no idea how to move beyond. Ragamuffin somehow came to mean that we could stay where we were because Ragamuffin gave us a guise to self-confirm that we had been “ragamuffin” all along–as long as being “ragamuffin” meant holding dearly to a caustic view of faith that we knew was torturous, but which we weren’t ready to give up.

And because it wasn’t until I wrote that very paragraph that realized any of this, I was ready to rip The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning a new one.

The evisceration went something like this: “Brennan Manning’s new book follows up his squishy self-help ethos laid out in Ragamuffin. Manning confirms for the church once again that everything is OK because God loves you a lot. Gosh darn it, God likes us! So much that Manning’s book needs a video trailer. You know, because sometimes life’s like you’re stuck in a little boat in a big sea.”

I know.

And then I read the book.

Brilliantly written it is not. The odd switches between typeface, the strangely unordered chapters, the small-group questions that interrupt, the conviction that scripture be quoted in all caps, the shifts between the personal “I” and the all-seeing “I” point of view were all jarring. But I was willing to forgo all of this after page 17, when Manning writes so simply:

I’m Brennan. I’m a sinner, saved by grace.

That is the larger and more important story.

Only God in His fury, knows the whole of it.

I sat with this final sentence for two days, and when I picked the book up again I realized that The Furious Longing of God had inadvertently become my compline prayer. I began patching sections of Manning’s text into prayers, like:

The one thing I owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything.

I am blessed. My soul’s winter is over. I am blessed! The love of God is folly!

As I make my life a pattern of  prayer, may these prayers make my life more like You so I simply do the next thing in love.

These prayers hold at their centers the conviction that “only God, in His fury, knows the whole of it.” That the stuff of our spiritual lives goes unsaid, for it can never be said. It can only be known. The best of friendships, according to my dear friend Kristin, are all in the knowing. I think the same is true of our lives with God. Which is way Manning’s book became the centerpiece of my prayers this week. Perhaps it explains too why Manning’s book clunks from one chapter to the next, from one block of text in caps to another in italics. What words can communicate the things that can only be known? What words are enough to fumble towards the ineffable? What can be said from the center of a storm?

(full disclosure: I was furnished with a copy of this book for free as a participant in the theooze.com‘s network of viral bloggers.)

This morning I’m pondering what role cultural scholarship will have within the emergent church? What role, if any, will such criticism have as EV reorganizes after #EVDC09?We’re obviously concerned with the theological implications of the emergence, and vice versa, but how will we integrate the critique and assessment that comes from scholarly considerations of groups as cultural movements?

I’m also wondering how to study something with which I also identify. Of course this happens all the time; queer scholarship is an apt example. Nevertheless, part of the critics job–at least I’ve always thought it be–is to work objectively. I’m quickly coming to recognize that one of the first things I’ll have to do in my dissertation is disband with my own objectivity and somehow carve out a critical space for myself on terms that don’t require the cool distance of the scholar observing.

So I open the question to you: how will/does cultural criticism sit within the emergent community? What are its limits? What are its benefits? Dangers?

(Also, if you are, or know of someone who works on the emergent movement in non-theological terms–church history, rhetoric, anthropology–please send them my way!)

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Brent, Zack and I had a great conversation last night at Katie’s Cup; We asked and responded to provocative questions about if and how institutions change, about the role of faith groups and their commitment to serving their communities, and how that organizational structure (community-driven) inevitably breaks down the need for propositional theological treatise. It was nice to connect  again with both Zack and Brent and ponder these ideas together.

In related news, I’ve been watching with anticipation the reports coming in from EVDC09. While the details have been somewhat scant, the trail of musings has begun. I’ve collected them below for our convenience. More to come, I’m sure! I’ll repost here my comment from earlier today on Julie Clawson’s blog:

I’ve been wanting to hear about what went down at EVDC09, so thanks for the update. I think taking up the villageness in addition the emergentness of EV is a loving and kind reminder that we want not to think that we have emerged and want that church over there to do so too; rather that those of us living here, in new and old communities, do just that — live — and our living has changed/is changing. Perhaps that’s the best way to describe the emergent church: we want to be the people that change.

Julie Clawson

Sarah Clark Notton

Tim Snyder

Makeesha

Baptimergent

#EVDC09

Tonight the up/rooted.rockford cohort with be gathering at Katie’s Cup at 7 pm. Looking forward to seeing anyone and everyone. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by for some informal chatter about the church that is emerging and a cup of coffee.

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The disciples have been following this attractive, irresistible and relevant Jesus for quite some time and now the question comes from Jesus: “Who do you say I am?” Peter’s answer was right on when he said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This is the first time this has been expressed with a sense of conviction by the disciples. The thought was there, but this seems to nail it down. We believe Jesus is God’s Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Now note Jesus’ reply to Peter’s answer. He first says, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.” Jesus strokes Peter for expressing the right answer to the question. But before Peter gets too puffed up for coming up with this great answer, Jesus quickly says, “This was not revealed to you by flesh and blood.” He is saying, “Peter, you didn’t think this up on your own and no one taught you this truth.” You see, we continue to rely on teaching our people a set of doctrines or beliefs, thinking this teaching will somehow be sufficient to establish and maintain a vital relationship with God.

Jesus goes on to explain, “But by my Father in heaven” revealed this to you. “Peter, my Father gave you this great insight that I am indeed the Son of God.” This is still the plan of operation today. The Father transformed the hearts and minds of the disciples, because they have been following Jesus for a long time.

Timmons goes on from here, but his articulation is simple and pointed: the nature of Christ revealed by God in time is something only our hearts and souls can hold.

Those around me will attest that I am far from anti-intellectual, but my academic pursuits have persistently demonstrated to me the outer limit of what I can know. Those things I hold in my soul are unknowable and unspeakable outside of time spent with Christ under the divine hand of God.

After a decade or more spent driving toward this clarity, to announce it as such has sucked the air from my lungs in a way more glorious than I could have imagined.

Amen.

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The next meeting of up/rooted.rockford will take place on Monday, March 30th at 7 pm at Katie’s Cup.

All are welcome! Invite your friends!

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