An Evening of Emerging

Yesterday I attended an evening discussion on the emerging church, put on by a little Baptist Bible college in my neighborhood. It was really helpful to me. The two presenters were a professor from the college (Dave Lambertson) and a local pastor (Angel Silva) who considers himself a part of the emerging church movement (his church is part of the Acts 29 network).

Anyway, one of the memorable lines from Angel: "The beautiful train-wreck that is the church." Sometimes its easy to focus on the train-wreck, but only God can make a train-wreck beautiful. Really it defies the imagination of men, how this thing we call church can work at all, considering how messed up we all are. But beautiful He will make it, and is doing so even now.

Angel also said that the early leaders in the movement recognized the need to overcome "the hyperactivity of late 20th century worship practices." Man, that one hits home for me.

One more: "The Bible is not a databook from which to mine propositions about God, but a narrative in which we the readers are meant to find ourselves."

This brief evening was one of the most informative and interesting I've had in a church in a long time.