Emersion Books

Emergence Conference

a post-evangelical church for a post-Christian world?

Over the past several years there has been for some a growing uneasiness and for others an unprecedented excitement about the church among emerging generations. There is a movement afoot in our world called the "emerging church" that has called into question the normal way of doing church and being the church. Many are wondering if in our post-Christian world the church has become little more than a resting place for all things religious.

Join us for a unique weekend conversation that will feature many of the key leaders in the emerging church movement. This event will provide you with a first-hand experience with people who are re-imagining what the church can be for a post-Christian world. Come and interact with key leaders about the beliefs, practices and ways of engaging culture in the way of Jesus.

Dates & Locations (2 remaining, the first event occurred early June in Seattle)

October 19-20, 2007
Austin, TX

Fall 2007
Minneapolis, MN

Speakers
This weekend conversation will feature many of the key leaders in the emerging church movement such as Dan Kimball, John Burke, Doug Pagitt, Scot McKnight, Andrew Jones, Karen Ward, Danielle Shroyer, and Mark Driscoll. View the speakers

Register Here.

Purpose Driven Kit for Life

Joseph R. Myers is an entrepreneur, speaker, writer, and owner of FrontPorch, a consulting firm that helps churches, businesses, and other organizations promote and develop community. Author of The Search to Belong, Myers is also a founding partner of the communications arts group settingPace, based in Cincinnati, Ohio. You can find out more about Joe at www.languageofbelonging.com

If I only had a purpose…

I’m driven. Ask anyone who knows me—I have an italic bent to my life.

But do I have a purpose? Does God have a purpose for me?

If he does he seems to be a little confused about it. I mean, why does he keep it so secret? Why is it so illusive that over 20 million bought a book to discover it?

If God has a purpose why does he make it so hard to find?

What if he doesn’t have a purpose, but instead has possibilities? What if God’s plan is emerging and fluid, not static and set? What if God’s plan is Organic Order and not a Master Plan?

Here is one illustration (that I also mention in Organic Community). When I was a boy, I started showing an interest in art. My parents often found me with pencil and paper, drawing anything and everything I could bring to mind. The front of the refrigerator door quickly filled with pieces I had completed.

I remember one Christmas in particular, when I had started to show a growing competency in art, my family encouraged me by giving me supplies and instructional books. The more presents I opened, the more excited I became.

My expectations ran high when we arrived at Grandma’s house. In her own way, my grandmother was an artist. Grandma would give me presents selected with the wisdom and insight of a fellow artist!

The first gift came. Brushes. Then the second: a large, rectangular box. I couldn’t suppress my excitement. This would be the gift that would set me on the path of Artist. I unwrapped that present like a starving dog devouring a bowl of food, all the while composing in my mind the wonderful acceptance speech I would give to honor this gift and my hopeful future.

There it was: a paint-by-numbers kit. I was shocked into silence.

Grandma kept looking at me as only grandmothers can, with eyes full of love and a voice full of tenderness: “Now you can paint beautiful paintings.”

Beautiful paintings! What did she think of the ones I had already done? Weren’t they beautiful? Weren’t they art? Her gift told me that, in her mind, I was no artist at all. I was just a little boy trying a new hobby. Maybe, if I could learn to follow somebody else’s plan, I could produce “beautiful paintings.”

It is not true that an artist is someone who manufactures art. An artist is someone who enables art to emerge from a canvas—someone who has the strengths, competencies, and patience to bring that miracle into being.

Art is not formulaic, like a paint-by-numbers kit. It has life. It is viewed and appreciated. It moves and inspires. It invites participation, mingling its own story with those of its observers.

God invites our artistic participation in life. He does not have a master plan—a paint-by-number experience waiting for you to discover. God invites you to paint your life and discover the masterpiece!

Soliton Sessions: Dangerous Living

Dangerous Living: The 2007 Soliton Sessions

Soliton Sessions : US | Register Now Join us for the 2007 : US Soliton Sessions in Ventura, California. This will be held from August 9-12th (Thursday late-afternoon through Saturday night or early Sunday morning depending on what you can do). Conversation: "Dangerous Living" Guides: Kester Brewin (UK) Pete Rollins (N IRE) Christine Pohl (US) Ched Myers (US) Barry Taylor (US/UK) and the many others that have joined us through the years. Register you and your group now. Click here. *Kester Brewin, author of Signs of Emergence, will be a "guide" for this event. There will also be a release party for the book on Friday evening. More information to come soon!

About the Network | Read More The Soliton Network is a global network of cultural creatives, missionaries, activists, church planters and Kingdom entrepreneurs, in dialogue about 21st century mission, justice, spirituality and the church.

Emergent Midwest Gathering

A church of 10,000 people that meets in a mall...
A small urban community that meets in an art gallery...
An African-American church on the south-side of Chicago...
Web communities that connect tens of thousands of people...

