I've Been Bitten

I have officially been bitten by a bug... the emergent church bug. I feel like I've been an ostrich with his head in the sand and perhaps have wasted too much time. Oh well, must keep moving forward.

I just finished reading Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy and all I can say is....WOW. It is sort of an affirmation of most everything I have recently wanted to believe, but was too afraid to really say so . . . Afraid of another excommunication and all that.

A little less than a year ago our family left a church that we had been involved in deeply for about 10 years. Some really good and healing things happened there, but in the end it became destructive for us. It was better for everyone involved that we left, and it was very emotional for reasons that won't be delved into here. But you can imagine having to leave behind the only relationships you've had (outside your family) for the past ten years and the life change that throws you into. It was very difficult, but now it's done and Jaime and I both feel so much better for everything we've gone through. We're hoping now to move on with the new relationships we're building and the old we're rebuilding (insert apologies here for completely alienating our families.)

Needless to say everything feels new and we've felt free to relax and explore new ways of thinking and living; to explore things that we'd always felt were right but weren't free to talk about or really live.

So recently I've been spending too much time at a blog called Tall Skinny Kiwi where he recently had a pretty strong rebuke for the Emergent Church in the US. This of course piqued my interest on top of other references this week to the whole thing (how's that for deliberately vague?) and I found their web site. Got my hands on the Generous Orthodoxy book and have been bit.

When I'm bitten by something, I get obsessed with it and have to learn everything I can about it, which means lots of Library books on my book shelf for way too long and Jaime getting mad at me. But fortunately for her, I've got two big projects coming up in school and probably won't have time to hit the libraries. Since our public library seems to be short on titles that the Emergent folks recommend, it will take some time to dig them up (I may just have to buy one or two, heaven forbid).

I'm still not ready to jump in with both my feet, though the pull is very strong. I'm still trying to figure out all the details. Anyway, check them out. Several links are on the left. Enjoy.