Central Oregon Emergent Cohort

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1. bob pearson - June 6, 2008

Nate,

Thanks for doing this. i think it will generate some very valuable conversatons.

My responses:

1. I think you did not fully develop the idea of networked sets.
You may not agree with this, but /i know we have talked about this in the past.
The idea is to have many separate groups that are loosely connected and overlap in some areas.
This model will overlay your scattered diagram with separate sets that are connected in some way.

2. Sorry, but changing conservative in/out Christianity is my mission and I am emerging…:)
But seriously, if we are not about changing Christianity what are we about.
Maybe it is just changing the perception of Christianity that we are about…

3. “Knowing it is not the mark of a righteous person.” I am not sure what you mean by this statement?
Please elaborate.

4. “. Its authority comes from God but also through the communities that interact with it.”
It is also guided by the Spirit of God and we only truly interpret it by the grace of the Spirit.
Anyone who says that they have the definitive interpretation of any scripture must be humbled
in seeing that the only way they can say this is by the guidance of the Spirit of God.

5. “Love happens in relationship and when it ends (which is usually not my decision)”
But may you be contributing to the dissolution of relationships in ways you may not perceive???

6. “there is much that I am pretty sure of that is not written here.”
Nate, i think this is very much of a problem with your approach. to truly enter into a loving dialog,
I strongly believe that you must, at some point, state what you truly believe in full.
Only then can others trust you and enter into a loving dialog.
Holding back part of yourself is not a loving way to connect to others.
You ask others to tell their most basic and intimate stories.
You must be willing to do the same.

7. “Disagreement is a waste if we never lovingly talk about it.”
Yes, and unless we are honest with our disagreements, we can never talk, or know when we disagree, about them…

2. Nate - June 6, 2008

Bob, thanks…. here’s my response.
1. True… I didn’t get into the implications or application of what the networked set looks like. Our model of living that out is not going to be everyone else’s model. I think ours is good… maybe even one of the best. But I didn’t feel like I needed to get into it in what I wrote. Perhaps that’s a whole blog entry in and of itself.

2. I really think it is God that does the changing… we are voices and encouragers to that process. The point of emergent, I don’t feel is to change christianity, but more so to be a part of what is already changing, right? We become the change, but in most cases, we are not the ones who are ultimately able to force it.

3. Knowing the Bible doesn’t make one righteous. It helps… but as I see it, Noah, Moses, Abraham… they were named righteous and they didn’t know all the scriptures. Sometimes people think that knowing the Bible and being able to quote it makes them more holy or more righteous. I don’t know that this is the case.

4. I totally agree with everything you said here. Probably will add that in. What you are talking about though is illumination and not necessarily authority, which is what I was writing about there.

5. True… but I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be the one to say, “That’s it! I am not going on with this relationship.”

6. Mainly what I wrote, since most don’t know of our conversations about this, is that there is no way I can write out everything that I think. In fact there was a lot that I was forgetting when I wrote it all. I am more able to talk clearly about what I hold back and what I don’t… Greg and Dave understand… and Kris and Carol too. I do believe that we must share everything that we believe, and I try to be upfront about that. But ideas, or thoughts… not necessarily the case. Regurgitating everything that I have been reading, talking only about baseball or the latest theology that I disagree with does nothing to let people know about the person underneath all that. I want the on the ground stuff that I can put my fingers into. Stories are different than ideas. (We’ll talk about this more)

7. I’m talking about disagreements that just get emailed about or blogged about and never a face-to-face conversation.

Thanks again.
Nate