I TOLD you so...

I cannot help but gloat. Annual Conference 2004, I had just encountered the emergent conversation and very few people had the slightest idea what I was talking about when I tried to talk with them. I remember trying to tell Robert Martin, a professor at Saint Paul and a very bright guy, what I meant. I even waited for him at the back of the Expo Center in Columbia the day after ordination in order to give him a copy of Brian McLaren's The Church on the Other Side. I remember running into Rod McNeall, who had been part of the class at Saint Paul where I encountered emergent for the first time, and us looking at each other an earnestly saying to one another that THEY JUST DON"T GET IT!!! And I remember Hal Knight encouraging me, and Lovett Weems throughout, throwing resources and people (not literally of course) to me whom he encountered who thought about all of this somewhat the way I did.

And, wonder of wonders, guess what happens tomorrow in the life of the Missouri Conference??? Ministers' School--and the theme THE EMERGENT CHURCH!!! And Robert is leading a Bible study and Tim Keel is preaching tomorrow and giving a presentation, and I, even I, am giving one also on Thursday. I am not at all sure that anyone who isn't already conversant in all of this will "get it" any better after my presentation, but I am giving it the old postmodern try. It's just extremely hard to talk emergent-ese with us UMs when we are so good at Methodese. Not that it can't be done...it can. And here is a picture of my "emerging church box" with two books, one of which I have read (and re-read...) Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? by James A.K. Smith and Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches which I have only "read at." And this picture is to show that I have finally learned how to use my inexpensive little digital camera by myself, something I was DETERMINED to do before Ministers School. This is all a bit strange and wonderful for me, to be sure.