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A New Kind of Christianity

March 25, 2010 By Adam Walker Cleaveland 1 Comment

Deborah Arca Mooney, a progressive Presbyterian as well as the Mainline Protestant Portal Manager for Patheos, had the chance to interview Brian McLaren about his new book and much more. She describes the interview in this way:

The interview was written from my perspective as a progressive Presbyterian and my interest in his cross-over appeal and work in building bridges across theological divides and religions. I had the opportunity to ask him a host of questions about his to reading “new kind of christianity,” including his unconventional approach to reading the Bible, the future of the emergent movement, what mainliners and evangelicals can learn from each other, inter-religious friendship, his views on the church’s response to homosexuality, and the spiritual practices that keep him grounded. His answers, as you might expect, were thoughtful, generous and inspiring. I hope you might share the interview link with your readers.

It’s a great interview and has some wonderful insights in it that would be helpful to Presbyterians who are continuing to seek out new ways of being the church in an emerging world. You can find the interview here.

Filed Under: Resources, Theology Tagged With: Brian McLaren, Evangelical, Mainline, Presbymergent

Presbymergent Website Redesign

February 22, 2010 By Adam Walker Cleaveland 1 Comment

We decided it was time to overhaul our old design we’d been using for a few years, so we did a redesign over the past weekend. We hope that you will come and check out the new site and let us know what you think. Presbymergent.org is much more than just a blog, and we wanted our new redesign to reflect that. We also wanted you to be able to connect with us more easily to Facebook & Twitter from our website, and we think that was accomplished with this redesign.

It’s also our hope to feature photos on the front page of what your Presbymergent community looks like around the United States – so please send us your photos of community gatherings, worship experiences, etc., and we’ll try to keep new photos rotating through the homepage.

One feature that we’re still trying to determine the best way to handle is the list of Presbymergent churches, worship gatherings and bloggers. Sticking lists of bloggers in our sidebars just became too unwieldy, so be looking for a “Friends of Presbymergent” page to come soon that will highlight some of you and your communities that self-identify with Presbymergent.

There are probably still some tweaks that need to be made, so if you see something, please let us know and we’ll try to take care of it. But we hope you’ll all enjoy our new website!

Filed Under: Presbymergent, Press Tagged With: Design, Web Design, Website

Richard Dawkins: Good Scientist, Bad Philosopher

January 27, 2010 By Colin Kerr 24 Comments

Foxholes are unnecessary. There are no atheists in the dentist’s chair. That’s my theory at least.

After getting four teeth drilled on the other day in Charlotte, I had the only slightly greater pleasure of driving my Novocain-paralyzed face down to Columbia, South Carolina to see the infamous Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist. Dawkins, a British biologist, is part of the controversial neo-atheist movement. Neo-atheism itself is a highly vocal, if not outright shrill, atheist philosophy that seeks to argue, insult, and humiliate believers of all stripes into abandoning their faith—or at least ostracizing and ejecting them out of having any cultural influence. Dawkins’ last book and a key intellectual bulwark of this view, was politely named The God Delusion in honor of anyone moronic enough to have any belief of the divine.

I waited among thousands of students in Columbia with baited breath, for the neo-atheist circus ringleader to shock the crowd with resounding statements of intellectual superiority from his new science-oriented book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. I anticipated enough fire and brimstone to replace a Bunsen burner. I was instead stunned to hear a soft-spoken English gentleman request that ministers, priests, and pastors live up to their responsibility as community leaders by educating their flocks about the reality of evolutionary truth.

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Filed Under: Culture, Presbymergent Tagged With: evolution, neo-atheism, preaching, Richard Dawkins

Who is the Jesus we Portray in Worship?

October 13, 2009 By Jen Reiff 7 Comments

I’ve participated in some incredibly passionate worship services over the years, but I’ve also felt captive in the pew during many passionless services. Sadly, those passionless services seem to be the normal in many Presbyterian churches today. Hear me clearly. As a young adult, I do not need flashy graphics, a loud worship band, projected images on a screen, or a cool, hip, and stylish pastor to evoke passion in worship. Passion isn’t synonymous with loud, big, and flashy.

