a word from the editor.

hi. here at metamoses content, clarity and cleanliness are highest priorities. we hope you’ve enjoyed the outlandish articles and pointless theories presented here. we would like to apologise at this time for our complete lack of understanding concerning the difference between emerging and emergent and capital E and lowercase e in each scenario. we don’t know what the difference is and use these terms pretty interchangeably thruout our posts. we just like emergence theory as applied to Church and think it serves as a lovely and very useful metaphor. regarding the emerging/emergent differentiation, we offer these words: whiskey tango foxtrot. can someone please clear this up for us? we dont feel like doing research we suspect will not be worth our time. seriously- where should we start?

Filed under: Blogging, Emergent Church

The Emergence in Question

So, here’s a theory;

the emergent church is a propaganda product. It does not actually exist. It is a construct of church leadership.  Negativity is always the lowest common denominator. The best way to raise support (money, people, resources) is to create a scenario where there is a good guy and a bad guy and tell people that the bad guy is threatening your way of life, your god, whatever… and it will take money to stop the bad guy. The emergent church is the bad guy.

Is this like the Scapegoat Mechanism we find in ancient religions?

Kind of. The emergent church is too vague. You need names and faces to target or it doesn’t work. The Baghdad thing was fully supported by the american people until they ‘got’ Saddam- and the whole mechanism broke down because they ‘got’ the face. Lost all support for it because you can’t place vague blame- it has to be specific. Terrorist cells? Huh? Bin Laden- yeah, people get that.

Is that where Brian McClaren and Rob Bell come in? 

Exactly. You have to channel your negativity toward names and faces. Clarity is power. Specificity is action. Brian uses emergence theory when talking about church- and it is a beautiful analogy of the church- but i guess that’s why he’s been made the poster boy. I mean, i didn’t need Brian to tell me a bunch of stuff i already knew.

Rob, on the other hand, doesn’t even try to go for the emerence theory stuff directly, uses the term loosely and appropriately, and generally disengages himself from emergent church talk. But his name always comes up when someone needs a scapegoat for their cause of righteousness.

“We need to be careful of terrorist cells and ’squishy theology’”… huh? what? “We’ve got Saddam on the run and Rob Bell is a heretic”. Oh! People get that. 

That’s a terrible theory- why would anyone do that?

There’s a lot of anger out there/in here. People need to place blame. Need to have a place to put their anger. People feel threatened by “new” ideas or thoughts. When people feel like they have to defend the gospel or stand for righteousness or stick up for god, its not because the gospel or righteousness or god is actually threatened, its because their way of life, which they think is divinely-mandated, is threatened, because their power is challenged.

Way of life, anger and power are not abstract concepts- they are very real and present actualities. We deny our involvement by making them abstract and fuzzy and complicated to cancel out our complicity.

We engage in these behaviors without understanding. We claim allegiance to the Scapegoat Crucified when our own complicity created the need. We know not what we do.

Deeply Misguided Theory or Mind-Blowing Revelation?

Filed under: Emergent Church, Eschatology, Interdisciplinary Action, Philosophical-Possibly Theological, Theology, church , brian mcclaren, emergence theory, Emergent Church, Gil Bailie, Rene Girard, Rob Bell, scapegoat mechanism, violence unveiled

The Curiousity of Doubt.

“If we are all thinking the same thing, someone isn’t thinking.”

Doubt and questioning are fundamental to growth. Was it Franklin or Jefferson (or someone else?) who said that, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”?… it’s the same idea for the Church and those who are given to thinking about Her. This is why i am surprised at all the “us vs. them” talk in the Church in america- it involves group A questioning long-held ideas and beliefs and group B telling the group A to stop questioning and stop being heretics. Fierce fidelity to Christ and His gospel is not compromised or threatened by questioning, is it? Why is the questioning so bad? Why isn’t it celebrated?

Take the Emergent/Anti-Emergent debate… or the big episcopal divide right now. Why is it that every generation struggles to arrive at new places of thought and spirituality and has to fight thru- not just the previously held beliefs- but seemingly the established generation, to get there? And why when they get there, do they think they’ve had the fianl thought on the subject and beat down the next generation? Won’t someone who studies generationlism debunk this crappy cycle?

What is the established generation supposed to do with the next? Celebrate and guide or alienate and deride? Maybe they act like heretics because we treat them like heretics. I wonder what it would be like to sit down with the next gen over coffee (or whatever THEY drink) and hear crazy ideas and not be threatened by them- but instead encourage it and maybe open their brains to new ideas that leads to new perspectives and lead them into new territory. Is that discipleship?

