“We need thousands of leaders to help lead existing churches through the current paradigm shift. AND we need thousands of leaders to help plant new faith communities. Both are essential, and progress in one helps the other. Among church planters, we need folks who will start churches to help alienated churchgoers … people who will drop out of church unless somebody forms a more open space where they can survive and thrive spiritually. But no less important — more important, in my opinion — we need church planters who will go much farther than most alienated churchgoers would want to go — to meet the ‘spiritual but not religious’ where they are and form faith communities among them, forming authentic disciples or followers of Jesus without needless religious baggage. So I just wanted to say to you and anyone else feeling this call … you’re needed. Fan the flame. Go for it. Don’t let anyone discourage you!”

Read the rest of Brian’s post

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In the July/August 2010 issue of Tikkun magazine, Andrea Smith writes in her article “Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering Society” shares an interesting observation/comment about “the emergent movement.” (Jay Bakker also has an editorial in this issue of Tikkun, which is available online for $5.) I wanted to post an excerpt here that’s a bit longer than Twitter will allow to give a space for people to read and reflect and respond in civil dialogue. Here’s what Smith says,

“By describing the emergent movement as a queering of evangelicalism, I don’t necessarily mean that it offers an open critique of homophobia (although some emergent church leaders such as Brian McLaren have spoken out against homophobia). Rather, I see this movement as challenging of normalizing logics within evangelicalism. This movement has sought to challenge the meaning of evangelicalism as being based on doctrinal correctness, and instead to imagine it a more open-ended ongoing theological conversation.”

What do you think?