http://emergingpentecostal.org

The cafe has since lost its’ lease in the larger scheme to gentrify the neighborhood by pushing in franchise productions. It was replaced by a high-end antique store and a St.Arbucks popped up magically across the street. What was lost, however, was not merely a hip, independent coffee house to the inevitability of big business. On a different, more personal level, I lost the freedom inherent in discovering the raw, untamed love of a Creator-God, the beauty of truly believing that he will remain within me as I remain within him in a powerful and present way. I lost my religion to the cultural apprehension and insecurity of an American brand of Christianity that didn’t really know what to do with the street-level manifestations of a philosophical postmodern shift. Not knowing what to do, we tend to either shame the behavior of what threatens our way of life (i.e., bohemians, democrats, queer people, etc.) or shore up the credibility of our own position by circling the wagons (i.e., position statements, manifestos, articles of belief that move beyond Jesus and even Paul and into the minutiae of life – a new law to replace a messy, grace-filled spirituality).

We culturally-insecure Christians do this all the time, this getting out of rhythm with the Holy Spirit, both personally and institutionally. Here’s a key example: in his response to the recently-published Evangelical Manifesto, James Smith points out that even the idea of a manifesto is likely a thinly-guised attempt to frame evangelicalism from a uniquely American perspective.

When the world finally reaches a tipping point at which the export of American Cultural Evangelicalism no longer carries controlling interest in the narrative of Christ’s Body (I think that time has already come, by the way), how will followers of Jesus here in the US respond? Will we be wolves, or doves?

I found out later on, after the cafe had closed, that it was run by a loving Christian couple who wanted to provide a safe haven for the social misfits who, for whatever reason, didn’t fit in. Looking back, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have been welcome at my youth group (and that’s not a knock on my youth pastor, but on the social currents of cultural Christianity). I’m also pretty sure that, while I walked by that cafe from across the street, holding my breath, Jesus was inside, sharing a quadruple espresso with a mohawk-wearing punk, loving him and talking about the Way.

Cultivating Faith Communities in Emerging Cultures

Some view our rapidly changing world with great dismay. Others view it with great hope. Join authors and innovators Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt and Mark Scandrette in a hopeful conversation about Cultivating Faith Communities in Emerging Cultures. You’ll have the opportunity to get a closer look at what’s happening on the cutting edge of the church in emerging cultures as Tony, Doug and Mark draw from real-life experience to lead three separate conversations on theology, church planting, and discipleship. A light meal will follow, which includes a Q&A forum with the authors, and opportunities to connect with other local people who are enthusiastic and hopeful about the role of the church in this new world.

Date: Friday, June 20, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. PST

Location: Sequoyah Community Church, 4292 Keller Ave. Oakland, CA 94605

Cost: On-Site = $20 (includes lunch); Off-Site = $15 (no lunch)

Questions: Contact John at jfohara@gmail.com

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON REMOTE VIEWING: This is a pay-per-view event. To reserve your seat at the live stream, a payment of $15 can be made by clicking the “TIP JAR” on the ustream.tv page on or before Friday, June 19, 2008. This stream will be password-protected on Saturday, June 20!

For those who are not within driving distance but would like to sit in on the conversation, we’ll be live streaming a pay-per-view channel at:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/culitvating-faith-communities-in-emerging-cultures

In a recent post, Steve Knight introduces his readers to John Crowder, a clearly pentecostal/charismatic preacher who is apparently tagging himself as “postmodern,” if not wholesale emergent. Steve is tempted to label him an “emergent pentecostal,” but hesitates to do so and points out in a footnote that I may disagree with such an alignment.

Well, I do indeed; which provides a very interesting platform for me to paint a more nuanced picture of what I believe the budding relationship between the charismatic movement and the emergent conversation might actually be.

