.bE (yes, it's my third post of the day...)

after tonight's .bE worship service (be still and know that i am God!), here are my raw thoughts:

as for the description of given of The Emerging Church "movement":
"emergent is not for people whose primary concern is to defend cherished modern institutions and formulations. true, those who wish to help modern institutions be refounded for the emerging culture will be an essential part of the emergent community, but emergent's greatest loyalty is to dynamic christian life and mission in the present and future...not the survival of modernity's institutions and formulations."

thank you, emergent, for telling me that i cannot be living a dynamic christian life since i find spiritual gratification in an institutional church and feel that the traditions of the church are crucial to our emerging culture.

as for the worship time itself:
candles are pretty, projected images are nice to look at, chant is nice to listen to (i love it), incense smells good...i felt the multisensory push. i didn't feel spiritually fed. i felt pressure to "feel" God and pressure to "experience" spirituality, and that if i truly had faith i could experience what you wanted me to experience. i wish i could remember where i read a description of liturgy that turns the faith-experience connection on its head. the author spoke of how liturgy builds faith by acting faithful. that is, we don't start with faith and then act on it, but rather we literally practice our faith. moreover, the importance of the liturgy is that even when i'm not feeling strong in faith, the enactment of faith by the worshiping community surrounds me, carries me, speaks the words that i don't have the strength to say.

and i wish that tonight would have looked at BEING with Christ not as an act that i can perform -- not as something that i can achieve if i only work hard enough -- but rather that tonight would have spoken of a Christ who chooses to BE with us! i don't have to climb up the ladder to be with God, because Christ became incarnate in order to be with me. and not me personally, but for the sake of all humanity. give me a theology of grace and incarnation; a theology of the cross where i know that Christ died for me not because i was worthy, and certainly not because i could reach God if i only meditate enough or pray hard enough or sing with enough devotion.


i went tonight as a skeptic. i admit that. but i still went. i struggle with what it means to be Christ in and for the world, and i struggle with the place of the church in that mission. i feel defeated. i feel like i have no voice. i fear that i am about to devote my life to the pastorate -- to a mainline, traditional, institutional denomination -- just in time for the emergent church to swat me down. i get tired of defending the worth of church-as-institution. i get tired of defending the theological richness of hymns and the profound theological movements to liturgy. i get tired because no one listens. and i get sad because no one cares...or rather, because "postmodern" or "emergent" or "alternative" forces are telling Christians not to care. maybe i'm just a dying breed...

i feel dejected.