Interesting little article on the emerging church from the floor of the Christian Booksellers Association trade show. Some snippets:
From the odd:
One morning as I walked through a hotel lobby, I spotted a badge-free person with a particularly familiar face and smiled in a most cheerful manner, stopping just short of saying, “Hey, how are you doing?” The familiar face, as it turned out, belonged to Chuck Norris. I tell that story for three reasons:
1) it’s a good story;
2) I’m hoping the search engines will draw Chuck Norris fans to this site; and
3) it underscores the fact that you never know who will show up at CBA.
Norris was there promoting his autobiography, Against All Odds, which releases in September.
to comments on evangelicalism...
I also identify with evangelical Christianity... Even so, I am among those who have grown increasingly disenchanted with evangelicalism. Don’t get me wrong—I could sign, and have signed, any basic statement of faith issued by most evangelical ministries and companies. It’s not a problem of doctrine; it’s a problem of practice.
to the bizarre
This year, I asked a fellow Episcopalian, a book editor who could have easily sat out the event, why he bothered to attend. “Are you kidding?” he said. “I love CBA—it’s so bizarre!” Amen to that. Display cases in the lobby of the Georgia World Congress Center, where the event was held, exhibited such items as Actual Brimstone from Sodom and Gomorrah and canvas sandals featuring an embroidered scripture reference and American flag, for those who feel the need to wear their faith and their patriotism on their feet. More than a few groups of journalists hold annual contests to see who can come up with the best example of “Jesus junk” from the trade floor.
and then, to some comments on the emerging church:
What the emerging church offers and encourages is a new way of doing church and being the church, one that resonates not only with the 18-to-34-year-old demographic—the first fully postmodern generation—but also with people who think like those in the younger demographic but are older in age. Or way older, like me. If you came to faith in Christ during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s as I did, you should readily understand the emerging church. Remember how we tried to create a whole new model based on Luke’s description of the early church in the book of Acts? Well, the emerging church is succeeding where we failed, for reasons I can only speculate about. Sometimes I think we just gave up too soon. We ended up with some decent alternatives for that time (think Vineyard Fellowship and Calvary Chapel), but that’s not what we really wanted. What we really wanted then is what they’re actually doing now.
