Letting Go

What an amazing start to my sabbatical experience. If you read my post yesterday, you'll know that my plans were to spend today chewing on two of Diana Butler Bass' works: "The Practicing Congregation" & "Christianity for the Rest of Us". The bulk of my attention, however, went into two different resources. This start to the study aspect of my sabbatical was the perfect embodiment of the principles in the emerging churches - follow God's agenda Craig, not yours!! The first resource I explored was the May/June edition of the United Methodist Church's magazine "Interpreter". I had been referred to it by one of our worship facilitators (Gwynne). The edition caught her eye since the cover was titled "In Spirit: Authentic Worship? Spirit, Not Style, Makes the Difference". The thing that caught my attention in the article was the simple mission statement of the emerging experience: "The goal: 'being real' with God and each other." What a great way to capture the essence of the worship experience. I was also touched by Marcia McFee's article "Where 2 or 3 Are Gathered". As someone who has devoted her life to worship planning, she captured the greatest challenge many worship leaders face - bringing the values we PROFESS into both the worship experience AND the worship planning. As Marcia wrote: "In worship we must truly embody what we proclaim. Don't just talk about hope, peace, reconciliation and right relationship; come together in worship to 'try it on for size'". How many churches, I wonder, spend their time railing about acts of war and violence around the globe, and then send their worship leaders into committee meetings that are ultimately dominated by spiritual war and spiritual violence (i.e. those who like traditional hymns pitted against those who like contemporary music; those who want visual elements on the walls of the church such as banners versus those who want a bare sanctuary, etc). I wonder what would happen to our faith communities if we started living the principles Marcia named in our worhsip planning processes. The rest of my morning was spent listening to a podcast of Brian McLaren's address from last January at Columbia University titled "Hope & Obstacles". There was so much in the address that I could comment on. I'm trying to keep a focus in these regular sabbatical notes, however, so I'll pick just two things. The first was a statement he made in passing: "What you focus on determines what you miss." The challenge Brian lifted for me was to not become so focused on a particular expression or experience of the emerging movements (i.e. my agenda) that I completely miss broader, more compelling elements of the emerging movements (i.e. God's agenda). Stay tuned to see how I do in living out this professed concern. The second element that stayed with me was an analogy Brian used. He compared the various arms of our Christian tradition (i.e. social action arm, charismatic arm, liturgical arm) to the life of a tree. He noted that as trees grow taller, they also grow wider by adding rings. The inner rings denote the past of an entity or movement; the outer ring reflects its current circumstance. The reality is that folks who are focused on the inner rings (the past) often share more in common with one another than folks who are focused on the outer ring (the present). This can make for odd alliances (i.e. inner ring focused persons from the charasmatic and liturgical traditions can see eye to eye more often than individuals both from a liturical tradition, one of who is inwardly focused and one of whom is outwardly focused). This explains some of my personal experiences around worship when I have often connected with folks who do not share a similar tradition yet share a similar focus (the outward ring). I look forward to seeing where my study experiences take me later today and tomorrow. Til next time...