catch words for the religious

ah yes, emerging church. this is my thing. i read voraciously on it. there are two main points to the emerging church that i like. the first is that it is organic (another en vogue word). it comes from the communities that are planning it and gerneally involves a team of church members working on the worship, not just the ordained and/or ordained and church staff. i like that. the purpose is to bring what is happening in the church community and neighborhood and culture together to form a worship service that speaks to the people in their language. the biggest problem i have with my congregation is that they don't speak my language. i mean, i understand their language. but it is not mine. much like worshiping in guatemala, it is beauitful, yet foreign, and therefore there is a stumbling block keeping me from truely worshiping the creator. the other thing that i like is that is brings together the past and future, dipping into what is eternal about christianity and what is modern. so often we give nothing to the people to help them bridge that gap. also, churches that are in the emergent model tend to extend sunday into the week, with many meetings and house groups and such. many of our modern churches are not so good at helping people remember christ everyday.

you probably know of all these people, but brian mcclaren and dan kimball are two of my faves. dan's website is cool. in one of his books he shares a story of walking into a christian bookstore for the first time using non-christian eyes. he noticed how overwhemingly frightening it would be for a person who is not christian to walk into such a place. it's a great story. he also just wrote a book called "they like jesus, but hate the church" or somethign like that. also, there is a website i really like called transformingchurch.com. lots of good stuff there. we just have to be careful that the emergent movement keeps emerging and transforming, unlike our current "modern" church movement which is already stale for most.