Who is this Jesus we are worshiping? When I sit through a passionless worship service, I truly begin to wonder. I want to worship a Creator who formed the universe with a word and molded my very being from the fibers of the earth. I long to sing praises to a God, who shouts with excitement through the joys of life and holds me tightly, with mutual tears, in the pits. I want to surrender all I am to the workings of a Holy Spirit who guides my movement in ways I never dreamed possible for myself. I want to humbly bow to the most humble of babies who changed the course of history for eternity. I want to lay offerings before a God who offered His own Son to wipe away the distance I continually place between Him and I. I want to meet this Jesus over and over again, so maybe someday I will begin to understand the magnitude of a Love so grand, so extreme, and so passionate at this.

It can come in all sizes, shapes, and volumes. I don’t care. What you do doesn’t much matter to me. But how you portray my Savior, who has molded and changed my life forever, means everything to me.

Filed Under: Presbymergent Tagged With: jesus, Passion, Worship

A Young Adult Ministry Proposal

September 2, 2009 By Bryce Elliott 2 Comments

JKCWe believe existing PC USA churches can have staying power and emerging ways of doing church will have staying power too. Below is a proposal, written by Young Adults, for Young Adults in the Presbytery of East Tennessee (PET). Conversations began and ideas began to form…we would love comments and reactions as well as hear what others are already trying to do.

Problem:The link below was taken off the PC USA website after doing a search for Young Adults. It puts words to what many of us have been experiencing and know from our local congregations in the Presbytery of East Tennessee (PET).

Study: most young adults drop out of Protestant churches

Solution: The hope is that this Gap Ministry proposal, detailed below, will be the Presbytery of East TN’s response to these trends for Young Adults in our churches.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Churches, Presbymergent Tagged With: Young Adult Ministry, Young Adults

A Tickle In Our Ears

August 29, 2009 By David Williams 11 Comments

The General Governing Council here at presbymergent is deeply troubled by a recent interview with the otherwise estimable Phyllis Tickle. In that interview, which was conducted over at the Ooze, she lays out her informal thoughts about the role that we as “hyphen-mergents” might play in the revitalization and renewal of denominational Christianity. We have heard much of the chatter in the emergent world around her assertion that the timeline for denominational acceptance of the emergent ethos is short. In response to this conversation, we feel we must raise a cautionary voice. There is, in her description of presbymergent, a deep and critical conceptual flaw that we on the GGC feel must be addressed.

We do not use a hyphen.

Other than that, she’s got some pretty cool things to say. If you haven’t yet seen the interview, give it a watch:

Filed Under: Presbymergent

A Stimulus Plan for Sunday School

August 20, 2009 By Colin Kerr 5 Comments

Religious education is in the same shape as Detroit automakers.

Gone are the days when it was a cultural norm that every child would go to confirmation and every adult would dutifully attend Sunday School before church. According to the Barna Group, a pollster of American religious trends, Church attendance has remained fairly steady in the last decade, but Sunday School participation is slowly going the way of the buffalo. Churches have tried all sorts of gimmicks to reverse this trend—bagels, coffee, dancing bears—without much success. Meanwhile, the Barna Group also says only nineteen percent of self-identifying Christians profess belief in historical Christian doctrines, which is at an all-time low.

Forget about atheists. We’re quite capable of sabotaging our own faith, thank you.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Christian Education, Presbymergent Tagged With: sunday school, worldview

Sacred Space: Why I’m Bi-Vocational

August 13, 2009 By Chris Brown 7 Comments

My sacred space is a cafe.  It’s the cafe where I work three shifts a week, serving coffee, tea, smoothies, and baked goods to the variety of people who come through our doors.  It’s nothing fancy, but it’s one of the local independent cafes in our part of Pittsburgh that attracts the graduate students, the internationals, the professors, and the eclectic and eccentric assortment of characters who inhabit Squirrel Hill.  And it’s sacred space for me precisely because the people around me there aren’t all other Christians. In fact, most are unchurched or de-churched.  And I love them.  As one who experiences God when I’m engaged in mission, I see the Holy Spirit at work when I’m around people who are just starting to get to know Jesus. The cafe becomes sacred space for me every time I have a deep conversation with a coworker or listen to a regular customer share their life-story.  The relationships I’ve been able to develop with co-workers and customers are sacred relationships.  Some people talk to their barista they way one does to the proverbial bartender, and at times I feel like taking off my shoes because I know I’m on holy ground when someone opens up to me.

