FYI. We wanted to make sure everyone knew about this free webinar. Please join us!

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Join former Emerging Spirit executive director Keith Howard for a webinar on future models of church. 2:00 Eastern, May 19. Click on the link to sign up for this free webinar. Presented by Edge: A Network for Ministry Development.

Hi Folks,

The Emerging Spirit project will officially end on December 31, 2010.

As part of the closing of the project we gathered those who had presented workshops, under the banner of the project, from all across the country. Not all could attend, but 35 gathered at Church House November 23-24, 2010. This reflection formed part of the closing worship.

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During the past few years we have been proclaiming that the prime story of our time is not that the church is dysfunctional or in decline but that God is at work and inviting us to write a new chapter in the story of God’s people.

We have used, until it wilts from exhaustion, the quote from Loren Mead:

We are at the front edges of the greatest transformation of the church that has occurred for 1,600 years. It is by far the greatest change that the church has ever experienced in America; it may eventually make the transformation of the Reformation look like a ripple in a pond.

If it is true that we are being called forward, it will not be the first time that we, as the people of God, are called to be on the move. Our earliest stories are of a people on the move.

Part of the trouble with Emerging Spirit was not in its mandate or vision but in failing to appreciate just how difficult it is for local leadership to make significant shifts in a congregational culture. We probably should have known better - and maybe even did - but the timeframe was compact and necessitated certain choices.

By and large leaders were sympathetic to the project's analysis, message and call to radical hospitality. The challenge, in reality, lay in trying to balance the cost in time and energy it would take to engage that question with all the other voices demanding attention. No one says that improving a ministry of hospitality is a bad thing but where does it fit in the lineup of things we should do, like looking at the governance system, renovating the worship service, training leaders, meeting the budget, visiting the sick and doing all the things necessary to keep an old way of being church on its feet while being open to something new. For many there just wasn't time or energy even though we heard 'Amens' from their lips and spirits. (Part of me is still not convinced that making hospitality a priority really takes as much time as it does a commitment but more of that in another blog. For now, I concede the point that it takes time which leaders feel they do not have.)

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So, here I am at GC40.

The 40th General Council for The United Church of Canada.

I get to help elect a new Moderator.

I get to discern well over 100 proposals.

Specifically, I will be spending time on Palestine and Israel, dangerous dump sites, support for Canadians in prison...and, Emerging Spirit.

Yes, I will part of the group that will try to discern the future for Emerging Spirit - our programs like WonderCafe, advertising campaigns and congregation training seminars. How did they ever let me in?

Although I clearly have a bias, even a passion for Emerging Spirit, I will listen, I will share and I will do my best to hear the voice of God as we make our recommendations.

But before, I get properly objective - let me say a couple of things.

There was an elephant in the room. I have yet to name the elephant, but I think it is customary to put "bo" on the end. This elephant was spotted roaming around my Conference Annual Meeting on the weekend, knocking over the odd table and crashing through the book display. Despite an obvious attempt to grab the floor, the elephant went unacknowledged.

I was in Calgary recently to attend a few presentations by Richard Rohr. His work has had a strong influence on me ever since I first heard him at a Sojourners event a few years ago. He is an American, a Franciscan priest, and a renowned teacher of spiritual development, especially for men. Rohr was in Calgary at the invitation of the Franciscan community.

One of Rohr's presentations was on the Emerging Church movement. He calls Emerging Church a "movement" in order to distinguish it from the later stages of evolution he calls "machines, museums, and monuments." As a movement, says Rohr, the Emerging Church defies definition and analysis to a certain degree. His attempt is an early one to identify some common threads in the movement.

The four themes of Emerging Church that Rohr identified are: