Beware, by Don Heatley

Here is a fascinating article posted on the Emergent Village Blog about traditional churches reacting against Emergent churches in their area and warning others to stay away. Very funny and thought provoking, I thought.

[Our Church] has never used any conjugation of the verb “emerge” in any of our ads. My theory is that this fear of Vision all began in someone’s inbox. Sandwiched between warnings of hypodermic needles hidden in the coin return slots of pay phones and claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim, this person read an email claiming that different Christianity equals Emergent, and Emergent equals dangerous. Informed only by anti-emergent websites, they went looking for an “Exhibit A” and found it in my church. How ironic that Emergent, which is often criticized for not defining itself, can be so easily defined by its critics. I propose a new tag line for “this thing of ours” (to use a New Jersey term). Rather than “Emergent: A Generative Friendship,” I propose “Emergent: We’re like pornography. You know it when you see it.”

Let me know what you think.