A dose of Lexapro
A couple of weeks back, I put up a post so depressing, if anyone read it you probably wanted to start Lexapro. I was whining about being in a desert, wondering why I wasn’t happy. All of us get to this point at times, I think. We usually call it a “pity party.”
I got the needed jolt. A few days after that, I went to a meeting in Richmond for new ministers in the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. John Upton, our Executive Director, had several good words to offer, but there was one point at which he seemed to know what I was going through. And the basic idea was this: Our “cutting edge” is different, no matter where we are, and we’re to be on our own cutting edge, not someone else’s.
I’ve recently (past two years) begun looking seriously at the Emergent conversation, thinking about the ways the Global Church is headed in the next decades. To me, that’s intriguing, even if I’m not always comfortable where the theology leads. And while it’s interesting to look at, that is currently another church’s cutting edge. It has affected my preaching and my ministry, and so my own cutting edge has been pushed. But that kind of church won’t make it out here for quite a while to come.
Or will it? Is that kind of church even possible in a rural setting? I’ve long been thinking about the context here – how most folks here have heard the Gospel and have been to church, but few have probably seen a living example of the Gospel. That, I think, is where Emergent thinking has a lot to offer in my own setting: An idea that’s different enough that people in a Gospel-soaked culture might notice something different.
