We look forward to the challenge it will be to both live in an open-source world, and also honor our denomination’s call to doing things decently and in order - and seeing how that plays out for leadership in the 21st century. We are very excited to see how this new group will guide the continuing emergence of presbymergent.

Hint: You can stuff the ballot box (vote often) if you wait 24 hours and then vote again.

While this leadership arrangement has enabled us to do much, we’re at a point where we need to be more intentional about leadership — not in a hierarchical, bureaucratic sort of way, of course, but rather for the sake of accountability, transparency, communal stewardship, and plain old “getting things done.”

To this end, we’d like to form a Coordinating Group to steer and guide our community over the next year, as we seek a balance between living in the world of “loosely networked generative friendships” as well as the world of “decently and in order.”

The Coordinating Group is open to anyone who is both Presbyterian and actively exploring what it means to be Emergent. It might be a transitional group, or it may evolve into something more permanent. Regardless, we’re looking for people willing to make a one-year time commitment to participate in several intentional developmental conversations (through a Google Group, some conference calls, and hopefully face-to-face interactions) about the continuing “emergence” of presbymergent. We should add the warning that the Coordinating Group is not intended as a “prestige” thing nearly as much as a “roll up your sleeves and work with us” thing.

If you’re interested in helping to further develop our community in this way, you can reply in the comment section to this post, or else send an email to presbymergent@gmail.com letting us know. We’ll reply to everyone as soon as we’ve given sufficient time for people to take the plunge … step into the fire … umm … volunteer.

“Last night our Session did something different. Instead of the annual assignment of committee chairpersons, we talked about options to committees. With the exception of the Nominating Committee (which is mandated by the Book of Order), we’re doing away with committees. (The truth is, our committees died off long ago due to lack of interest.) Instead, we’re going to experiment with the idea of ministries that flow out of discernment groups. Congregants who are interested in a particular ministry will gather for ongoing conversations centered around that ministry. And instead of each elder serving as the chairperson over her or his own group, the elders will work in partnerships of two or more per ministry to help facilitate discussion and the ministries that result from discussion. We’re not sure how this is going to work, but the elders seem to be encouraged by this less hierarchical, more relational approach.”

What have you heard or tried along the lines of reworking Session committees? Any failures? Any encouragements?

I love my “wee kirk,” which when I arrived back in 2003 was a group of about 17 stalwarts, the last folks standing in a suburban congregation that began it’s archetypal mainline deathspiral back in the 1970s. We’re now at about 45 attendees, a mix of Anglos, second generation Korean-Americans, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and African-Americans. The majority of my membership is now under the age of 30.

This year, my session composition is finally changing to more fully reflect the makeup of my church, with half of my leadership now comprised of young professionals…again, under the age of 30. My dear stalwarts are pleased with this, and are eager to hand over the reins. I am both pleased and a little concerned, because while I have total confidence in the thoughtfulness and gifts of my new church leadership, I’m not quite so sure about how well we’re going to mesh with the demands of church record keeping and bureaucracy.

In the near term future, I’m going to need a new clerk of session, and to be quite blunt, I don’t want to inflict the expectations of that hallowed office on any of my new members. My current clerk is worried about it, because she recognizes that it’s going to be nearly impossible for any of my new leadership to do all the things that she currently is required to do without quitting their jobs.

I’m going to be unable to honestly persuade anyone to take on that mantle because I don’t think it’s one that ultimately *needs* to be taken up. Yes, we need to keep good records for our own planning. Yes, we need to maintain standards of accounting transparency. But I need my folks working towards our vision for revitalization and in-the-trenches evangelism, not pouring their energies into paperwork. We don’t have that luxury.

So my question is: have any of y’all managed this kind of transition? Any tips? Any pointers? Any sympathetic ears in Presbytery?

Or should I just resign myself to telling my folks that all those exceptions on our Session records are just a way of telling us how exceptional we are…

I have decided to write this post in response to last weekend to share some reflections as well as to encourage anyone in the Presbymergent community that it is possible for traditional congregations to transform themselves into the hope of the Great Emergence. Many of the emergent churches out there are new plants which have the potential to try amazing things! Then there are those of us who are in declining Presbyterian churches wondering if there is any hope at all!!! Well, yes, and yes, and yes.

