2 Emergent Experiences

I've been to two Emerging Churches today.....just to show the diversity of "the Emergent Church," let me tell you about where I went.

The first, "Pause." A subsection, community effort of my home mega-church. Its an attempt to fill the gap in ministry between high school seniors and married couples/young couples with children. Whether this qualifies as an "Emergent" community or not....well if I've learned much of anything about being Emergent, its just that there is no definition and beyond that, the people/groups who would fit the definition refuse the definition profusely.....funny how that works.
Well Pause is a service that takes place in the same room as the weekly youth service--its a gym, turned into an all-black room with a stage, couches, a band, tons of bohemian candles.....basically, if you pick up the book "the Emerging Church," this service models the back of the book, exactly. Creepy. Haha, well all in all, its a very nice service. Great band, normally a very 20s something-oriented sermon. Both communion and offering can take place on your own time.....during the ending song "set" you can visit both the "commune" station where you give yourself communion......or the "contribute" section where there is a box for offering (someone put in a snickers bar today....), not to mention the "connect" section that includes a place to pray and write down prayer requests.
While this whole thing seems so close to form, it is done fairly well. If only there were the people-resources to keep it afloat. Southlake Texas is just not a hot spot for the 20-30 crowd, no matter what you do. Sad. In the spirit of community; however, instead of just the passing of the peace/hand shaking session, they do encourage "real conversation" which could last as long as 4-5 minutes. Actually have to get to know someone--community, a strong part of this whole postmodern church thing.

Trial #2
Searching off the "Emerging Church" directory website, I found "Mars Hill," named independently but still somewhat remaining connected to Rob Bell's Emergent Church. Funny enough, I'd already interviewed the pastors at their home.....part of my Christian Monastics series. This group, qualifiying for "true Emergent status" looks very different from Pause.

There was little attempt to appear cool---the black room, bohemian look, couches and dimmed light of Pause was replaced by a house--where we gathered in the living room. I ran late, getting there at 5:20, 20 minutes late.....to only find out that the "service" began at 6:30pm. Before then, we stood around and talked, I had a couple of great talks about the Emerging church, Evangelism, and my research. Very friendly people. All in all, about 20 people came.

Today's service was about "Stewardship." Apparently last week they talked about stewarding, giving in terms of relationships, money, "words" and service. This was much more fluid and hippiesque in nature than anything I'd really ever seen. However, seeing the direction of my own life lately, I easily fit in and played along.

The pastor talked about how the time before we started served as a time to steward our relationships with others in the community---and how afterwards we weren't going to close in prayer for the sake that our stewarding would not end, whoa. Cool but just very different.

Instead of a formal teaching time, he had asked everyone in the community to go back and spend the week considering what God would have them bring back this next week. One guy had us speak out the names of the trinity (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit) in prayer, one guy had a psalm to read, and a woman talked about aching for the body of Christ. It felt much like my other almost-Emerging community in Newport news where we did a Quaker like exercise one time.

Results, I don't know about the whole House Church thing. People surely have a greater chance of being really connected, loved, and cared for, really experiencing community. However, there is some difficulty in the 1st time. I could handle it, being fairly friendly and really familiar with religious settings.....however, a true seeker, would they feel welcome? Is church the place for the "seeker" to come? Or would they be invited? Is it bad to place a greater burden on the believer to have to personally invite the seeker to come? hmmm....
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