It's Stochastic!

Revolution letdown cont.

Some more thoughts spurned by comments on Nick’s blog. (you’re inspirational Nick et al!)

I know I sound really defensive of Emergent Village (TM) and that really isn’t my intention. I love that community but have no real attachment to it as a brand. But I do want to point out that Tony stepped down as national coordinator quite recently. We met in DC just at the end of April.

Yes, EV is changing, Yes, it’s lost momentum - we get that. But please, give the thing a chance. EV has been declared dead and people are even performing postmortem examinations and it’s still dancing on the morgue table.

We live in such an instant gratification age that we expect church culture and climate to change overnight and hopefully with as little involvement from us as possible. I was born into the church in the 70’s, grew up in it in the 80s, came of age in it in the 90s and essentially left all I knew in the 00s. I don’t expect everything in me that existed that long to end overnight nor do I expect it to in the American Church as a whole. *nor do I think, by the way, that that’s a good idea. I don’t think we should want some new thing to just explode on the scene and become the new status quo - as my friend says “we didn’t come from nowhere”*

If EV isn’t your thing, whatever, it’s only a small piece of the whole movement of christianity anyway - but there’s no reason for anyone to distinguish themselves APART from EV. I have seen quite a few “oh by the way I’m not Emergent anymore” posts lately and I don’t feel offended, I just think it’s weird. OK, so you’re not emergent anymore, SO WHAT? What the hell ARE you doing?

(this is now about more than just Nick’s post by the way, this is directed at the whole of the conversation - I realize he’s not attacking EV).

What *if* Emergent Village ceased to exist tomorrow - are all of you just going to go back to the status quo, lamenting what “could have been”? If that happens, it’s because people have been blind to all that has happened and have set themselves up as “buy the church off a shelf” consumers from the beginning. That would be incredibly tragic to me.