What do all of these have in common? They are all emerging faith communities discovering what it means to be missional in their own unique context. AND they will all be represented at the first annual Midwest Emergent Gathering, July 20-21 in the suburbs of Chicago, IL. Come learn from Tony Jones (Emergent Village), Denise Van Eck (Mars Hill Bible Church), Spencer Burke (theOoze.com), Nanette Sawyer (Wicker Park Grace), Doug Pagitt (Solomon's Porch), Alise Barrymore & James King (The Emmaus Community), Will Samson (author of Justice in the Burbs) and many other missional practitioners from a wide diversity of backgrounds as we learn together about "Creating Missional Communities".

Contribute to the conversation as we discuss, network, and learn in community together via fast-paced mainstage sessions, interactive workshops, and unstructured times for dialogue with old or new friends. Whether mainline or evangelical, emerging or traditional, high church or de-churched, you will find inspiration and ideas to help you and your faith community become more effective agents for the mission of God in this hurting world.

The Midwest Emergent Gathering is being hosted by the Cardinal Drive Church of Christ at 2300 Cardinal Drive, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008.

Visit www.emergentmidwest.com to register or for more information.

*There will be a book release party for Justice in the Burbs at this event. More information to come.

Presence, Present, and Power

Joseph R. Myers is an entrepreneur, speaker, writer, and owner of FrontPorch, a consulting firm that helps churches, businesses, and other organizations promote and develop community. Author of The Search to Belong, Myers is also a founding partner of the communications arts group settingPace, based in Cincinnati, Ohio. You can find out more about Joe at www.languageofbelonging.com

I am swearing to you…. I will not read another leadership book based on the leadership style of Jesus. Is there anyone that will hold me to this?

Why do I feel this way?

For several reasons, but let’s unpack just one that confuses me.

There are at least two times where Jesus had an opportunity to lead an anxious group forward and he runs.

First, Jesus described the competencies of a good shepherd, and he said something like “If it were me, I would leave the ninety-nine in the desert to go find the one who has lost its way.” That doesn’t sound like a great leader. I’ve never heard any of the books describe a good leader as someone who would escape the responsibility of caring for the group for the sake of one rebellious soul. That just doesn’t sound like a “getting the right people on the bus” mentality.

Second, Jesus was talking to a group who were in their hour of dire need. And again, he ran. “I must leave you. I can’t stay. But don’t worry, someone else is coming.” I haven’t seen a leadership model like this in the literature I’m reading.

It seems to me that a leader is to lead by presence more than by being present. A movement based on a leader being present will surely die. To lead a movement by presence requires one to leave.

So maybe the question is, “Can you leave, knowing that whatever or whoever you are leading will continue to move forward without you?”

Leading with such presence may require an organic use of power.

A Master Plan tries to deliver power to individuals through position. A person is set into a position on an organizational chart and given corresponding control, authority, jurisdiction, permission-granting rights, and influence. He or she is trained in how to use these tools to achieve the master plan.

An Organic Order asks, “Who is the steward of power now?” and “Who is leading now?” Positions have no place of permanent importance. There is a revolving understanding of power.

In a framework of revolving power, there is no dominant member. Like the dynamic game of “rock, paper, scissors,” no one element stands as permanent leader. Rock is covered by a single sheet of paper. Paper is cut down to size by scissors. Scissors are crushed under the rock. This revolving understanding of power gives flow to the game and makes it competitive. (And interesting!)

Feel free to lead with presence and a revolving understanding of power. Let go of your fleeting positional power. Not even God tries to control your life with positional power.

God, you left the kingdom in some messy hands, please let me be as wise.

Justice in the Burbs Review and Excerpt

By Will Samson (from http://willzhead.typepad.com/willzhead/)

Lisa and I just received a really great review for our upcoming book, Justice in the Burbs. That review [From Publisher's Weekly] is pasted below. After, there is a link for you to download the first two chapters of the book.

Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands of Jesus Wherever You Live
Will and Lisa Samson. Baker Books, $14.99 paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-8010-6809-6

Award-winning Christian novelist Lisa Samson (Songbird; Quaker Summer) and her husband, sociology doctoral student Will Samson, intertwine fiction and nonfiction in this challenging and inspiring book about justice. Lisa Samson's novella features the Marshalls, a suburban family with all the accouterments: Matt climbs the corporate ladder, Christine cares for their three children, and both are busy with numerous church leadership positions. One day, however, Matt and Christine visit an inner-city mission, and their ideas about how they should be living gradually, but dramatically, change. The nonfiction portion of the book examines the issues these characters (and most of the book's readership) face. The Samsons talk about why God cares what we eat, where we live, how much electricity we use, and to whom we minister. Astonishingly, the authors manage to do this without hitting a sanctimonious note. On the contrary, they repeatedly highlight the heartbreak and complexity of what they refer to as "thinking and living in keeping with God's heartbeat of justice," and frequently acknowledge their own struggles and failures. The Samsons include short meditations at the end of each chapter written by a variety of Christian authors, as well as a series of helpful discussion questions at the end. (Aug.)

Download a free sample of Justice in the Burbs including the cover, table of contents, introduction, and Chapter 1 in PDF format:

(Download a sample of the book here)

Interview with Will Samson

Previously posted on the Emergent VIllage website: An Interview with Will Samson.

In this Fred Peatross interview, Will Samson talks about Emergent Village, environmentalism, and the upcoming book Justice in the Burbs — due out in August.

Phyllis Tickle to Write Book for emersion

Phyllis Tickle, founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, will write a book on emerging Christianity for Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. The book, whose current working title is The Great Emergence, will be the seventh in Baker emersion series, a partnership between Baker Books and Emergent Village, intended to provide a practical, positive vision of the church as it steps into the future.

Tickle says the book will discuss the development of the emerging church, what she calls the Great Emergence, placing it among the other great phenomena in the history of Christianity, including the Great Schism and the Great Reformation. "Every 500 years," Tickle said, "the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity, whatever they may be, become an intolerable carapace that must be shattered so that renewal and growth may occur. Now is such a time."

Tickle is widely regarded as a leading authority on religion in North America. She has been quoted on the subject by a wide variety of media outlets, including USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, PBS, NPR, and the Hallmark Channel. She is author of numerous books, including The Divine Hours series, God-Talk in America and The Shaping of A Life.

"We are thrilled to partner with Phyllis on this important book. Phyllis will explore one of the most significant developments of American Christianity in recent history," said Chad Allen, acquisitions editor for Baker Books. "Church leaders, laypeople, and observers alike will be able to locate themselves in this narrative of profound change and come away with ideas about how to live constructively in the days and years to come."

In addition to being a best-selling author, Tickle has long had a special interest in what is happening within the emergent community. "Phyllis Tickle is the best friend the emergent movement could ever have," said Doug Pagitt, series editor for emersion. "She's a keen observer of the American church scene. She's also gracious and wise. Her books, from The Divine Hours to her memoirs, are essential reading. We look forward to the release of The Great Emergence with much anticipation."

The book is tentatively scheduled for a Fall 2008 release.

Organic Community Links

Check out Joe Myers website, Language of Belonging: http://www.languageofbelonging.com/. His site includes a podcast section. Right now there are four recorded talks from San Antonio at the Christian Education Association Conference.

Here are a couple of reviews about Organic Community:

Eddie Gibbs:

"In our highly mobile and fragmented living the challenge to create community remains a daunting one. Joseph Myers provides some fresh perspectives on this important topic, arguing that we need to move n our thinking from master plan to organic order. Creating community has more to do with fostering an environment than with imposing a structure. Highly recommended."

http://www.netbloghost.com/tiggertalk/?p=53

Bob Hyatt ("Bob.Blog"):

[...]I won't get too deep into the book in this post, other than to highly recommend it. I started it last night and am already half-way through, and while not the monster mind-blower of his last one (though it may yet prove to be so) I am already thankful for the thinking it has stirred up in me. I feel like books that prompt me not only to hear and absorb what the author is saying, but prove to be a catalyst for further thought about my community, my ministry are few and far between (at least for me, in this stage of life) so when they come along, I like to recommend them.[...]

http://bobhyatt.typepad.com/bobblog/2007/04/organic_communi.html 

Signs of Emergence Reviews

Here are some early reviews about Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin (In-Stores July).

Ryan Bolger:

Kester Brewin is one of the sharpest thinkers on the emerging scene. For years, his community, Vaux, created worship spaces that engaged forbidden cultural and theological themes. His upcoming book, due out in July, Signs of Emergence, continues in this pattern and doesn't disappoint. Brewin combines psychology, urban theory, and complexity theory with biblical reflection on church and leadership. The result? Brewin produces a fresh look at the contemporary scene with an innovative approach to leadership in the church [...]

To view Ryan's complete review visit: http://thebolgblog.typepad.com/thebolgblog/2007/03/signs_of_emerge.html

Jordon Cooper:

[...] I think I have read The Complex Christ (the UK version of Signs of Emergence) probably 20 times and I will soon retire the book as soon as Signs of Emergence comes out in North America for no other reason to give it's battered binding a must needed break. If I had a list of the ten most important books for the emerging church and for the church in general, I think this one would definitely be on it. You can pre-order your copy from Amazon.com now, you will be glad you did. [...]

To view Jordon's complete review visit: http://www.jordoncooper.com/2007/01/book-3-of-53-signs-of-emergence-by.html