I’m a pastor, but I sometimes say the place where I do the most real ministry is the cafe.  On the surface, I’m “bi-vocational” (working half-time for our church and part-time at the cafe), but I don’t really see any separation between my two jobs.  There’s been some good conversation recently in the PC(USA) about tentmaking, or bi-vocational ministry, as a viable option for more and more pastors and congregations.  The reason most often given seems to be financial: a church can’t afford a full-time pastor, so the pastor gets another job.  I applaud other pastors who do this, but I think the conversation needs to get beyond the financial reasons for tentmaking.  Here are the reasons why I chose to be bi-vocational: (1) Mission – As a new church development pastor, my “second” job gives me an entryway into the community.  Every day I meet people who would normally never set foot inside a church.  And wherever I’m meeting them is exactly where I’m called to be.  (2) Leading by Example -Working a second job that’s not explicitly a “ministry” vocation also gives me an opportunity to teach and model for members of my church how we as disciples can find meaning in our “ordinary” jobs.  Our churches are filled with people who are discontent with their work and who rarely think of their jobs as places where they can participate in the Kingdom of God. How much of that disconnect is the result of an over-professionalization of clergy?  What would it look like to really reflect in our lives the truth that almost any job can be used to serve God?

Early this morning I met my co-pastor and another friend for coffee in my sacred space.  This afternoon I’ll return and work for four hours, looking forward to whatever conversations God brings my way.  In between I’ll do a little “church work”, but in reality there’s no separation between the two – each job complements and enriches the other. Whether on church time or cafe time, I work and pray, and I look for Christ’s presence in the breaking of bread and the pouring of coffee.

Filed Under: Churches, Emergent, Jobs, Presbymergent Tagged With: NCDs, new church development, Pastor, Tentmaking Bi-Vocational, Vocations

Become a Fan of Presbymergent on Facebook

August 12, 2009 By Presbymergent Admin 1 Comment

We’re moving away from our Facebook group to a new Presbymergent Facebook page. This will enable more interaction between everyone and will help us stay better connected with everyone. Please go to our new Facebook Page and become our fan on Facebook.

Filed Under: Networking, Presbymergent, Press Tagged With: Communication, Facebook, Fan

Evangelism is NOT a dirty word!

August 12, 2009 By Jen Reiff 3 Comments

Evangelism has become such a dirty word in the mainline protestant world. Our church even changed a committee name a few years back to remove the word so people “didn’t get the wrong idea.” Unfortunately, there is nothing wrong with evangelism – the Church should be rock solid evangelists… but maybe not the ones of our recent past.

Evangelism in America has coincided with proselytizing and typically with some ulterior self-motive, whether it is filling our own pews or filling our own egos. I know evangelism at my own church was about going around the neighborhood and inviting neighbors to join us on Sunday mornings so we could feel good about our full pews and overflowing offering plates. But, I believe evangelism of today is going to be more about the community and less about our churches.

To reach the young adults and youth of today, we are going to have to get off our cushioned pews and get out into the world. Evangelism isn’t slick advertising or a fancy website drawing people in. We must be Christ in the suffering world for the Kingdom’s sake and not for our own. Today, evangelism can’t be about sharing the Word of God so we can increase our membership, but instead sharing the Word of God because people need to know the Hope of the world is here and now. We need to be in our community centers, our schools, our coffee shops, our gyms, and our bars being Christ incarnate for the Church’s sake – not for our churches’ sake.

Filed Under: Presbymergent Tagged With: Evangelism