Church Plants Coming This Summer...

We're looking forward to the arrival of two new emerging church plants coming this summer to NYC...

1) Samir Selmanovic, his wife Vesna, and their two daughters Ena and Leta are preparing to move to New York City and start an urban interfaith community called Faith House. Bowie really enjoyed meeting Samir in Pasadena at the Christian Churches Together meeting, and some members of the group know him from the six years he spent pastoring a multi-ethnic church in Manhattan (he moved to CA four years ago, but when NYC calls...). His bio is well worth checking out.

2) Sean and Monica Callaghan and their three kids are moving here from South Africa and starting incarnate NYC in Tribeca. Brian McLaren says that, "Sean and Monica are church planters and leaders who epitomize what is good and hopeful about emerging churches" (read more).

Please keep these church planters and their children in your prayers.

The 2007 Emergent Philosophical Conversation

The 2007 Emergent Theological Philosophical Conversation

“What Would Jesus Deconstruct?
A Conversation about Justice”

a conversation with John D. Caputo,
and featuring Richard Kearney

$145 before March 1, 2007
$160 after March 1, 2007
Eastern University, Philadelphia, PA
Monday, April 16 (7 p.m.) – Wednesday, April 18 (12 noon)

REGISTER NOW!

REGISTRATION IS LIMITED TO 250 PARTICIPANTS

Find out more on the Emergent Village website & while you're there, subscribe to get announcements about upcoming events

The End of Emerge

Last night I went to the final Emerge, the 7 p.m. alt worship service at St. Bart’s on Park Avenue and 51st in New York. After the service, a friend turned to me and said, “that was sad.”

“Tragically and sinfully sad,” I replied.

Sad because it was just so damn good and sad because it’s a crying shame that St. Bart’s is shutting it down less than a year after it started.

Sinfully sad because there were more than one hundred people there last night, with visible age, ethnic, racial, and class diversity in the room. How many churches around the country only dream of that type of crowd on a Sunday morning (the majority of Episcopal churches have less)…let alone a Sunday night.

St. Bart’s, a Byzantine basilica, covered in shimmering tiles and mosaics, is one of the most beautiful churches in New York City. A take-your-breath-away holy space. For Emerge, candles created a curtain of light between the altar and the congregation. Behind the small table set up for readings and celebrating the Eucharist, a wonderful assortment of images were projected on a beveled-edged stand-alone screen.

The service followed the forms for an Episcopal liturgy with texts “crafted and adapted from several sources including Enriching Our Worship, The Iona Community Worship Book, Johnny Baker’s Alternative Worship and Common Worship 2000“. The music selections and musicians were spot on, capturing the contemplative and celebratory mood of Emerge’s tag line: “where the ancient and urban come together.” I was moved by the amount of silence in the service (allowing for entire minutes to go by, a sacred treasure in NYC) and also really glad when they invited the entire congregation to stand around the table during the celebration of communion.

There’s bits I could critique (hey, I’m a seminary-trained PK who’s starting my own emerging liturgical community) but why? I like to say: If you’re part of the solution, you’re part of the solution. Sanctuary at Epiphany, Common Ground at Advent Lutheran, and Emerge at St. Bart’s are all trying to work out some new solutions in mainline settings… and are all succeeding.

It’s tragically sad that Emerge is ending precisely because it was succeeding at doing something perceptibly new. Elizabeth, the young priest who gave the sermon, did a good job of using the story of the Transfiguration to tell the congregation that we shouldn’t try to hold on to our “mountain-top” experiences. Nor, she preached, should we “worship the worship.”

The party line reason for ending Emerge was budget cuts. At the end of the service, Bill Tully, the rector of St. Bart’s stood up and asked people to pledge. Maybe then Emerge could come back. He asked us to read through a small printed pamphlet about St. Bart’s 2007 Annual Fund called “The Heart of All We Do.” The opening message from the rector in the booklet says that “at St. Bart’s, worship is at the heart of all we do.” Tonight that statement rang hollow.

One of the hallmarks of doing post-modern worship is that it’s got to be authentic. Emerge was authentic. It succeeded in being a sacred space of mystery and transcendence. It succeeded in being a safe place for many different types of people who feel the brokenness all around us and who perhaps are made to feel broken themselves by traditional church. The service was professional and resourced and lived up to all that St. Bart’s should be doing in an alt worship service. Beautiful, mysterious, broken, and profound. It was authentic to St. Bart’s.

Orgininally posted on Transmission

New Cohort Leaders and the Schedule!

What a great cohort gathering we had this Monday. The Latino Leadership Circle (LLC) showed up in force - David, Belinda and Luis represented.

We were able to make some nice progress on organizing and scheduling things. Under group pressure and in a show of great compassion for me, (Jeff) Bowie Snodgrass and David Ramos agreed to become co-facilitators with me of the Cohort! Yeah!

I can't wait to see how their energy and wisdom transform and enrich our gatherings and our ability to communicate better and do new things.

Next month on Monday, March 12th, the LLC headed up by David Ramos will guide the dialog.

Then in April on Monday, April 9th - the day after Easter when tired pastors just want to hang out and relax, we will hang out relax, talk about whatever and have some food. Chill.

For the May Cohort on Monday, May 14th, Elise will head up a collaboration with some of the other women members of the Cohort for an anticipated dialog on Women Emergent.

Belinda Passafaro brought to our attention some very important activity on the behalf of humans who have suffered greatly and need our help. A group called Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform has been launched and they and the LLC and others have made A Call for a New Sanctuary Movement. We've posted these documents online at Google docs and spreadsheets so you can read them , but here's the main idea:

"...As an act of public witness, religious or faith communities will publicly provide hospitality and protection to a limited number of immigrant families whose cases clearly reveal the contradictions and moral injustice of our current immigration system while working to support legislation that would change their situation..."

Look what cool things happen when the LLC shows up! How would we know to help these people if no one told us? This is the kind of generative frienship that the cohort hopes to enable.

Another thing we talked about is communication of events that might interest us. We recently had some great speakers come through town that none of us knew about until it was too late, and so we really encourage you to comment here on the blog about any interesting events, and from time to time we will include them in email annoucements. We'll try to find a balance between keeping everyone informed and not sending out to many emails.

Also don't forget to send in your info for the sidebar's of this blog to cohortnyc@gmail.com or just post in a comment.