New Ways of Being Church

Conversations on renewal and transformation in mainline congregations

March 15-18, 2009

Yes, there are signs of hope for the Church in the post-modern and post-Christian era! In 2009, Louisville Seminary welcomes a celebrated trio of church leaders/scholars who are spreading the news that the Church of the 21st Century can and does re-think, re-tradition, and re-invent itself.

• Diana Butler Bass, historian and author of the popular book Christianity for the Rest of Us, brings with her inspirational presentation solid research showing that mainline congregations are thriving as communities that practice ancient Christian traditions.
• Marcus Borg, a prominent New Testament scholar, speaks for many who seek a fresh, credible, and progressive understanding of Jesus Christ for this age. His forthcoming book is simply titled Jesus.
• Brian McLaren is a pastor and author who best represents the “Emerging Church” from an evangelical perspective, but his presentations and books, including A Generous Orthodoxy and Everything Must Change, elude simple labels.
• With closing worship led by LPTS Alum Preacher Mike Pentecost (MDiv ‘98), pastor of Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Brentwood, Tenn.

For more information about this event, contact David Sawyer, Director of Lifelong Learning and Advanced Degrees, dsawyer@lpts.edu, or Leah Bradley, Director of Alum & Church Relations, lbradley@lpts.edu, 1-800/264-1839.

The worship I attended was at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, and it had been billed as an emergent worship. It opened with music from Ryan and Holly Sharp, and Jared Milos of The Cobalt Season. They did a masterful job of setting up a time of contemplation of scripture. It was one of the highlights of the service. For fifteen to twenty minutes Jared played a slow, sliding line on the bass guitar, drawing on the root chords of a sung chorus. Four liturgists, each reading from a different passage, alternated reading portions of the texts aloud. When they finished reading the passage through the first time, we repeated the chorus before they began to repeat selected verses of the text, alternating all the while with one another.

During the music at the beginning of the service as well as during the reading, two video projectors had been set up and were projecting images on top of each other. The first projector was simply playing a slideshow of words in white type (“community,” “peace,” “solitude,” etc.). The second projector was playing the DVD film “Koyaanisquatsi,” which shows scenes from various world cultures. (The sound from the film was muted, but I recommend the soundtrack by Philip Glass on its own merits.) The effect was engaging and intriguing. Intentionally chaotic, the words were not timed to the film, but were in random order. Some words matched well with the overlaid film, some word associations were confusing, or outright contradictory, but the blend of the bass line, the visuals, and the slow scripture reading created a contemplative environment that engaged me in the texts in very different way. It was worship leadership very well done!

Gilda Carbonaro bore witness the way that war has torn at her with the death of her son, 28-year old Marine Sergeant Alessandro “Alex” Carbonaro. Alex died of burn injuries sustained by an IED explosion on May 1, 2006. As a member of Gold Star Families for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, Gilda read aloud numerous emails and letters exchanged between her and her son during his deployments. The vividness of her memories shone in her voice, as did her pain and her resolve to end the war in Iraq. After the service, I was so moved by her words that all I could do was ask her to tell me the birthday of her son: April 19, 1978. He would have turned 30 last Saturday.

Brian McLaren took to the pulpit after Gilda had finished, and though he was setting out on a new book tour for Everything Must Change, and on the verge of a conference in Vienna, VA of the same name, he knew when enough had already been said. I was a bit disappointed – and surprised – that he cut his remarks short, but it was a significant lesson that even a keynote speaker and powerful preacher can sometimes have his well-prepared and refined words pale in the face of powerful scripture and raw experience. It’s better to recognize it and cut it short than to take away from the whole (Note to self: Mother’s Day/Pentecost sermon: keep it concise– May 11.)

As a concluding act of worship, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated by intinction. While for some this was a new experience, it was a fitting way to nourish our spirits as we prepared for further action. (See PCUSA News article)

I hope this review of the worship service gives you some ideas, raises some questions, and challenges you to new ways of thinking about how social justice actions can be grounded in worship. Questions?

Peace, Ivan Herman

What is taking place in events, until this summer, are a number of region-specific gatherings. If you’re anywhere in the South, the combination of top quality speakers (Shane Claiborne, Tim Keel, Troy Bronsink) and low registration fee ($25 online), makes A Sustainable Faith in St. Petersburg, Florida, Feb 2-3, a must-attend event.

The main series of events is Brian McLaren’s The Everything Must Change Tour, taking place in eleven cities around the USA (Charlotte NC, Boise ID, Dallas TX, St. Petersburg FL, Washington DC, San Diego CA, Chicago IL, Seattle WA, Kansas City MO, New York City NY, Goshen IN). Currently two of the tour stops, Boise and Washington DC, have presbymergents who volunteered to connect Presbyterians going to these events. To learn more about how the First Presbyterian Church in Bend, OR, is getting ready for the tour, see this post, and email Nate Bettger for connecting with them in Boise. Brian Wallace is planning a gathering in Washington DC, email Brian for more information. If you are willing to volunteer for gathering presbymergents in any of the other tour cities, please email and/or write a post for this site by registering or logging in. I will also update the events page with your contact info and any other details you provide.