Over the past several months I have read the posts on Presbymergent, visited blogs of many folks, websites of Presbymergent churches and been left with more questions rather than affirmations. When I compared our church with many of the other like-minded churches, we did not fit in! So the question of “who we are” as a congregation has haunted me until this weekend. Well, we do not fit in! And that is a good thing. (As Martha Stewart would say!) What makes us emergent is not that we all look and talk alike, but how we are transforming in, through and with Christ to co-create with the Spirit in this Great Emergence. So I boldly declare that our small community is emergent. And it is fantastic!!!!

Our church is located in a 90% white, quite provincial, community with many folks who are either at or below the poverty level. Westminster had been declining for over 25 years (like many mainline churches) when my husband James and I arrived as co-pastors in 2000. In the past seven and a half years, we have tried many programs to grow the church. Folks who were first crazy about us became the most resistant. We gained a few here and there but we lost many to age and death.

In the midst of all the activities and programs, James and I focused on helping those who were willing to truly learn and grow as disciples of Jesus. We focused on connecting the head to the heart. There was a core group of 30 folks who responded as we prayed, deeply delved into the Scripture, practiced the spiritual disciplines, made retreats…. (Some in the congregation actually accused us of teaching new age and witchcraft…)

Three years ago, we went to a spirituality conference with Phyllis Tickle at Montreat. There were five of us. Everything changed after that conference. We came back convinced that God was leading us in this new direction, and the Spirit would show us how to seek and pray. This was the moment when we truly turned to God, praying on our knees (literally!!!), asking God to show us what we needed to do. We knew we wanted to be a community where we can taste and smell the Kingdom of God. We knew we want to be bold in our Christian discipleship. We knew Jesus is the center.

As we sought more of God, we saw more clearly what needed to be done. So we sold our building in 2007, and moved to a rental facility where we worship, fellowship, nurture, challenge and are growing as a community. There were only 30 of us when we moved. The rest left! Now we have about 50 in our community. God asked Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” You bet! God’s breath has entered our congregation and now we have come to life.

The majority in our congregation is over 40 years old, and we have several who are above 80! We have many children, as well as young adults, single moms and dads, and those with no kids. There are those who are Postmodern, and those who cannot spell Postmodern. There are Republicans, Democrats, independents, veterans, some who have graduate degrees, and some with only high school diplomas! Some are on Facebook, some have blogs, some don’t even have computers.

Some only go to the early emergent/contemporary/… service and some only go to the traditional Reformed service. Some alternate in between and some go to both every Sunday.

We use the Discipleship Project as our congregational formation tool. Everyone participates. (If you don’t know what it is, please do check it out, it works: www.thediscipleshipproject.com.) We have a Christian formation center, Wellspring, where we teach and nurture the spiritual disciplines. We host High Teas (Tea with a Purpose) as a part of our hospitality ministry. We hold Bible studies at a local coffee shop, have outreach with the local artists through the Arts Council of Jamestown, host concerts for local bands…, and we have just established a ministry for families in crisis, Faithful Hands. [Thanks to the efforts of Tara, our Worship and Outreach Director...]

I have wanted to share this community life with you beacuse this is who we are. We are not trying to do programs, but desire to be available in our life and work to the presence of God in and through us. We believe there are three standards for us as an emergent congregation which centers us: Christ, prayer, and community. And the Scripture holds all these three strands together. We will face many challenges in the near future (financial being one of them) but we go ahead, knowing that God will not abandon us, and we continue to seek us as we follow Christ in a world living in fear and chaos.

So friends, let us have hope, because God is indeed doing a new thing. Can we percieve it? May you experience the wonder of God in this holy season of Advent.

