checkin it out

this is a test. So what I am going to do is post some weird random crap below. Actually, I am going to post the first interesting thing I find at relevantmagazine.com. Check it out...

The critics aren’t so much interested in Henderson himself but the group of which he has many friendships—Emergent, a loosely affiliated “friendship” of church leaders looking to rediscover what exactly the Christian faith and church should look like.

For a generation raised on televangelists, pedophile priests and megachurches, Emergent seems like a pretty good deal. It represents “a new kind of Christian,” a phrase coined by Emergent’s unofficial patriarch, Brian McLaren. To those who have been burned by the Church, this kind of Christian is more open-minded, intelligent, loving and sophisticated than the Christians who came before. It’s quite enchanting to the religiously disenchanted.

But this is sacred territory, and it’s easy to see why this makes many Christians uncomfortable. To Emergent’s critics—and it has many—the group is off base at best and heretical at worst. Others—some of whom used to be closely affiliated with the group—wonder aloud if Emergent is losing control and being steered in a very dangerous direction.

The greatest hurdle in discussing Emergent stems from the elusive nature of the group. “How do you even identify Emergent?” Henderson asks. “Part of its own ethos is not having an identity.” McLaren echoes this. “You may be assuming that Emergent is a more defined thing than it really is,” he says.

Emergent has no formal doctrine, and, thus, the group is quite mixed. “We have Texas Baptists who don’t let women preach, and we have lesbian mainline pastors in New England,” says Tony Jones, Emergent’s national coordinator.

It’s dangerous business to offer commentary on a movement with vast affiliates. Emergent (with a capital "E") is a group of friends and a nonprofit organization. The emerging church (lowercase "e" this time) is a general description for churches that share a certain mentality. Most members of Emergent could be categorized as members of the emerging church, but not all members of the emerging church are members of Emergent.

So just what is Emergent? It’s the million-dollar question. Jones says that there are many misunderstandings of exactly what Emergent is and isn’t.

“It’s not a denomination,” he says. “It’s not a theological think tank. It’s not a capitalist moneymaking venture. It’s not heresy. It’s not the new Christian Left.”

So, then, just what is it?

“Emergent is an amorphous collection of friends who’ve decided to live life together, regardless of our ecclesial affiliations, regardless of our theological commitments,” Jones says. “We want to follow Christ in community with one another. In a very messy way, we’re trying to figure out what that means.”

McLaren puts it a slightly different way. “We’ve tried to accurately describe ourselves as a growing friendship engaging in what we hope will be constructive conversation.”

Read the full article here: http://relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7434