Squeezing Jello

How do you squeeze jello? More importantly, how do you squeeze jello without it becoming distorted, misshapen, and/or shooting out of your hand?

Some time ago I blogged about the church needing to change. I included the quote, "When your memories are more exciting than your dreams, you've begun to die." I still believe that to be true, especially in the church. We must continually adapt to reach each successive generation; we must also be excited about what our great God can and will do through us.

There is a problem, though. That kind of talk is becoming increasingly dangerous these days--not because it is false, but because some believe and follow it to an alarming extreme. In fact, it has become a "movement" with an unassuming name: the Emergent (or Emerging) Church.

On the surface, this sounds attractive. The church needs to keep up with the times--adapting, changing, modernizing--to keep the gospel relevant, or so they claim. Thus, the need to be emergent.

There are several problems with those who are "emerging." One is the lack of unity amongst followers, and so there are many different thoughts, definitions, and beliefs among the group. This makes it difficult to understand what core doctrines, philosophy, and structure are followed. Two, the closest thing to a spokesman is Brian McLaren, who is a lightning rod figure with whom some refuse to be associated. As far as lacking a definitive structure:

...this is a movement that hates formal structure, so it has been resistant to any kind of definition or careful boundaries that would make its shape easy to discern or describe. It's a movement that is purposely foggy and amorphous, fluid and diverse--and most in the movement want to keep it that way.

You were wondering when the jello would fit into this post, weren't you? The emerging group is like jello -- there are hard to pin down, difficult to define, and when you squeeze, they shift and move. In some ways, it is the next generation of the seeker-sensitive movement although it is much more than that. Basically, the group seeks to modernize the church (that is a very basic statement, by the way -- it is very difficult, if not impossible to point out one over-arching goal).

All that to say this: what are we to do with this? I think most would agree that the church needs to keep moving forward; we need to keep dreaming. But does that mean we should throw out the "way we do church" and begin all over? What aspects of church (theologically called ecclesiology - the study of the Church) must remain the same?

Stay tuned for more jello squeezing...