Finally, there will be a very special event this April 8-10, “Emerging Church for the Existing Church” designed to bridge gaps between Emergent explorations and established Mainline churches. All of the presentations at this conference will directly relate to what it means to be a presbymergent, a convergence of existing church and emerging church. This is an opportunity for both on-ramp questions of figuring out what Emergent is about and for higher-level practitioner questions of being Emergent in Mainline contexts.

If you’re planning a presbymergent-related event, or are even considering the possibility of an event, feel free to email about getting connected with other presbymergents.

We’ll definitely be looking for people willing to help out with this at GA, and the opportunities are pretty open. We’ll probably have some brochures or something to pass out, need some people to help with the booth and a variety of other things. And of course it always helps to tell people about presbymergent too!

At any rate, go head over to the Facebook discussion thread and let people know what you think we should do at GA in 2008.

At First Presbyterian Church, we will be studying the new book by Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, starting in January. We also plan to rent a van or bus to take a community group representing many churches to the Every Thing Must Change event in Boise, Idaho, Feb 8 and 9th.At this event we hope to connect with others developing emerging gatherings in their own communities, find other presbymergents to connect with and share ideas with, learn new worship practices that are consistent with the emerging conversation, be inspired by Brian and other leadership and develop a stronger commitment by our local leadership to this emerging community in Bend.Brian’s book offers a very positive vision of the role for the church in the 21st Century. His view of the difference between the current western society and culture and the teachings of Jesus on how to live in the Kingdom of God is both dramatic and inspiring. What if all followers of Jesus saw themselves gathering into churches and that these churches would exist not to serve them, but to help make the world a better place for all humanity? Wouldn’t this be a cause worth living ones life differently to make possible? What a call to renewal and faith.

Are other Presbymergents planning to go to the Everything Must Change events in other parts of the country?

Brian Wallace, B.J. Woodworth and the crew from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary put together a great event. There were some great times of fellowship, community-building and networking. We also got to hear from some amazing speakers (John Franke, Andrew Purves and a host of others) and met in breakout groups discussing everything from Presbymergent preaching, to leadership, to worship and Christology. On the way home, my friends from Princeton Seminary and I marveled at the diversity of folks at the conference. There were seminarians, theologians, professors, senior pastors, youth pastors, ordained and un-ordained, Presbytery staff and many other people as well. It provided for a rich conversation and many of us left with some wonderful things to process - and many more questions, I’m sure.

At the very least it is clear that there really is something to this thing called Presbymergent. What the future holds, we don’t know. But I think it is an exciting time to be a Presbyterian right now. Over the next couple weeks, be looking here on this site for more information from the event, including podcasts that will include audio from John Franke’s keynotes, as well as each of the breakout sessions, and photos from the event as well.

And please share with us your thoughts and experiences from this weekend - and if you weren’t able to make it, but have questions for those of us who were there, please ask away.

As we enter into fall, the events page has been updated with details on forthcoming presbymergent-related happening. Currently there are five events that include presbymergent parties, and a 100% presbymergent event. Links to more information about these events is here and below:

Emergent Gathering in Glorieta, NM
October 2, Tuesday, to October 5, Friday

Always Reforming - Emergence in the Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA
October 12, Friday, to October 13, Friday
(If you’re deciding between this conference and another one, this is the one to choose.)

Off the Map Live – Hear, Listen, Connect in Seattle, WA
November 1, Thursday, to November 3, Saturday

An Emergent Mainline Dialogue in Spokane, WA
November 9, Friday, to November 10, Saturday

Association of Presbyterian Mission Pastors in Louisville, KY
November 28, Wednesday, to November 30, Friday

Conversations with Phyllis Tickle in Lakewood, NY
December 1, Saturday, to December 2, Sunday

A new element growing from in person events will be recording interviews and other material for a presbymergent podcast, which will begin later this fall. More details to follow later.

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Hope to see you soon!

Presbymergent Polity 101: Worship, Sacraments and (Dis)Order
Many view the Book of Order as a rigid, rule-focused guide for saying more about what one “can’t” do in PC(USA) worship, than what one might be able to do. However, in this workshop we’ll look at some key sections of the Book of Order that promise more freedom and openness than one might think, and we’ll talk about some issues relating to “emergent” expressions of worship in both traditional and non-traditional congregations. While this is not meant to be a “How to…”-workshop, we will spend some time looking at examples of how some PC(USA) congregations might use emerging worship/alternative worship in their worship services.

In the workshop, I’d love to give some examples of ways in which current Presbyterian/Presbymergent churches (both traditional and more progressive in their liturgy-styles) have incorporated emergent expressions of worship into their gatherings. If you have done something that you’d like shared, please let me know in the comments.

I’d also love to know what some of your struggles have been, questions you have, or if there are any seemingly insurmountable obstacles you’ve run across. Feel free to leave all of these in the comments - or if you would prefer, you can email me with your thoughts and perspectives.