I will be the first person to admit that even our lowest standard of living is higher than many countries average daily income levels. We are not the worst. We are also sitting atop a volatile mountain of debt, spending, and imaginary power cells. What the fuck are we living for? Where is the service to Christ? Where is the transformation? We are dying as a church in the west and people say they care but they are not supporting it.

I wrote this in response to Carol’s post. I am not a pastor, but a seminarian on the verge of graduation. I am terrified to go into ministry. All of the fears you spoke of add to my anxiety. What shall I do to ensure I can afford to raise a family or even serve a congregation? I heard far too much, “trust God! It is a matter of faith.” I agree trusting God is the beginning. Where is the practice of trust when it comes to financial support from the congregations? Folks will complain, but they will not support.

We are all to blame in the decline. We are part of the problem. This stance of “trust God and if you do not then you have no faith” removes the responsibility from congregations, the Body, and all have in supporting the church. We do not train pastors for free. Is it fair and good stewardship to expect these individuals to shoulder the cost of training that is required?

We have to pay 80 dollars per ordination exam — that is 400 dollars if you can pass these antiquated monsters in the first shot. Not many do! Then there are the psychological evaluations, anywhere from 600 to 2500 dollars. Then the cost of seminary itself, from 10,000 to 15,000 per year for tuition and an additional 10,000 or so to live each year. That is about 60,000 to 75,000 in debt to begin your service with. We need to be smarter with this. If we say we are concerned with the death of the church then we need to step up and support.

The day of the full time pastor maybe behind us. I for one think it is. We must seek sustainable ways to minister in the context to which we find ourselves. Does this mean we have to do away with seminaries and the education they provide? No, the seminary education is foundational to service in the reformed tradition. We must change our lives to live responsibly and centered on Christ.

I used to joke that I wanted to open the First Presbyterian Church of Holy Rollers Bowling Alley. I am no longer joking. Is a coffee house, pub, bowling alley, or restaurant the answer? It is sustainable and attracts folks. In some areas it would respond to the desire and need of a distanced population. It would provide a place for community, care, warmth, outreach, and financial resistance. We just need folks to grasp the idea. Like one of my favorite groups would said, “Rage full on!”

In conjunction with a new way we can inventory our stuff and ask: Do we need the ipod? The newest phone? The cable TV? The two cars? The this or the that? All of this stuff is nice. What does it say about what you live your life for and for whom you live for? I am a f’king hypocrite right along with many of us. I crave the technologies! The Apple computers. The name brand running shoes, the jeans, the shirts, the designer vitamins and food. I love to eat out and am overweight and a burden to this world. I do not practice all that I preach. I need grace, forgiveness, and courage to be what I have witnessed in this world. To stand against the tyranny of consumerism and stereotypes, and hopelessness.

There is a better way. Please pray about it and pray that we can find the way to the cross and sit at the feet of Jesus. The rebel rousing Jesus that roundhouse kicks the money lenders out of a house of Prayer. WTFWJD?

There has been much ado about postmodernism these days. There is postmodern architecture, postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, postmodern film, postmodern literature, postmodern music, postmodern theater, postmodern theology, and even postmodern postmodernism. You cannot escape conversation in many circles without postmodernism entering into it and mocking your modern intellectual vision.

The effects upon the cultural landscape moves today into tension with tomorrow. It begs us to ask the questions of where, when, why, and how of the very human fabric that weaves history, time, and space into a society or does it?

No matter how you interpret postmodernism you must contend that it is a reaction to the status quo. It is rooted in an outsider perspective that mounts attitudes of “us verses them” upon a position of entitlement.

What is Postmodern Theology?
Postmodern Christian theology is a theology rooted in reaction to the status quo. It should be counter-cultural in nature. It seeks to disturb and transform those engaged in the practice of theology. It looks to the pervading culture for means to express and illuminate the gospel message of Jesus Christ. It must not be comfortable or commodified. Theology that seeks to transform cannot and should not be consumed like fun size Halloween candy. To partake in the radical transforming nature of the gospel direct opposition to the status quo is called for.

Gone is the ability to stoically sit by as the gospel is used to propagate a conquering message that excludes and builds division. We are far to concerned with difference rather than similarities.

