Imagine for a moment that I am not standing in a pulpit, but sitting on a stool in the middle of the room; I am not wearing a robe, but am wearing my blue jeans; you are not seated in pews, but are seated around the room on comfortable sofas.

On a sofa together, there’s no opportunity to leave 4 feet between you and your neighbor!  You’ve got your coffee or other refreshment.  There’s some music, but the musicians are off on the corner somewhere, playing and singing.  Everyone will gather and begin to sing together and pray together as we have done and hear some scripture, as we have done.  And then, the sermon will begin.  It will be more of a teaching time, and it will last from 30 to 45 minutes.

What I’ve just described to you is what some people would understand as emergent church.  Emergent is a word used to describe what is happening in some corners of the protestant church, primarily the evangelical protestant church and primarily in North America – in response to what is happening in the culture.

From the scene that I’ve just described you can know a couple of things about emergent.

One:  worship in emergent churches looks really different than it does right here, right now.

Two:  there is a different understanding of where power resides in the emergent church.  The organization of worship as well as the organizational structure of churches that describe themselves as emergent is a decentralized structure.  Power resides in the gathered community, not in the organizational structure itself or in the people who occupy positions in the structure.

Having said all this, I should also say that most emergent churches are organized around single leader with a strong charismatic personality.  These churches are relatively young, and tend to still be led by their founding pastor, almost all, if not all of whom, are male.

Emergent churches are diverse, based on local culture, and they are a culturally located phenomena.

There are some things we can learn from emergent churches that can help us understand why certain people, especially younger people, are more attracted to them than they are to churches like ours.

It is hard to define this emergent thing; which is why I have begun with a description instead.  While emergent churches are diverse, they share these characteristics.

• The style is casual – including the worship.
• The emphasis is on experience
• Worship is participatory
• image based
• communal
• multi sensory
• Interest is in tangible expressions of spirituality
• Very comfortable pulling in elements from different traditions
• Interested in community and social justice

So it is about more than worship style.  There is a real structural changes – the relationships between staff, members and ministry are very different than they have traditionally been in mainline, protestant churches.

In the emergent movement, there is a real openness to reassessment of traditional theological ideas.  There is an openness to uncertainty about truth; an openness to dialogue, a willingness to engage in discussion and conversation to challenge deeply held views.  This is very attractive to folks who are not buying traditional doctrine.

Brian McLaren, one of the best known emergent leaders, writing about the emergent movement, describes emergent church as being about unification of belief and practice.

What do today’s scriptures have to say to us about this?

First, the John text.  Did you notice in the John text that there is a worship war going on?  The woman at the well is living a community where there is a discussion about whether one must go to Jerusalem to worship or not.  So, perceiving that Jesus is a Prophet, she decides to get an answer to the question.  (Jesus, of course, never answers a question directly in John’s gospel.)

And so, Jesus doesn’t say “Jerusalem or Not Jerusalem.”  Jesus says, “The day will come, and is now coming when you will worship in spirit and truth.”  There is something about spirit and truth and belief and practice that Jesus wants to hold together in that conversation.  So one of the questions we are reflecting on is “how do you know when the spirit of God is moving?  How do you know; how do you feel the movement of the spirit?”

The Corinthians text says that God is always doing a new thing.  And Paul starts out describing God’s making of us as individuals into new creations in Christ.  But Paul very quickly moves, as Paul always does, from the individual to the communal and then describes this new thing God is doing as about reconciliation – and we as ambassador of reconciliation.

If we linger a bit with this idea that God is always doing a new thing… there is (for me) an “aha!” moment.  If God is always doing a new thing and we are doing the same old thing, we are already left behind!  It’s not about that book that claims that someday the faithful are going up to heaven and everyone else is going to be left behind.  We are left behind right now if we’re doing the same old thing the same old way – when God is doing a new thing.

So, if nothing else, this emergent church movement invites us to notice that God is doing a new thing someplace with somebody, and maybe wants to do a new thing with us, too.

When new things are happening, we tend to two extreme responses.  Either we refuse change, because we are stuck in the way we’ve always done it, or we just love the novel so much that we’ll try anything just for the sake of novelty.  How do we know what the right new thing is?  How do we know what is of God?  How do we find our way?

We learn to discern where the spirit of God is.  We have to learn to recognize and notice the movement of the spirit.  One way is to watch for fruitful results.

One of the interesting things about emergent church is the willingness to embrace practices from the past.  There is a kind of ancient- future quality to emergent church practices.  It can be a place for holding in tension past, present and future- understanding that the locus of God’s activity is past-present-future – but that God is always persistently moving forward and opening up the future for us.

Emergent churches are pretty open to a variety of practices, so that when it comes time for prayer in an emergent church, you might find people moving around the worship space, doing several different things.  You might find some in a circle, sharing joys and concerns.  You might find some people who have gone off into a chapel area to meditate in silence, or you might find that people are lighting candles at an altar dedicated to prayer.  You find a reliance on liturgy and a reliance on no liturgy.  You find old music and newly written music created by the community for the community.  You find openness to whatever God is willing to use, whether it is past, present or future.

