I believe that Jesus is the One who saves. But…aaah…what is salvation? Salvation comes when we stand in right relationship with God. It’s a healing of the rift that exists between we selfish, solipcistic creatures and our Creator.

All of the terms and images that are used throughout the Gospels and Epistles point to Jesus of Nazareth as the One who fully manifested the self-emptying servanthood that is required if we are to conform our wills to God. He’s the physical reality of the logos that underlies the universe, so woven up into who God is that parsing out where the man ends and God begins is a fools errand.

Or the errand of theologians. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

More importantly, through him we come to see that this logos isn’t just the disengaged Enlightenment clockmaker or the abstraction of an Aristotelian unmoved mover. Instead, Jesus expresses the logos to us as love. He has soteriological power..that means savin’ power, kids…because he is God’s own self-expression. He’s not the Ba’al of a neo-Canaanite Trinity, sacrificed and raised by El like a subordinate mediator god in a tripartite pantheon. At his most essential, substantial level, Jesus is God.

Being Christian..and being saved…is less about obeying or emulating Christ and more about participating in Christ. It’s not about our own heartfelt emo conviction that we’ve been adequately spattered with His plasma and corpuscles. It’s not measured by our ability to memorize and recite scripture or the doctrinal assertions of our particular tradition.

It’s measured by our participation in that love that is God the Father, which Christ expressed through his life, and which the Spirit struggles every day to manifest in us.

reposted with minor tweaks from Beloved Spear

I definitely don’t believe that non-Christians are going to hell. I do believe in an afterlife, and consequence of one’s actions during life, but I don’t think God cares if people don’t quite get it. I do believe in God.

In order to stay on track with my faith, I can’t over think the theology behind it all. I feel like it loses meaning as I pick it apart. As far as the story of Christ goes, he was the son of God, came to teach about God, he did just that, he had the answers on how to live a life of faith, and we killed him for it. The resurrection to me represents his life and teachings surviving his crucifixion. Whether the corporal resurrection happened, I don’t believe or disbelieve. I think it’s not likely, but I do believe in the possibility of something happening. I can’t lie about believing it because to me that would be worse than questioning.

So, if I’m not in it for the miracles and the resurrection, and don’t really think Jesus was God Himself incarnated as a person, but that he was sent by God, then how can I call myself a Christian? My reason is because I choose to follow Jesus. I believe that living by the principles he taught is what he meant when he said “the only way to the father is through me.” I do believe he is the savior, in that he can forgive us and bring us to God. That is where my faith lies. I take my faith very seriously, and when I am on track with my faith my life is so much better. He was more than a prophet to me, and I do believe he was divine. He was also a teacher of how to live. If I follow his teachings, my bases are covered. I can live in peace, without bitterness, without undue worry, and in complete freedom spiritually. I am not by any means fully successful with this, but I am learning. I can apply his teachings to every question in my life.

For those not already familiar with Second Life from various news reports, magazine articles, and other usual sources of hype, to explain would take up more space than would be wise in this blog post.  Instead, I recommend starting here. It’s eye opening reading, I promise.

When I first started exploring Second Life, I found plenty of evidence of minstry — from a United Methodist Chapel, to a Lutheran Pavillion, to a Taize Sanctuary 500 meters in the sky!  I found the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life, started two years ago by Rev. Mark Brown, which now has 800+ members and conducts five virtual services each week.   I also found a community — Koinonia Congregational Church – that can best be described as “emergent” and meets weekly in a beautiful sanctuary without walls or doors.

I searched for Presbyterians.  It was pretty bleak…but I did find one person — in real life she’s an elder at a Presbyterian Church in California — who has been keeping the proverbial light on, and started a group called (no surprise here) 1st Presbyterian Church of Second Life.  She reserved the name with the hope and a prayer that someday more Presbyterians would come along.  And now, that’s started to happen…

After several weeks of talking to people, dreaming and visioning, the number of Presbyterians in Second Life is growing — most of us are new, and probably feeling a culture shock not unlike what immigrants to the US feel (SL has a steeper learning curve than FB or twitter).  But we’re starting to connect, have conversations, explore opportunities for ministry that is uniquely Presbyterian, but also uniquely Second Life.  Just yesterday, our esteemed moderator, Bruce Reyes-Chow, jumped in (his SL name is Esteban Radikal), as did Philip Lotspeich (SL: Philip Lionheart) from the office of Evangelism and Growth.

