Emerging Women

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Makeesha's intro. and a question

Hi-ya ladies :)

I'm Makeesha, a relative "young'un". Mom to 2 girls, wife to one man ;) for 7 years. My husband and I are co-ministers of the college ministry at our charismatic church, Third Day Victory in Fort Collins, Colorado USA and our budding "emerging type" congregation, Revolution that will be starting in August . I grew up in the charismatic/word of faith church and have been in ministry since I was a kid.

Here's my question - our church is not at all what I would consider emerging. It's a pretty typical charismatic, faith type church that is affiliated with Victory Churches International. Our pastor is extremely supportive of us and a wonderful guy. He has released us to start Revolution as a "church within a church" with his full support (the vision being to create a contextual community that reaches those who our church is unable to currently reach) but we're still having a hard time explaining the full extent to him since he has no frame of reference for where we're coming from. It's also been hard to communicate to the staff. Everyone on our Revolution team totally "gets it" but they're generally much younger with less ingrained ideas about what church is supposed to be. It's not a big deal but it would be nice to build a lexicon that more "traditional/modern" types could understand. Unfortunately, emerging has created its own dictionary that is familiar to us but not very conducive to dialogue with those outside of the conversation. I come from where they are but I still struggle getting the point across.

Of course, I think ultimately they're just going to have to experience it but we're trying to create the least amount of friction possible with the current "church at large"

Does anyone know of good resources for this or has anyone had a similar experience and found a good way to explain everything?

Let me give an example of where some of the confusion manifests. David was meeting with Pastor B. today and B's question was "you're still going to do ministry right"? When David shared this with me, I was kind of dumbfounded. Basically, he's asking if we're still going to do the "worship set, sermon, pray for people" type stuff in order to help them grow and whatnot...which we're not, at least not in the same way B is thinking. David didn't really know how to respond because the question is just not in line with our thinking right now or even our view of "ministry". He basically said "well, yeah of course" and changed gears....bless his heart.

So there ya go...I thought I'd just go ahead and start off with a bang ;)

posted by Makeesha at 9:59 PM

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4 Comments:

At 6/02/2006 12:10:00 AM, Sarah Kivell

Hey Makeesha,

Just wondering...in what way will the "worship set, sermon, pray for people type stuff" look different than what Pastor B has in mind?

~Sarah K.
At 6/02/2006 07:48:00 AM, the holly

hello makeesha,

dan kimball has written lots about this "church within a church" phenomenon. happens to also be a great guy. his blog is http://www.dankimball.com/vintage_faith/

tim conder just released a book called _church in transition_ which addresses a church learning this new language of the emerging culture. might be helpful!

its nuts trying to explain things to people in another context. i've been doing it for years. sometimes there is a fun breakthrough; other times there are misunderstandings galore. walk gently and love lots.

peace to you in this crazy journey!
holly
At 6/02/2006 09:57:00 AM, Makeesha

sarah - shorter messages, possibly no messages sometimes, more discussion, more "out in the community" stuff, creative and more artistic worship expression...we will still have the elements that most Christians consider to be "ministry" it just won't look the same. I think what he was really asking was are we going to still be "in the church" doing the work of the ministry or are we going to be doing missional stuff all the time? It's a concern that any pastor from a traditional/modern model is going to have.

holly - I like Kimball, he's friends with the pastor of a church we helped plant a couple years ago. thanks for that tip. The book sounds great too. And you're right, ultimately, people are going to just have to experience/see it to understand.

caroline - awesome! I might have to offline with you a bit about what you're doing. I'm really trying to build my connections of people doing what we're doing. Steve over at Opawa has espresso and I've gotten some good info from him already.

**some of it is that we're really trying to reshape what we consider "church" so while we more closely identify with emerging, we're not necessarily using anything as a "model" per se. Thanks for the feedback :)
At 6/06/2006 07:42:00 PM, Lydia

Hi Makeesha,

I wonder if using some sort of overseas missions analogy would work?

By that I mean, maybe you could explain that you're trying to reach people in a culture that doesn't respond well to some of the old ways of doing church. And right now you're "translating" God into a new culture just like someone who travels to another country to do missions work would have to translate their ways of worshipping God to better reach the other culture.

Or at least you'd hope the missionary would try to do that sort of thing. :O

Just a thought. It's nice to meet you, by the way. :)

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