All are called to ministry. All are sought after to serve. In the Presbyterian tradition being a Minister of the Word and Sacrament does not entitle you to anything more than service. There is no difference between congregation and pastor. We are a body of Believers! Some of us have lost our salt. We are SALboosT as a denomination already.

Where must we go from here?

My outcome in this process
In the course of researching the topic of Postmodern understanding of call I conducted many interviews. I came across a few conclusions:

1. Call is relative to one’s culture.
2. Postmodern understanding of call is rooted in vocational understanding and a longing for security.
3. Action is called for today. we must seek to engage the culture around us to become effective instruments of witness.

There is need for ministers, pastors, and preachers. There is also a need for the understanding of these roles to sift and become more flexible. Churches would benefit from becoming uncomfortable and challenge he status quo. What are you protecting and from what are you protecting it from? In a world full of adjectives, may we be a people of verbs.

It’s not that simple.

The iron was too hot on that fateful day and I lifted a rather large chunk of the carpet along with the huge wax spill that had occurred the night before during our emergent worship gathering. Try as I might, I could not hide the blemish. It remains there still—a reminder of my inability to properly Martha Stewart my wax issue, and as a warning on where not to place candles that you don’t want tipped on to the floor.
Lately, though, I have come to see the burn in the sanctuary carpet as a symbol for something else: The tenuous, tumultuous relationship between the existing and the emerging church…

For the past two years I have led a small “emergent” worship gathering that meets in an existing church, namely the very same church where I serve as the Associate Pastor. Because I am the only pastor on staff at the moment, I also lead and preach at all of the other worship services my church holds. So, on Sunday morning I begin my day by presiding over a “contemporary/casual” worship service with its own constiuency of coffee drinking, jean wearing, contemporary-music lovers. Then I don my clerical robe and preside over our “traditional” worship service that is dominated by grey haired, formal, Sunday-best-wearing Christian “lifers.” Then on Sunday evenings I prepare for our emergent, experiential worship gathering “Song in the Night” by donning jeans, a “Ramones” t-shirt and my battered Chuck Taylor “All Stars.” We then transform our church’s sanctuary from a 1960’s-era, stuffy Presbyterian worship space into something a bit more use-able. The corners of the space are filled with experiential, hands-on worship/prayer stations. Candles and insence are lit. The crowd is decidedly younger than the morning worship services, but is still dotted by grey hairs here and there. As you walk into the space, you might hear a “prelude” by Jimmy Eat World, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash or Amy Winehouse. Insted of hymns or “contemporary” praise songs, you might sing worship music from Charlie Hall, Robbie Seay, David Crowder or The Cure.

At Song in the Night I preach the same sermon that I preach at the Sunday morning worship services…but the delivery and a great deal of the commentary are decidedly different. The emergent gathering hears a more “missional,” raw, prophetic version of my sermons, and then they are given the opportunity to respond to what they have heard in a variety of ways. During our time of response–entitled “Free Worship”–participants can do hands-on worship, journal, pray, sing, talk to one another, or sit quietly.
At some point wax from one of our many candles invariably gets spilled on the floor.

I hear about the candle wax once in a while from a small, but noisy contingent of older church members, who believe that the wax represents a fundamental disrespect of everything they love about church. I think that on a deeper level, these well-meaning people are struggling with their own relevance in an increasingly changing world, and their lack of understanding about our little emergent gathering touches on their innate fear of becoming anachronistic. Fear of irrelevance is a by-product that is created when we begin to more fully realize our own mortality. But here’s the thing… When one of my little, old ladies begins to complain profusely about how “the kids” don’t respect the sanctuary and the amount of money that went into rennovating it back in 1967, she is almost certainly not in touch with any of the aforementioned psycho-babble. She sees something that makes her feel uncomfortable and angry, and she reacts.

I have to say that this reaction is not entirely typical among our older church members. For the most part (as long as they don’t have to listen to the music or see people attending church in jeans and flip-flops), the “traditionalists” in my church tend to live and let live.