Frustrated and a bit discouraged, i guess. I get the sense there’s a better way to pass the torch than the current model of beating and burning. This battle isn’t supposed to be against flesh and blood, is it? Have we really already thought all the best thoughts? Is there a chance that we are the giants upon whose shoulders others will need to stand? Is this too many rhetorical questions? Will Batman escape the buzzsaw/conveyor belt-contraption? Does this really have anything to do with discipleship?

Filed under: Emergent Church, Integral, Interdisciplinary Action, Leadership, Philosophical-Possibly Theological

What are you going to be for Halloween?

I’m going as Jesus as He would appear as an Irish-American in 21st Century USA.

Not really. I just like the pompous sound of that.

Today is New Year’s Eve… sort of. Tomorrow is the first day of Samhain and the first day of the Celtic Calendar and like many things Celtic, it is both pagan and xian. See How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill for the explanation on that one.

Tomorrow is also All Saints Day. Has a more west church feel to it and seems to cover alot of different things (all the saints everywhere, ever, for one.) but also the day which martyrs of the xian faith are remembered collectively.

Andrew Jones has determined he is going to go thru the entire celtic calendar this year; starting tomorrow you can track with him on Our Daily Blog, which I’ve added to the blogroll for the year.

I’ve considered Nov. 1st my new years day for a long time- it’s my birthday and always seems like a more appropriate time for reflection and forward thinking than the craziness of the time between xmas and Jan. 1st. The fact that all these other things are associated with Nov. 1st is still pretty new knowledge for me and I’m still sorting out the info that’s available. I think, by tracking with Andrew thru the celtic calendar, I’ll get a better handle on what it all is.

Anyway, a fine Samhain and slainte to you.

Filed under: Blogging, Blogroll, Emergent Church, Theology , andrew jones, irish, new year, our daily blog, samhain, thomas cahill

The Measure of a Conference

How do you know if a conference was any good? That is, how do you quantify and crunch an experience into a stat in order to determine whether it was worth x amount of dollars to attend? Unknown. But my blogroll grew mightily upon my return from Catalyst and there were several more people that i wanted to add who don’t have blogs (yet?), like Francis Chan, whose session alone was worth a lot of cake. I think the blogroll/connection thing is a worthy indicator, though not very quantifiable.

Oh, and Ken Wilber wasn’t speaking at Catalyst, but i realised i hadn’t added his yet. What would happen if Ken spoke at Catalyst? Does anybody else read Ken Wilber? Really? He makes C.S. Lewis and Christopher Hitchins sound like little kids fighting over toys… though i enjoy both these guys very much. Reading Ken is like reading a Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters, Fight Club) hitter to your brain- and your brain likes it.

When i say cake, it means mental uranium… which, if harvested and sold would be worth a lot of jack.

Filed under: Blogging, Blogroll, Emergent Church, Integral, Interdisciplinary Action, Leadership, Pomo, Theology , , Catalyst Conference, Christopher Hitchins, Chuck Palahniuk, CS Lewis, Francis Chan, Integral, Ken Wilber

Instant Ramification

Noticed something… mmm, today or last night… that is, while visitors always look for the recent posts, there is very little action on the pages. I always check pages. I actually update pages more often than i post (still not often, but more often). Pages provide a consistent context within which the posts make sense and help move things along. I saw a quote yesterday from Seneca: “To the person who does not know where he wants to go, there is no favorable wind.” Pages provide that direction, and posts are that favorable wind… or maybe it’s the other way ’round. Regardless, pages are important to me.

 What brings this up? You did.

That last comment from the last post asks where i’ve gone. Which i appreciate, Josh. It makes me feel like people are actually interested in what they might find here. Anyway, my internal response was “check the pages! that’s where the action is” and then i realised that i never hype the pages in the posts. Sorry, my fault.

So, check the pages. I sort of base everything else on those. Except the Lego one- that’s a complete waste of time. And by the way, that quote from Seneca… the article didn’t specify whether it was the Lesser or the Elder. Sorry, not my fault.

Filed under: Emergent Church, Interdisciplinary Action, Recommends

rumblings

“The clown show has been put on hiatus for re-tooling.”

2 points if you can identify this quote. Bonus point if you can tell me which artist is being lampooned/homaged in the artwork, cause i don’t know.

Filed under: Blogging, Emergent Church, Theology

Angry

Sometimes, when i listen to all the us vs. them talk against the emergent, i want to be angry, then i read this thing about anger. Click here then download the pdf.

Wow.

Filed under: Emergent Church, Recommends, Theology