I recently had a good experience with the American Baptist (see post below). And now comes the Baptimergent an Emergent Baptist Network (cool).

We confess that we’re Baptist but we look around and see only two options; moderate/liberal or conservative. We don’t really identify totally with either one. We respect our heritage as Baptists. We value the competency of a person to work out their faith before God without coercion from an ecclesial authority or from the government. We also think that the strength of kingdom mission is in the local congregation, and is best sustained by free association. We also think that the Bible is best understood with Jesus as the hermeneutical guide. When we think of baptism we think of going down to the river for a full bodied washing.

While we value these Baptist destinctives, we are in no way inclined to value our Baptist identity over anyone else’s religious identity. It just happens to be the family of faith we were reared in, but we feel no need to make anyone else in our religious image.

We also have no stake in the fight that has defined many of us for the last forty years. No one has God or theology figured out and finished. The hubris of our recent forefathers who have wasted the last four decades fighting over who is most Baptist or most right is embarrassing. Especially when world events such as South African Apartheid, Latin American Disappearances, Rwandan Genocide, Darfurian Genocide, Middle Eastern war, global poverty, and climate change have dominated the landscape in those decades. Being the most right Baptist, or even the most right Christian is laughable in the face of these world issues.

We are Baptists, but we are dreaming of new ways of living that identity. Something more kingdom-of-God now, rather than later. Something with a lot more room for others, be they Christian or not. Something more than church on Sunday and Wednesday night. Something that hasn’t been co-opted by a political agenda, but still maintains its prophetic edge.

If this confession resonates with you then you will most likely find this blog and its community of friends encouraging engaging, and empowering. You may find that to be the case even if this confession doesn’t resonate. Whether you identify as Baptist, Emergent, both, or neither, you are welcome to interact with us via this site.

Welcome to the Emergent Baptist Network, a.k.a. “Baptimergent.”

Files under Baptimergent, Baptist, Uncategorized, emergent | |

Read my conversation with Alan Hirsch, the author of The Forgotten Ways [here]

I was shocked when I heard that Leonard Sweet had accepted the position left vacant at Grace Community Church with the firing of John MacArthur. Read the complete story [here]

Files under Alan Hirsch, April Fool, Consumerism, Culture, Evangelism, Interviews, Leonard Sweet, conventional church, conversation, emergent, mission, missional | 2 Comments | 2 Comments »

My good friend Larry Chouinard, who blogs at Spiritual Conversations, has made his most recent publication, The Way of the King, available as a free download. [download it here]

Files under Evangelism, Larry Chouinard, emergent, missional | |

In the twenty-first century, it’s not God who’s dead. It’s the church. Or at least conventional forms of church. Dead? you say. Isn’t that overstating the case a bit? Indeed, churches still abound. So do pay phones. You can still find pay phones around, in airports and train stations and shopping malls-there are plenty of working pay phones. But look around your local airport and you’ll likely see the sad remnants where pay phones used to hang–the strange row of rectangles on the wall and the empty slot where a phone book used to sit.There are under a million pay phones in the United States today. In 1997, there were over two million. Of course, the death of the pay phone doesn’t mean that we don’t make phone calls anymore. In fact, we make far more calls than ever before, but we make them differently. Now we make phone calls from home or on the mobile device clasped to our belt or through our computers. Phone calls aren’t obsolete, but the pay phone is–or at least it’s quickly becoming so.

Similarly, the modern church is changing and evolving and emerging. To extend the analogy a bit, no one is saying that the pay phone was a bad idea. Most people would agree that it was a good idea at the time-it was an excellent way to communicate. But communication was the goal, and pay phones were merely a means to an end. The modern church-at least as it is characterized by imposing physical buildings, professional clergy, denominational bureaucracies, residential seminary training, and other trappings-was an endeavor by faithful men and women in their time and place, attempting to live into the biblical gospel. But the church was never the end, only the means.

-excerpt from The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier by Tony Jones

Files under Learning, emergent, leadership, review | 1 Comment | 1 Comment »

This gathering conversation; emergent(s), house churches, new church plants—what Barna called Revolution. I can’t help but believe that among these growing numbers are a ton of libertarians and former young church leaders who have reacted to the personal pain of having their ideas, philosophy, etc., dismissed by the current crop of (boomer) church leaders.

But there’s some history that might reflect on the above paragraph.

Through the 1980s the baby boomers were the ones pushing for change. Many today are not old enough to remember and the ones who could remember may have forgotten the rabid resistance by a generation of World War II leaders against the change being lead by the next generation of leaders–young, upstart baby boomers. There were other transitional movements at the time, it just so happens the following come to mind for me. There was strong resistance over the push to allow reading from the NIV and NKJV in the public assembly along with (their)KJV. Another issue was the right to attend the assembly in informal attire. No more ties and dress shoes, or at the minimum the option not to wear them. It all seems silly now but at the time it was serious, so much so that many churches divided over such issues, especially the version controversy.

Paradoxically, the boomers (who are the current crop of church leaders) now practice their own version of resistance. And then on another rung there are the ultra conservatives somethings making statements like, “I’ve never changed my view on anything,” thinking faithfulness is found in a statement like that.  Jesus is right…humanity, in all it’s varied colors, needs him.

Files under George Barna, emergent, house church, libertarian, revolution | |