But the conversations about the difference between the communities within the larger community of our church always tends to devolve to a conversation about worship style. I am well aware that even my own words have leaned in that direction over the past few paragraphs.

Sadly, our first dreams and excited meetings about the emergent gathering that we began over two years ago had less to do with worship style and more to do with who we were as a community of faith. We were far more interested in how we were going to impact the world than we were about the sort of music we were going to play, or what experiential worship station we were going to create. It all really changed for us one evening when we were visited by an autistic, African-American teenager, who stood up during our “God-Sightings” (a time of sharing and testimonies at our worship gathering) and told us that all he ever wanted to do was to make a difference in his neighborhood (ours) to give kids hope, keep them away from drugs and introduce them to Jesus. We felt at the time that this was a word from God. That Jesus himself had entered the building, delivered a message and left. The young man never came back, which made seem even more Spirit-led. That moment inspired us to leave our sanctuary and go out into our neighborhood… just loving people, feeding people, caring for the poor, the least of these. Over time, though, we got sucked into living a life less ordinary as a group. Serving others is hard and thankless. It’s easier to just keep things in-house, to begin hoping that the world will come to your doorstep. It’s easier to worry about what sort of music will attract the coolest, hippest Christians. It’s easier to sit around and have really deep conversations about church trends and how the latest theological movement will impact the Busters and the Mosaics, and why that is important…

We’re waking up again, though. And this time the existing church is waking up with us. Come to think of it… that was probably our problem in the first place. The members of our existing church were spectators to our emerging missional activities and we liked it that way, to be honest. All of the reasons why we felt the need to move toward “emergence” and away from “existence” were still there. The existing church was still, well, the existing church. Within the existing church you were always free to exhibit creativity, innovation and whatnot—as long as it didn’t cost too much, change the time of choir practice, or the color of the carpet in the Parlor. Generally speaking, even the missional activities that the existing church deemed worthy of engagement were sort of existing in nature. Many of us had found them to be far too pre-approved, pre-ordained, pre-shrunk to fit budgetary requirements and pre-fabbed… as if the Spirit had been sucked right out of them. Our idea of what was missional was a bit more dangerous. And we liked that.

We have a strange bunch that gathers for Song in the Night—our emergent gathering. The majority of the formerly “un-churched” members of our faith community attend Song in the Night. We have more than our fair share of “church-hurt” participants. Our participants also include ex-alcoholics and drug addicts, homosexuals, agnostics, single moms, single dads, abused kids and a few other categories that I am sure that I am failing to mention. We have ex-Baptists, ex-Catholics, current Unitarians, ex-Episcopals, agnostics, evangelicals, liberals, conservatives, ex-Marines, neo-hippies… you name it. Our oldest members are in their mid-sixties and our youngest are barely crawling across the floor. It is the most diverse of all of our communities within the community.

Like I said, we are waking up again. The visions for neighborhood missions are returning to our Song in the Night participants and they are beginning to remember who they were when they were at their best. The spirit of openness that now exists in our entire community of faith—a spirit that I believe had its origins with the Song in the Night gathering—has sparked a movement to being a Holistic Health Ministry that will reach out to people of ages both within and without our church. There is a group that has found our “emergent” ideas about Creation Preservation to be right in line with their own understanding of what it means to practice Stewardship over all God’s gifts. We are now on the verge of launching a church-wide Environmental Stewardship campaign. I could go on… there’s definitely more. Once a month we offer child care to busy working families to give parents the time to get to know one another again, or for single parents to go on a date or have a night of rest. None of these programs would have had a chance two years ago. They would have been scoffed at in favor of more conservative, “traditional” church programs that did more to add members to the church than they did to further the kingdom of God.

So, I guess this brings me full circle—back to the wax stain on the carpet. Something there is that doesn’t love a wax stain… Yet there is something about this one that helps me remember who I am and who I am called to be. Those of us with an “emergent” spirit, who are called to serve the existing church find ourselves living in two worlds more often than not. This is the space to which we are called, though. To deny it, or rail against it would be to deny or rail agains the will of God who placed us here. I can try desperately to iron up the wax from the carpet, but no matter how skilled I am a bit of the wax will always remain.

