10 Point Jones-aist

recently, a few of us attended an emerging church conference with a local presbyterian church.

tony jones shared the following points - which i'm assuming is part of a creative common-ey like emerging dialog license. uh, if not - this could be awkward.

so his point was to introduce a flavor of who the emerging church is to the uninitiated but interested / those who may be ready to take the red pill.

emergents*....

10. have no problem with paradox

9. tend to be skeptical of tabernacles

8. find little importance in the various flavors of christianity

7. tend to think in terms of world christianity, not global christianity

6. it’s the theology stupid

5. remove the pews

4. are starting new churches to save our own faith

3. believe there are no ontological differences between clergy and laity

2. reject the politics of left vs right (politically and ecclesiastically)

1. share an eschatology of hope

for the most part, we like the list. i think we may even consider ourselves 10 point jones-aists. but the one that hit me / us the loudest - was #4. we're doing this to save our own faith.

and then my friend Dee made a remarkable deduction from this - that if you're doing this (emerging church postmodern thingy) to save the faith of someone else - it ain't going to work. for them or for you.

we really are doing this to save our own faith.


* for purposes of this post, i'll assume "emergent" is a contraction meaning: emerging agents