So here I am, at 11:17 p.m. PST, getting outed by Steve Knight and John Crowder as neither a cessationist (I believe in the continuation of the charismatic gifts, including speaking in tongues and prophecy) nor an unthinking, emotionally-fixated Holy Spirit junkie (I also believe that the entire counsel of Hebrew-Christian scripture has more to emphasize than those charismatic gifts alone, and that we Pentecostals would do well to balance our gifts-of-the-Spirit-diet with some of the fruit of the Spirit… particularly self-control).

My own theopraxis regarding the role of the Holy Spirit, to boil it down, is pretty straightforward:

don’t fake pentecost (tremendously tempting in the thick of charismatic circles), don’t push pentecost (fellow Christ followers who disagree with my particular approach aren’t more or less devout, but differently devout), and – most importantly - don’t ignore pentecost (yielding to the active presence of the Holy Spirit requires a lot of trust, and could very well end up looking and sounding strange). To put the last practice in positive language, I personally place a high value on being responsive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and available to whatever the Spirit wants to do at any given moment. It seems to be the modus operandi of the early church throughout Acts, and can still characterize the body of Christ today. Can we trust the Spirit of God enough to go out on a limb, like Paul in his missionary journeys, like Philip with an Ethiopian Eunuch, like Jesus in the wilderness, like a room full of frightened disciples bursting out into the light of the feast of Pentecost to boldly speak languages they didn’t know? I have to admit, John Crowder seems like a total and complete kook to me, and I’m really tempted to throw tomatoes and lampoon him. And while I continue to think his lowest common denominator theatrics are a disservice to the message of pentecostal heritage, I also realize that cynicism is far easier than spirit sensitivity. If God wanted me to toke on the Jesus bong (which I sincerely doubt would be the case), would I trust him enough to take a hit?

Tags: Pneumatology, Responses, Pentecost, Friends

We’ve got a number of prizes…but only ONE submission so far. I know most folks will wait until the deadline (which is May 11) looms closer…but we could definitely use some submissions.

Maybe this is just my skewed view on the world, but people who claim to make Pentecost a defining characteristic of their spiritual expression should have a word or two in them on the subject.  If you’re interested in, as of now, LITERALLY going head-to-head with yours truly, then submit your stuff at http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2008/04/01/stepping-into-the-wind-a-pentecost-inspired-writing-competition/

All kidding aside, it was pretty cool to see ministers get together to talk about philosophy, theology and practice around a table of friendship.  Personally I feel like it was a hit and that there was a good vibe among us.  A whole bunch of ideas that were shared really stuck with me.  Thanks for being a part of it.

If you wanted to join us but had other meetings planned, or were out of the area, there will be other opportunities to get involved in this.  I would love to see local, ongoing conversations emerge out of tonight’s meal.  Please keep the rest of us informed if you’re planning something.  Can’t wait to do this again next year.

Join us Tuesday, April 22 for the first meet-up of Emerging Pentecostals for Northern California and Nevada. We’ll talk about the developing relationship between emerging church and the pentecostal movement, our own stories, and developing a framework for ongoing conversation. Tell your friends and come on down.

Sacramento EP Meet Up (.pdf download-and-print flyer)

Sacramento EP Coloring Page (for the kids)

Emerging Pentecostals NorCal Meet-Up

Sacramento, California

4.22.08 @ 4:55 p.m.

Strings Italian Restaurant, 9500 Micron Ave.

E-Mail RSVP by noon on day-of to:

jfohara(at)gmail.com

“Here’s a quote from a Korean leader: ‘When I encounter a Buddhist priest, I meet a holy man. When I meet a Christian leader, I meet a manager.’”

- 50+ year-old Church Administrative Assistant, who is considering stepping down because she’s disillusioned with the way we do church.

[HT = Jesus Manifesto]

This may very well be an overstatement, but I think I was emerging when I was lifted out of my mother’s womb. Before I knew the models and forms, before I could differentiate a sense of Self, before I knew the prejudice of preferences I was ever emerging. It was my natural state of being.