It’s time that as leaders in the existing Church we, who feel the burgeoning preseence of the Church that is emerging, begin to stop trying to separate, to cover up, to mask or hide its coming. We must help our congregations (existing or no) embrace the hope that is found in Isaiah 43:19 a hope that is meant for all—”See, I am about to do a NEW thing…”

Here is a stab at what I think are a few valuable characteristics for those who lead, influence, sojourn along side of or even pastor that group of people that are known as postmodern, emerging, 21st Century, don’t-put-me-in-a-box-what box?-there-is-no-box! followers of Christ.

An effective pastor of the postmodern persuasion might want to think about embracing the following realities of what to DO and how to BE in ministry.

Take everyone seriously // I think we must start with the assumption they everyone comes to a place of discernment from a place of deep faith. This does not mean we agree or even accept everything that one thinks, but we at least begin with a posture of trust rather than suspicion. Yes, we may later factor in issues of mental health, personal interaction, kookiness, etc, but even those who have “issues” need to be heard . . . I know I do.

Thrive in the gray // I think that one of the core reasons there is such a disconnect between so many entities in the world and church is this idea that the purpose of faith is to conquer ambiguity. Some put all their energy into creating what I think is an unattainable and ultimately empty pursuit: to remove all struggle from life. Another option is to see faith as something that helps us to navigate well, find peace and even thrive in the midst of the ambiguous, gray, chaotic ways of the world.

Embody Appreciation over Acceptance // One of the digs on the Postmodern church is that we just willy-nilly accept any and every thing that comes our way. Some do. This is a mistake. While always leaving room to change it is essential to maintain a clear understanding of one’s core beliefs, essentials, etc. Hearing the point of view of others should be appreciated always, but stop short of acceptance without some measure of discernment. I think that one of the worst things a Postmodern pastor can do is to see the postmodern search for truth as a mandate to give up ones personal understanding of truth. To go to such lengths as to give up one’s truth takes one out of the conversation that a body must continue to have as it moves towards understanding corporate truths. Hold strong to what one believes while being able to maintain an appreciation for the other is essential.

Love Jesus // Cynicism is the disease of our day. I am not talking about being diligent or even discerning, but outright cynical about the world. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is about hope, new life and all things that are beyond humanities imagination. Leadership must embrace and nurture this reality and relationship as it manifests itself both individually and communally.

And some bonus characteristics for we mainline emergents

Embrace the past and unleash the future // For those steeped in tradition and are discovering the postmodern within, postmodernity is not about destroying and forgetting the past, but about a life that flows from and emerges from the past. So . . . this means we need to embrace where we have come from and how we have gotten here without getting to the point of worshiping tradition. For those who prefer a posture of “destroy the institution” I think that they will be hard pressed to move out of a place where they are defined solely by what they ARE NOT; whereas a healthy understanding of the past will better help us those in the future to be defied what they ARE.

Challenge the family // While the outsider’s voice is often the most helpful to spark change, for those of us in mainline settings, if we expect change and transformation, we must ourselves speak out as part of the family. Sure there may be a point where division is needed, but for the most part when we get frustrated with our family, we can either run away, stay and fight or try to find ways to engage in faithful discernment no matter how hard or stressful. Challenging words spoken with love and confidence that are built on relationships of respect can be more powerful than we might think.

Cross the aisles // Arrogance is bad. Mainliners, while I do believe we have some wonderful things to offer to the larger Christian conversation, we also believe that we hold THE truth is so many ways: leadership, theology, style, etc. We must get over ourselves and come to the realization that people will and do experience a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ in a variety of ways. We must reassert our place at the table in the many conversations that have deemed us obsolete simply because of our affiliations. We must also approach those conversations with a confident humility that allows our voices to be respected and heard.

So, there you have it, some early week musings. I desperately wanted to include “Be on Facebook, “Grow a Goatee” and “get trendy glasses” but I figured those where understood