"what if..."

This past weekend I, and several other interns, attended the Diocese’s Spring Learning Event. This year’s event was sponsored by Episcopal Village, which is a network of people who are involved with the “emergent church” or “fresh expressions.” The whole day was devoted to different ways of imagining church. The Crossing hosted worship, and leaders from around the country came to lead “Missional Conversations” about different ways that innovation is happening in the Episcopal Church.

During the afternoon, I attended a conversation led by Thomas Brackett, the Episcopal Church’s “Program Officer for Church Planting and Redevelopment.” During the conversation, he asked the group several questions. He’s not the first to ask these questions, nor will he be the last. That doesn’t matter though, because they are important to hear again and again – because I think they begin to outline the fundamental basis of what it means to be a follower of the Jesus Way.

The first group of questions are a number of different ways to express the same question:

• What if I truly believed that I was beloved?
• What if the only approval I needed was the approval of the one that has always approved of me?
• What if I didn’t need YOUR approval?

The second group began with the question: How do you smell the spirit at work? What then followed was a discussion about how we can begin to trust our sense of when God is on the move, and bring that both more deeply into congregations and out into the world.

I think what strikes me again and again about this kind of work is not how people in the fresh expressions movement are saying something new, but how they are saying something really old.