So, in true Presbyterian fashion (maybe a bad thing, mabye not?) we’ve acquired some land, threw up a building (both were WAY easier and cheaper than in real life) and will be gathering on Saturday nights 9pm CST / 7pm SLT for fellowship, conversation, and perhaps eventually something like worship, too.  Tomorrow night will be our very first gathering of Presbyterians in Second Life, and anyone is welcome to drop in. May God’s Spirit breathe through the bits and the bytes into a new context (for us, at least)!

• To find our meeting place in Second Life, click here. If you don’t have an account yet, you’ll have to create one.
• If you’d like to get involved with what we’re doing in Second Life, contact Neal Locke via twitter, facebook, or email neal at mrlocke dot net.
• If you created an account in Second Life but are utterly confused and lost, use the search engine to find me: I’m Neill Loxingly in Second Life. Add me as a friend, and I’ll come to your rescue, or send another SL Presbyterian to help

Bend sits in the midst of millions of acres of national forests and wilderness offering world class nordic and alpine skiing, rock climbing, mountain biking, white water kayaking, golf, hiking, camping, fly fishing, boating, etc.  This is a great opportunity to build a church for the 21st century from scratch.  For more information contact Bob Pearson, bobpear@bendcable.com.

Peace.

On Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment: A Comment – Andrew Tatusko

The Presbymergent Coordinating Group for 2009-2010 is as follows.

Adam J. Copeland

Adam Walker Cleaveland

Andrew Seely

Bob Pearson

Carol Howard Merritt

Chad Andrew Herring

Charles Wiley

Chelle Honiker Yarbrough

Chris Brown

Chris Harrison

Dannah Walter

David Parker

David Williams

Drew Tatusko

Jan Edmiston

Jen Reiff

Jenny Warner

Jim Howland

John Franke

John Gulden

John Vest

Joseph J Dorociak

Jud Hendrix

Karen Sloan

Landon Whitsitt

Leon Bloder

Melissa Lynn DeRosia

Meredith Kemp-Pappan

Monica Hall

Nanette Sawyer

Neal Locke

Quinn Fox

Ryan Kemp-Pappan

Sarah Glass

Scott Kinder-Pyle

Seth Thomas

Thomas Brown

Tom Livengood

Tom Robinson

Tony Sundermeier

Troy Bronsink

Wendy Bailey

It’s true that many of us in the Presbymergent conversation have, over the past two years of our existence, cringed at the thought of becoming more structured, fearing that first step towards institutional irrelevance.  It’s also true that the “Presby” side of our heritage embraces things done “decently and in order.”  So the challenge for our tribe has always been to live in the tension between these two natures — the organized and the organic — being true to both and not letting one dominate the other.

When we gathered last month, there was energy around several things — some were proposed events, others were ideas, and some were goals for Presbymergent and related communities.  We quickly realized that our dreams outnumbered our hands, so only those things which gathered enough hands, feet, and commitments were carried forward.  Several “clusters” emerged, each with a point-person committed to shepherding the dream into reality over the coming year.   More specifics on the different clusters to come soon!

The cluster I was part of named itself the Organ(ic)izing Group to reflect our dual nature (and because parentheses are just sooo emergent) — or just “OhGee” for short — and was given the blessing of the Coordinating Group to accomplish the following:

• Establish 501c3 Non-Profit Status for Presbymergent
• Establish bylaws, budgets, transparent record keeping and accounting systems as needed for non-profit status
• Constitute a new Coordinating Group through broad and open invitation, with concern toward diversity of gender, age, ethnicity and geographical location
• Develop a “Conceptual Document” for and about Presbymergent (kind of like a mission statement, but more flexible, organic, and living)
• Serve as a point of contact for inquiries about Presbymergent and for administrative decisions on behalf of the Coordinating Group.

Basically, while the other clusters are having fun being creative, the OhGee gets to do the “dirty work” of administration   But not in a centralized, authoritative or controlling way, — rather with the desire and intent of empowering the other clusters to accomplish their tasks, mindful that our authority originates from and flows through the Presbymergent Coordinating Group.

There are eight members on the Organ(ic)izing Group:  Jan Edmiston, Heather Grantham, Chad Herring,  Carol Howard Merritt, Ryan Kemp Pappan , Neal Locke, Adam Walker Cleaveland, and David Williams.  Members were chosen by interest and consensus within the Coordinating Group (some volunteered, some were drafted) to serve for one year until the next gathering of the Coordinating Group, which will take place next February in Atlanta, GA.

