Weather Report

I’m watching the weather today…

I’m writing from the Outer Banks of NC, a soul place for me. These long barrier islands are typically about 3/4 mile wide bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the East and one of NC’s large sounds on the West.

To truly love the Outer Banks, you have to love high wind and rapidly changing weather. This morning, I’m watching that big line of storms and cold weather, that has created havoc across the U.S. this week, literally race across the Currituck Sound toward me. In the last hour — the sun has disappeared, the temperature has dropped twenty degrees, the wind has changed direction from due South to due North and has picked to gusts of about 40mph, and the rain is now pelting down. Just an hour ago, it was sunny and 60 degrees…

When I’m out here, I often meditate on change. The weather certainly makes the thought inevitable. This week particularly — I’m out here writing about transition in the church in our culture, reading emails from friends describing changes in their vision and hopes, and experiencing fundamental shifts in my own vocation at home. My Myers-Briggs temperament tells me I’m change-averse. But I can hardly quantify how enthusiastic I am about the many changes I’m experiencing and observing.

On a larger scope, I opened my email this morning to a couple letters from church leaders who are comprehensively rethinking their community expression of the Christian way. There are so many negatives that can be said of the church in our culture. But I’m hopeful. It is exciting to watch communities and leaders challenge the notions of church as program or isolated community and the gospel as commodity or a security blanket. As Jason Clark wrote recently on planetemergent.org, “emergent is not the emerging church.” So true. But it has been a real privilege to be part of one of the catalysts for these changes.

I’m also hopeful and excited about the many transitions of Emergent these last few months. The transition from a coordinating team to growing community of contributors and friends expresses our heart. We so desire this to be an open friendship and an open conversation shaped and bounded by a rule of community rather than organizational boundaries. If you desire to join in and contribute, please do so. There’s room for you.

I’m also enthusiastic to watch local learning communities and cohorts begin to take off around the country. We’ve long desired for local expressions of emergent to grow. Geoff Holsclaw is leading a strong team of folks (Rick Bennett, Andrea Summers, Mike King, Laci Scott) to continue to develop these expressions. Over the last few months, we’ve seen new conversations develop in Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham, Miami, Nashville, and several other locations.

I also want to add my thanks to Will Samson for his tireless efforts in starting this blog and his work on the emergent website. These projects certainly fit the category of positive transitions.

Well — the rain out here has just “gone horizontal.” I can barely see the house next door. You gotta just love Outer Banks weather. But according to the weather channel, it will moderate in just a few hours.

Tim Conder

Comments

[Brian Baute]

Tim-

I'm write down the road from you in Burlington, NC and I too have a deep affection for the Outer Banks. Enjoy the storm.

[Whitewave]

Hi again.

Just did a little word study on "catalyst" and "catalytic converter". Very informative. Speeding up change or making change possible under less destructive conditions or changing destructive substances into harmless ones.

I get a little deffensive when people complain about finding identity through the use of dissatisfaction and negativity. Like anything else, creating something new is not a sudden and static event. It is a process. Processes of change often begin with turning up the heat or purposely exposing the previously protected elements to some other chemicals or processes which remove or undo stability. Even if you prefer the analogy of human reproduction over chemical reaction, the process begins the same way. Forcing the loss of control or stability.

Deal with it.

But rest assured that, like your wild weather, instability is not a permanent state and there's no reason to maintain it beyond it's usefulness. We have to begin the process of definition by identifying what we are not. That's just a reality. But it seems obvious to me that The Emerging Church is not about a permanent state of negativity or opposition.

It may be that there are alot of people who equate confrontation and opposition with exclusion and self-righteousness. Those people may panic and forsee only escalation and destruction. While the Church has often supported this kind of sticky-sweet ethic (when convenient), Jesus clearly does not. And it may be that there are many people who indeed cannot embody confrontaion without puffing themselves up for a dirty fight. I know for a fact that is true. But there's no reason to assume that the loud ones or the nasty ones speak for all of us, or that healthy confrontation cannot lead to negotiation, change and a new and stronger union.

Please don't forget us West Coasties out here. I don't know why we're so isolated compared to the East. It's highly dissatisfactory. I often feel as if I'm the only one trying to turn up the heat, but I know that's not true. My best friend, Lorica, often feels the same way, methinks.