Abductive Columns

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Conversation to Movement (2)

Will the emergent conversation someday become a movement? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Conversations rarely turn into a movement and then run their course in one generation. The great revivals and reformations that dot the history of humanity were never the work of just one person. Every movement is the sum of visionaries who have gone before, generations of uncompromised lives and non-negotiated truths. Faithful men who have led forceful lives.

A movement comes of age when one life harvests the seeds planted by the countless lives of previous generations. A movement occurs when one person, no greater or lesser than those who have gone before, lives a forceful life in the fullness of time. Never think that the great movements of Luther, Calvin, or Campbell were entirely of their own doing. They were simply forceful lives placed by God in a receptive crevice of history.

Let’s vigorously converse while living lives stirring and forceful enough to cause a movement. A true mark of the visionary is his willingness to lay down his life for those whom he’ll never see.

Will the emergent become movement in our generation? I hope so. But even if it doesn’t, even if we never see it, it will occur. And we’ll be a part of it.

1 Comments:

At 10:11 PM, Blogger Fajita said...

Emergent will either be the next major Christian movement or it will inform that movement which is to come. Ha, I talk as if I have a fully functioning crystal ball. I don't, but I see so much good in the movement. Already, in my short time in the conversation, I have learned more about Jesus. I have been posed theological challenges from which I cannot remain the same. This is good. It is stirring (nice choice of words, Fred) something inside me.

My mother is a movement unto herself. She has brought people to Christ through love and a dogged loyalty - and the Jule Miller film strips. She is not against using them even today, although I think they are on DVD now. I think she would give a lot of credit to those tools of teaching the Bible. And yes, they do convey a message of the Bible. But, the gospel is in her life. When my mother enters your life, it is good news because Jesus is in her life. I bet there are over 100 people who are now following Jesus because of her forceful life.

I really want to catch that fever. Emergent is helping to give me a context, a language, a relevant posture. It is teaching me something about the God I love, but also about the culture in which I live. It is teaching me to love the people of the culture while not submitting to the culture.

Emergent needs to remain oa conversation until some more widespread debugging occurs. I see in me lots of needed debugging. It's probably that way for a lot of us.

 

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