Still Wrestling
I was struck by the “put it away and don’t touch it” tenor of many responses to my labyrinth situation. Not that emergent should mean embracing everything that comes down the pike - but the apparent knee-jerk comments surprised me. Guess we’re not as open as we like to think. Also striking was the apparent assumption that we’re doing the labyrinth INSTEAD OF scripture reading and teaching. Any possibility we might have been using it as one of many tools to help folks LISTEN for meaning and understanding of the words they’ve been hearing in scripture? (Hint: rhetorical question.) Irony is that many of the same folks who want us to put the labyrinth away - and anything smacking of “contemplative,” due to “Eastern/New Age/Pagan” influence - also tell us our ministry has taught them a lot about Jesus, and has focused on scripture. Apparently, they haven’t been paying attention to what we’ve tried to model about INTERPRETING and APPLYING what we read.
BTW, Session is not source of problem. With a couple of exceptions, elders either see no problem, or don’t strong feelings one way or other, but don’t like a group within the congregation wanting to prohibit all of the congregation from utilizing something they themselves don’t like. And yes, we’ve discussed the whole “eating food sacrificed to idols” issues from Romans and Corinthians - and struggle to understand how to “translate” not just the phrases but the 1st-century context to our 21st-century one.
Yes, I’ve seen the Lighthouse Trails stuff - actually, had it “presented” to me, along with helpful info from “Let Us Reason” web site. Strike me as perfect examples of (1) how to read the spot-Bible and miss the point; and (2) focus Christian theology and practice on how to “circle the wagons and raise the drawbridge” to keep the barbarians out. Which strikes me as being fundamentally at odds Emergent, which seems to be about mingling with the “barbarians.”
Oh well.
Comment by Neal Locke on 7 March 2007:
Clevestark — Knee-jerk? Ouch. I think it might be worth pointing out again that this is an open forum. Comments expressed here don’t always reflect the views of emerging churches, emergent, or even presbymergent at times.
That said, I too am disappointed too at how your open and heartfelt post was received by this community. Your poem (which, imho, is beautiful and well-written) expresses a closeness to God’s heart that transcends our often petty and narrow focus on methods and practices.
I think that if you look closely at this community of presbymergents, you’ll find that the harshest critics on your last post are surprisingly absent from other posts and conversations. Their voices are welcome here, as all are, but I suspect they come from a very different (and non-emergent) segment of Christianity, with different opinions and agendas than most of those you’ll encounter here, if you stick around awhile.
The emerging church movement has given great spiritual renewal to me and countless others, but it has also attracted controversy and detractors at every step along the way. That’s ok, though. Personally, I think it means we’re doing something right.
Comment by drew on 7 March 2007:
My post was probably one of the ones that was too harsh. My bad. And I like the labrynth! I got the impression that you were forcing it on people that didn’t want it, but I see now that that was not the case.
Anyway, please remember that NOBODY on this site (not that I know of, at least) knows your whole story. Looking back, I now see that I probably would have done better to give empathy, rather than a “fix.” That’s something I am working on in many realms of my life, and not just online.
You know better than us if it is the right time to bust out the labrynth in your community. My IMPRESSION was that it wasn’t. Again, the labrynth is cool, but not always and everywhere. Ministry, like comedy, is all abouTIMINGt. (get it?)
My suggestion was out of time. It’s up to you and your community to figure out if and when it is labrynth time.
Comment by clevestark on 8 March 2007:
To Neal and Drew -
Comments gratefully appreciated - and some “mea culpa” from me as well. Guess my “knee-jerk” comment was a bit “knee-jerk” itself. Wow, this would be SO much easier if I weren’t dealing with actual people - and weren’t a people myself.
Yeah, the timing issue is exactly on point - and in fact the session is taking the opportunity to set the labyrinth aside for the moment and address deep and persistent systemic issues in the congregation, which are what allowed the labyrinth issue to gain the crisis-tinged traction that it did.
I will also give some thought to the input about a Bible Study of Acts - Acts 15 being a reminder of the earliest Christian community sorting out What’s Negotiable/Peripheral and What Isn’t. And I have come to appreciate the humble, and maybe even tentative flavor of the “declaration” that resulted: “It seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit. . .” Rob Bell’s thoughts on this in “Velvet Elvis” strike me as right on.
So your comments are received, noted, and stimulate me to keep thinking. Dang! It would be SO much easier if I could nail down The Right Thing once and for all and just get on with it, hoping everyone else would eventually catch up.
Comment by Tom Robinson on 8 March 2007:
Just to get in my own two cents - I think Clevestark was justified in his concerns about the comments coming his way. I still don’t know what is so onerous about a labyrinth. I wish we had one here (we are talking about it). Anything to help people connect with God’s Spirit in their lives is a plus. Sometimes we have to be the prophet who has the tough word that people need to hear - maybe not what they want to hear.
Comment by Neal Locke on 8 March 2007:
Amen to that, Tom. Amen to that.