I didn’t realize this. It became obscured by the framing introductions of my world view and the limiting characterizations therein. I traded my emergence for identities like

American

Christian

Latino

Irish

Middle Class

Average

And enjoyed the resultant peace and security of knowing my place in the world. I might have stayed in the warm womb of this enclave, too, if life hadn’t begun to systematically unravel all around me, beginning with my parents’ dissolving marriage. It was then that my Roman Catholicism was introduced to Charismatic Pentecostalism, my blue-collar familiarity with the sights and sounds of second-hand stores and hand-me-downs was introduced to big-box suburban sprawl, when East met West and Black and White bled into Color and life went High Definition. I was re-introduced to my emergence by way of emergency. A fuzzy world view that coalesced into a formative sense of Self was cut at the knees by the wrecking ball crushing my world’s only sure thing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

That first emergency led me to a vortex between worlds, catapulting me into a different framework, like a hermit crab dumped from his familiar shell and forced to find a home of a different hue. Unquestioning and hardly putting up a fight, I departed the tension of going to Mass one week and doing the Holy Ghost hop the next, in order to embrace my new Daddy: the Assemblies of God.

I fastidiously navigated all the hoops of this new alter-ego, trading social awareness for eschatology, sacramental covenant for the full gospel of Spirit baptism, even moving from a hometown with union mechanics and carpenters as neighbors and into a new neighborhood where I was surrounded by salad-eating yuppies with a guest room and that new house smell that came with suburban subdivisions.

As a teenager, I suppose I reveled in my new identity and planned my new life accordingly: I would enter the ministry (what other career for the God-conscious?) and pray for a financially successful church experience that would support the full buffet of suburban proclivities. After all, if eternity is the endgame, why should I concern myself with the global economic and ecological impact of my personal lifestyle?

I was pretty good at it, too; having secured a spot as a staff pastor at a bigger-than-most church. I was being payed real money. I got married and bought a house in the heart of a suburban subdivision. I thought of ministry mostly in the context of my burgeoning career. Just keep counting conversions and weighing the glory of the altar calls, I would tell myself, and don’t forget to stop at the Wal-Mart on the way home.

I probably would have ridden that bicycle built for two into the sunset, if it hadn’t been for a peculiar and somewhat familiar voice speaking deep into my soul, telling me to go to the Bay Area. I began an unsettling journey West, beset by questions that I didn’t have the answers to…

“why do my Christian friends and I tell jokes about queer people?”

“why is my church parking lot filled with SUV’s and trucks when hardly any of us haul anything?”

“if Jesus is a ‘friend of sinners.’ why are all my relationships churchy?”

“why am I convinced that God wrote the Republican platform on the pages of the Bible?”

“why am I so lacking in compassion?”

These questions brought me to another vortex, one where things got fuzzy again, a place that required what I heard Tony Jones once call epistemological humility. Having questions does that to us. Being sure of everything has a way of creating identity confusion; when we think we’re the gardener it’s hard to be the seed the True Gardener desires to plant. So I believe God used this unknowing to remind me that I am adam, cultivated from the common earth and reliant on the Breath of heaven to be given form and substance. It is God’s to avenge, to reveal, to form and fashion, to build up and tear down, according to his good purposes. This is my re-emergence, my being brought back into focus principally as a child of God, with the freedom to let Yahweh interpret me and define me instead of the other way around.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant by being “born again,” or that we must become like children to enter the kingdom of God. I don’t know, you know? That’s what I know. I’ve heard postmodernism referred to metaphorically as a giant black hole, sucking every dimension of light and structure and absolute truth into an inescapable void of unknowing. My great hope is that the Spirit of God is similarly a giant vacuum of Light and Love and Truth, drawing every dimension of unknowing and confusion into her gravitational pull. As such, I’m beginning to get away from calling myself postmodern… I’m beginning to think of myself instead as a post-propositional, pre-spiritual, Jesus-following ragamuffin.