As a final thought on venturing into a new way of existing, I find the metaphor of Wikipedia helpful:  On the surface, it would seem that wikipedia (and all wikis) are chaotic and ever-changing, where anyone has the power to contribute or change the content.  But if you look one layer deeper, Wikipedia is a software application, written in PHP and MySQL. In other words, it has a framework, a structure, a scaffolding, that, rather than locking down and controlling the website, actually preserves and protects the openness of wikipedia, helping it to accomplish its open-source goals.  We hope that we can do the same for Presbymergent, in an organized — but organic — sort of way.

I have been involved in a discussion surrounding Presbymergent for over a year now. The term is a combination of ”Presbyterian” (as in Presbyterian USA) and ”emergent” as in emergent Christianity. As most nascent organizations of like-minded people, it has begun as something with a lot of energy, a lot of ideas, and ideas of structure, but no real structure until recently. But in a pragmatic way of looking at the world, structure is something that tends to follow clear ideas rather than come prior to it. So my own Presbyterianism, a denomination named after its political structure rather than a founder (Lutheran) or a theology (Baptist) or ecclesiology (Catholic), causes a continual problem. Organizational structure comes prior to clarity of good ideas and that structure assumes that it has already been formed by good ideas; or, it has been formed with good enough ideas to persist.

So what happens if we still have the same political structure, but the ideas that formed it create problems with the culture that now exists? What happens is that new ideas have to fit within the confines of the political structure which is assumed to be at the very least satisfying to those who persist in the denomination. The evaluative question I ask is rather simple: what is working? But this is always rooted in clear ideas. And away the wheel spins once more.

Presbymergent is a group of more or less like-minded Presbyterians who recently gathered in the form of a co-ordinating group asking this essential question: what is working? I did not go to the meeting due to many other concerns with work that kept me home. Nonetheless I continued to  listen and read what others were processing during the meeting. My question always came back to another one related to ”what is working?” and that was, ”why this and why now?”

So I pushed people a bit, critiqued a bit (and from someone from the outside looking in this is always problematic and seems a little intrusive), and engaged people who were there with this fundamental question. Thus, in a wonderfully open-source kind of spontaneous dialogue this afternoon with Landon, Chad, and Fritz, I reached a point of clarity not based on my thoughts, but on the thoughts of others. I had posted a twitter post yesterday that read ”finish this sentence: presbymergent is…” After a good hour or so of pretty intense Socratic dialogue, minds met and broke through some pretty palpable cognitive dissonance with this little statement I cooked up to synthesize the discussion:

Presbymergent are followers of Christ who seek continual reform of existing church structures through dynamic, open, and intentionally critical systems.

Let me unpack some of this since the terms are loaded with a lot.

1) ”are followers of Christ” indicates the source and reason for why people would engage in anything to do with the church. When we cease to be faithful to the revelation of Christs redemption, and when we cease to practice due diligence in following his witness through our words and deeds, we simply lose that which makes us distinctly Christian in the world. I am intentional with the word ””are”” as well. This is not a concept or an ideology. This is a group of people who make choices and act on them.

2) ”who seek continual reform of existing church structures” means that there is simply nothing in this world that human beings conceive that is complete and there is nothing that humans say or do that does not change. Change is not a political slogan and never should have been. It is a fundamental and irreducible construct of human being and human sociation. When we resist change, we are not only losing faith in the calling to which Christ demands of us, we are resisting the very core of what it means to be human. The structures which are constitutive and regulative of the Body of Christ are fallible and so, they are mutable. This is inclusive of not only political structures by which law, order, and social norms are established and reinforced, but of class, gender, sexual orientation, race, culture, ability, and linguistic structures that create assumed boundaries for social and theological construction. These norms are always in flux. Thus it can only be demanded that such frail creatures sustained by an undeserved grace from God, who seek to become more like God through the work of the Spirit that calls the people to God together and which founds the church itself, should understand that all human systems of organization are equally frail, incomplete, and change relative to the working of the living Spirit of God.

3) ”through dynamic, open, and intentionally critical systems” is a call for basic principles of organization that are regulated in and through change. While it is simply a necessity that structures of organization exist that are clear and conducive to getting work done, creating immutable systems is restrictive of the principles of the first clauses in this statement. By ‘’systems” I mean those of communication, team work, collaborative exercises, task forces, activism, etc. These are important organizational principles that should be open and collaborative in order to ensure that the idolatry of faith in an immutable politics is mitigated if not ideally expunged from the process.

