Yesterday I spoke at the Nazarene Theological Seminary's "Emerging Ministry in a Missional Culture" education event. I really enjoyed being there. In the Q and A time, a question came that is one that bothers me often: If we say (and I do say) that one good model from our own denomination's heritage in terms of how to "be" in the emerging/emergent conversation, is John Wesley himself, then where does that take us? Near the end of his life, Wesley still wanted the Methodist movement to stay within the Church of England--as we good Wesleyans know, he never wanted to start a new denomination. He believed that the Wesleyan Revival could act as a catalyst for renewal in his beloved Anglican church. Seeing the need for something different in the newly independent American colonies prodded Wesley to send over Coke and Asbury as leaders for the church here. The question yesterday was even though we may believe that the emerging conversation can be a renewal movement in the church, will there come a time when we, like Wesley, unwillingly may have to bless a parting of the ways and, basically, leave the denomination? Just typing those words gives me the creeps. I somehow can't permit myself to really conceive of that. But what gives me even bigger creeps is thinking that our denomination will not do the hard work ahead of us and will, as occasionally happens to a local church , choose to die rather than change. I am praying, and I am believing that God can do more than we can ask or imagine. I pray that we might show the willingness in some parts of our structure to believe Jesus when he says that to gain true life is to lose our lives as they are now. This is the hardest issue for me of all the implications of this emergent thing in which I find myself continuingly joyfully embroiled.