It is not likely that North Broadway is suddenly going to be identified by anybody as an emergent church – they are typically new communities of people.  But I think from the life of emergent churches, we can learn some things to help us notice where God is moving in our midst.  We may not use the “emergent” buzz word – but I do believe that God intends to bring NBC into the future; that something new; that something that has not ever been before is God’s intention for us.  Will it be connected to the past?  Of course it will be.  How can it not be?

So, the opportunity to ask “what is emerging here?” is the opportunity to notice where the Spirit is moving among us; to notice what resources we have; to notice how we might use those resources in new ways for new people so that we become ambassadors of the good news of God’s reconciliation to people who do not have community in which to share that good news.

One thing that we have going for us is that we have long been open to vigorous discussion and reassessment of traditional theological ideas and doctrine.  If you want to challenge tradition, this is a place you can do that.  This is a church where it is okay to ask questions.

We have already demonstrated the capacity for participatory worship with the Saturday’s Light service that we held here several years ago.  We need to begin to incorporate participatory ideas into our mainstream worship practices.

Visually, we have an amazing gift here.  The Altar table setting here changes every single Sunday.  The quiet servants of our altar guild give us that gift week after week after week.  In emergent worship, that visual interest might extend throughout the sanctuary and not just be focused in one place.

As United Methodists we do not have a fixed ritual for worship.  Look at the beginning pages of the hymnal and notice that we have a “basic pattern” which offers a basic framework, within which is all kinds of opportunity for different content.

If you read today’s Columbus Dispatch, you may have seen the half page article about our new payer labyrinth.  One of those ancient practices now relevant for present time is available here.

Our chapel is wonderful, flexible space, ideal for visually interesting, participatory, experiential worship.

What new thing is God doing here with us?  We have a new flexible adaptable and appropriate organizational structure for equipping disciples to be engaged in transformative ministry We have an Emphasis on mid week educational opportunities for community building and spiritual formation.

We have in place strategies for inviting new people.

See where the Spirit is already moving!

I used to believe that there would be a church long after I was gone in every place where I’d ever been in church.  I used to believe the church had permanence and stability, but there are closed church everywhere.  How many of the churches I’ve loved will become schools, or restaurants, or abandoned buildings?

The opportunity we have at North Broadway, with all of our assets and strengths, and with the Spirit of God moving among us is tremendous.  We can emerge as a strong, vital, connected, community oriented congregation.

Remember that emergent church is highly participatory?  What does participation mean?

It means, in the context of worship that we begin to recognize that when we come through those doors, we are coming into this space with a purpose.  That purpose is to bring all of our lives, everything going on with us, into the sacred presence of the holy.  Everything we do in here is about giving ourselves to the movement of the Spirit.  It is about really hearing the music, and noticing the light and seeing the space as sacred invitation.  We are here to sing, pray, think, listen.

What goes on up here in the chancel area is not the main point.  This is not just about what we do.  What we’re doing up here is trying to open up the sacred space for the worship of God’s people.  The work of worship is your work.

Participation is about intention and attention.  It is about presence – it is about having your body in the pew.  And it is about finding your gift and God’s call and offering that through the church to the world and community.

Every vital, fruitful church, by whatever label it is called, is populated with people who expect to be made new in Christ and are willing to invest in relationship with Christ and others with all their heart, soul, strength and mind.

I end by sharing an impression – an image.

We spent most of a week on Eastern Shore of Lake Michigan near The Sleeping Bear Dunes.  The geological formation along this area is spectacular.  As the glaciers retreated, forming the Lakes, and as the wind and the water moved, there arose huge sand dunes above the shore, in just a couple of mile swath along the Leelanau peninsula in Michigan.  On one of our scenic trips, we noticed where the dunes give way to hardwood forest.  There was a tree – gigantic, beautiful and huge – at the boundary between the sand dunes and the forest.  This is a living ecosystem and the dunes are moving closer inland and flattening out.  Here is this tree on the boundary.  And because the wind has been doing its work of shifting the sand, the roots of the tree are exposed on one whole side.  All the soil is lost, and the roots are exposed.  In some places they are growing bark.  The bark protects them from the elements, but they will no longer receive nourishment through those roots.

That tree made me think about the church – about our deep roots and our long history and our big presence we’ve had in the world; and about the shifting sands of time and how things erode and shift and change.  I don’t know if the church will always be here, but I know that God will always be in the world.

All we can do is put our roots down and get them nourished, and see where the growth goes and notice the Spirit.  The way you know where the wind has gone is to see where the sand has moved.  See what the Spirit is moving.

I invite you to just live with that image.  Think about our roots.  Think about the nourishment that God offers.  Think about the future that calls to us.

Think about and pray about …and be willing to move when the wind of the spirit comes to move us…