I am employing a grounded theory approach to visioning. In itself it is imperfect and requires testing and development, but it is a clear starting point. What I think is important is that Presbymergent have a consensus vision upon which its members fundamentally agree. Once the vision is identified, then specific problems may be addressed that such a vision can pragmatically correct within any social, political, or geographic boundaries identified by willing and able actors. Reporting the outcomes of these ideas through the various means as noted in #3 above are precisely how those items that need to change in #2 above can be identified and influenced.

I welcome continued conversation around these ideas in order to move toward some kind of a consensus vision to which each of our local areas of influence may soon reap the benefit of our sustained flow of energy to follow Christ in this unique calling.

During the February gathering we developed 5 PODS to which we have committed our time and energy. These PODS are 1) National/Regional Cohorts to which the Presbymergent conversation seeks to move into face to face small group gatherings across the denominational landscape. 2) Creative Guilds that seek to offer space to creatively work with Liturgy that moves and shapes and speaks to this emerging vision of Presbymergent. 3) eVokation, a movable event that seeks to awaken “the sleeping creative geniuses” in our midst and live into the call to be the church. 4) NCD identification/support/fundraising that seeks to develop relationships, resources, and faith communities that waif the scent of Presbymergent as we walk along side each other in witnessing to the life present in the PC(USA). 5) Organ(ic)izing Group, which is responsible for forming the new Coordinating Group and working to formally organize Presbymergent into a non-profit group.

Presbymergent is seeking members for a new Coordinating Group [CG] and is seeking your involvement. We are asking that you prayerfully consider officially joining the conversation by intentionally joining the Presbymergent CG.

We ask that your intentional involvement with the Presbymergent conversation include physical presence in your local Presbymergent Cohort as it gathers and seeks to understand God’s call on our lives.

Please attend the local cohort.

We ask that your intentional involvement with the Presbymergent conversation include participation of one of the above PODS that Presbymergent is working towards this year.

Please participate in the work of Presbymergent.

We ask that your intentional involvement with the Presbymergent conversation include attendance of the annual CG gathering to be held February 9-11, 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Please attend the annual CG gathering.

Becoming a member of the Presbymergent CG is not contingent upon completion of any or all of the above bolded statements. We seek only your intentional participation in the Presbymergent community, with the bold statements to be used as a guide to intentional participation.
If you are interested in participating in the Presbymergent CG please email us at [presbymergent@gmail.com] with your desire of participation and what, how, or where you would like to participate. There is no other criterion to membership other than a willingness to gather and converse.

The new Presbymergent CG will be announced around Easter 2009.

And yet, allow me to offer this caveat. In chapter seven of Outliers, Gladwell chronicles the failed communication between Avianca Flight 052 and the traffic control tower of Kennedy airport. That excerpt too may be instructive for Presbymergent. Here’s the gist of what took place in January of 1990: the captain and first officer knew that their 707 was running low on fuel. However, instead of transmitting the dire nature of their circumstance, the Columbian pilots deferred to those brash-speaking controllers on the ground. Rather than emphatically demanding to land the plane immediately, their nonchalant description of the emergency—evidently pilots often say that they’re running low on fuel—led to a catastrophic crash into the estate of John McEnroe. “Thank you very much” were the last words of the first officer as Flight 052 maintained its dutiful holding pattern.

Now, here is the parallel that I would like to make with Presbymergent and the Presbyterian Church (USA): Between those who Twitter and those who do not, communication breaks down. Between those who regularly blog and those who do not, there is an intimidation factor that must be considered carefully as we move forward. Without disavowing or disabusing people of their technology, I propose that we begin to practice a disciplined poetic style of interacting with one another. I don’t mean that we discipline ourselves to speak in rhyme or even iambic pentameter, but that we carry on conversations based upon our contextual experience. That is, let’s begin to say things and to hear things that break through the thickening skin of the Emergent Village subculture. Let’s renounce the incessant tendency we may have to quote the ecclesial expert and let’s truly traffic in the lingo of the vulnerable and broken theo-babblers that we are.

One of the most compelling conversations that we had in Louisville took place at a pub on Thursday evening. I was tired and ready to go home, but a woman from Judd’s church simply asked us to tell why we’re so passionate about serving God. Each person then shared a vivid story of some loss, some trauma or some life-emergency, that precipitated and preceded the call of the Spirit. My sense is that we need Presbymergent to function like Theology On Tap, and that everyone should have the chance to contribute a poetic and authentic verse. If one verse is left out, or is conveniently ignored, or is not honored, Presbymergent will not become the dialogue we had hoped it could be.