I passionately want to be involved in the current mission of God in the world. I don’t want to be where God was five years ago. I want to know where his heart is today.

This is a wonderful idea, and I want to be a part of it. Thus, consider this my story of emergence, or of how I came to be involved with both the pentecostal church and what is commonly called the emerging church.

I met Jesus when I was just shy of fifteen years old, and met him through what you could call a dramatic encounter that took place in an Assembly of God church in Salisbury, North Carolina. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a part of the supernatural actions of God in the world. I wanted to be close to him in tangible ways, and I wanted to bring others to be close to him as well.

As my faith developed, I began to do grow in some very specific ways that together have shaped the person I am now, almost ten years later. First, I began to seek out how I, specifically, should serve Jesus with my life. I looked into being a pastor, a missionary to an obscure country, and a number of other things, because I felt strongly that I was called to reach out to people that were far from God.

Finally, I found confirmation in the idea that I was called to reach the outcasts of our own society. The people who did not fit in with the traditional church, whether because the church rejected them, because they rejected the church, or both. This manifests itself in more ways today than it did ten years ago. At the time, most of this kind of ministry was happening in the various underground subcultures, and it still is. But now, it has moved significantly further into the mainstream with organizations like Emergent Village. In any case, my heart was inextricably linked to the underground, and it remains so now.

As I began to learn about this calling, I also began to learn that I had a passion for being at the cutting edge of whatever I could. I can still remember a message I heard that described the church of today as the kind of organization that would build a church at the site where Jesus performed some great feat, rather than following him to see what he would do next. I passionately want to be involved in the current mission of God in the world. I don’t want to be where God was five years ago. I want to know where his heart is today.

In addition to, and as part of, these previous things, I began to have a deep desire to communicate with love, grace, and power to people who did not yet know Jesus, that they might see him as he really is and give consideration to the kind of influence he would like to have on their lives.

These areas have been molded and shaped through education, experience, prayer, thought, and conversation over the last several years, but at their core they remain the same, and they are derived from a desire to live in intimacy with Jesus, thus my involvement with the pentecostal and charismatic church. I am well aware of the shortcomings of the movement, and at this point I identify far more closely with the term Post-Charismatic than with pentecostal or charismatic, but I am also aware that there is much good in the movement.

As for my involvement with the emerging church, it began through my desire to be a voice to the underground. For most of my life, I have fit with the underground, and I’m comfortable with this. I feel at home there. It’s natural that I would want to share what I believe is commonly hidden about Jesus from these unique people.

As I’ve said before, I have been blessed to be involved with the Underground Railroad and learn from and be in community with the wonderful ministries that are part of it. Many of these ministries have been around for decades, and have been doing the kind of ministry that is now known as “emergent” for longer than I have been alive.

Thus, I have come into the emerging church, and thus into Emergent itself, from what you might call a back door. I have learned ministry by grace, unconditional acceptance, and the power of authenticity from the underground, and have sought to learn how it fits with my personal theology, my personal experiences, and my personal areas of calling. Many other leaders of the emerging church, including Andrew Jones, also came to be involved in similar ways.

I feel that this is one of the most valuable facets of the emerging church and the Emergent conversation: that people who spend their lives reaching out to the darkest corners of western society can come together with people who study postmodernism in universities or painting in art schools, people who understand that colonialism is dead and its obituary is the power of the non-Western world, with those who do research on the effectiveness of modern Christianity in the Western world, and those who simply feel like something is missing from their normal church experience.

More interesting still, than these examples, is that no one fits into only one of these areas. For example, I have a passion for walking into dark places as a shadow of Jesus, but I also have a ministerial education from a pentecostal university an art degree from a secular art school, and a weird job history of discussing theology and politics and philosophy for hours at a time while cleaning toilets and mopping floors. Emergence indeed.

Jonathan Stegall