The Emergency Conversation: New Movement of One
Dec 4th, 2008 by John
Emergency Conversation
You read it right: not emergent conversation; not emerging conversation…emergency conversation.
I feel a pastoral duty to start a new movement titled The Emergency Conversation. I will be sole author and provocateur. All adversarial comments can be aimed at me, not at Brian McLaren or Tony Jones or Doug Pagitt…or Peter Rollins. So relax everyone.
I will publish some books to help this new movement. An Old Kind of Christian: The Awesome Resurgence of John Gresham Machen. Taking a clue from Anne Coulter, my next book will be If Emergents Had Any Brains They Would Be Calvinists followed by a whimsical little fiction work titled The Shed in which the persons of the Trinity are called Larry, Moe and Curly. I will offer some theological tomes as well: The Eternal Primacy of Penal Substitutionary Atonement: Why Christus Victor Makes Me Sick. Included will be a book about Jesus because Jesus studies are really hip: Jesus of Nazareth: The Incarnation of Someone Not as Smart as a Dispensationalist Who Really, Really Knows the End Times. I must address another hot issue, so I’ll do a work titled The Tightly-Closedness View of God’s Sovereignty and Omniscience: Divine Meticulous Control of Nano-Particles and, Therefore, How Much More All Human Lives. To round out the publishing arm to sustain this movement, I will write an historical treatise Back to the Future: The Theological Shaping of the Apostle Paul or How Paul Learned Everything He Wrote from Martin Luther. That work should shut down this whole fantasy called NPP (New Perspective on Paul).
Why “emergency”? Maybe it’s contextual. In West Michigan too many fine Christians experience apoplectic seizures when the terms “emergent” or “emerging” are used, especially in conjunction with the word “conversation.” Pastorally it is just not right to allow them to experience so much trauma over words. They need comforting and coddling from that big old scary world of serious theological thought. In West Michigan we have a category along with justification and sanctification called petrification. We want our theology petrified…rock solid. We have hardworking, self-appointed theologians protecting the West Michigan flocks from slippery, ooey-gooey heresy, but who is mopping up the blood? Hence, the Emergency Conversation. We serve those caught in the gears of a, God forbid, changing world.
The Emergency Conversation is a movement of one…like most self-appointed protectors of the “pure” church. So, you can’t join. I don’t want my movement to get watered down by radical thinking, tattoo-wearing, beer-drinking, cool square glasses-wearing, postmodern, post-Christian, post-categorical, post-evangelical, post-trib, post-toastie types who have rejected the assured results of historico-grammatico-biblico-textualico- theologico-hebraico-aramaico-graeco-hermeneutics. But you can give money…lots of money.
Popularity: 2% [?]
you kill me.
Aw-right!!!!
I’m not in!
Don’t sign me up!
I can’t wait not to join in the conversation!
Where don’t I send my money to?
(Hm-m-m-m-m. Something’s not right here … )
Sacred Vapor,
No killing intended
Ken,
Just don’t send your money to Jeremy Bouma.
Ri-i-i-i-ight … What isn’t his address?
Ken,
Click on Jeremy’s name above (comment #4) and you will find out where not to send your money.
Thank you, this made my day.
Jeff,
Glad to bring a smile to your face
John
You definitely missed your calling brother. You are a comedy writer par excellence.
Bill,
Dang! I missed my calling! Is there more money in comedy??
Thanks for linking the post.
One of these days we’ll hang out together!
“In West Michigan we have a category along with justification and sanctification called petrification. We want our theology petrified…rock solid”
LOL!!!!!! Thanks for the laugh, John
Sue from ‘down under’,
I am glad you laughed. Sometimes I want to cry. Free inquiry by brilliant young thinkers is anathema in some circles in W Michigan. All theology-speak has to be adversarial here. You can never draw near the “other” and really listen. Why? You might be viewed as condoning or even worse! endorsing. Maybe some humor will help.
I hope so.
But my favorite “post” is something I stole from Will Samson’s Facebook bio — “post-categorical”
JL,
I think I’ll add it too my “post-s” in the blog.
John,
Thanks for the laugh! A great piece!
But alas, in the long run by definition your movement will not move.
Ward,
I am glad you had a good laugh
But what’s this about the unmoved movement? That’s kind of depressing…:(
John … I can only say it was a severe mercy that ripped me out of Western Michigan at 16 years of age, and took me out to the Wild West. We hope that humor helps, but it usually is just laughing with the choir, as it were, eh?
What to do with all that blood?!? Comedy will only get more bloody, mostly adding the comedian’s to the mix. Thanks for shaking it up around the Unshakable Kingdom, bro.
Peggy,
I do hope the humor helps…to get us to laugh at our so serious selves squeaking on about God as if we have him contained. Satire is a tool but it can get “bloody” with its use.
God bless!
John:
Gosh, you know some BIG words.
haha nice John! what a wonderful post. The post is just as funny as it is true!
Karen, our hero, too
When you hang around theolowgie types your vocabulary mutates to theology-speak. I might ask, “Are you saved?” A theologian woud ask, “Has the previent grace of Holy Spirit initiated a regeneration of your depraved soul so that the penal subsitutionary accomplishments of the *homoiousius* Christ Jesus may enact justification, that is, applying the accomplished redemptive work of Christ to you by grace alone through, not just mental consent but eternal reliance on God?”
Isn’t “Are you saved?” so much easier?
Great, John. It’s wonderful now to know we’ll be protected from all the heresies everywhere. I’ll relax now, knowing I can take it in from a source that has it all together. What a relief! Thanks, thanks, and more thanks!
It’s not just in West Michigan John. Brian McLaren is over in Scotland on a speaking tour this weekend and attracting all kinds of ‘criticism’ from conservative bloggers who’s posts look a lot like this one… without the irony. Keep up the good work. And I don’t want to join your conversation either!
The reason this is so funny, is because it is too true. Thanks a ton John, but I wish I had just laughed less.
Ted,
I am here for you, Ted
Keep up the good work.
God bless.
Stewart Cutler,
Thanks for not wanting to join my movement of one.
It’s sad that so many want to play Holy Spirit for the rest of us.
Keep up the good work across the pond.
John
Terry,
You caught the spirit–if we don’t laugh at this stuff, we’d weep.
I am glad you stopped by and commented.
Hey John,
Where do your find these folks?… under rocks. Calvin and Cornerstone(GRTS) and many RCA and CRCs in the area seem to be open to the emerging authors.
Thanks for your wit!! Bob
As a current GRTS student, I do appreciate the openness to the emerging conversation. There are however, signs of increasing hostility to genuinely dialoguing with this important movement, her books, and her leaders. I hope the signs of entrenchment don’t have staying power…
-jeremy
PS-you crack me up, John! Glad we work together
Is this blog supposed to be a joke?
Last week my oldest daughter was discouraged after hearing students claim to be agnostic. It seems to be “in” as a high school student to claim that you can’t know anything for sure, and ridicule those who claim otherwise. e.g. A fellow high school classmate (who had recently read Velvet Elvis) doubts the existence of Hell and claims to be an agnostic.
I’m not laughing.
Dave,
I am sorry your oldest daughter is surrounded by some immature friends. I personally don’t think Rob Bell’s *Velvet Elvis* has anything to do with this satirical post about those who freak out about the “emergent/
emerging conversation.” Go ahead, laugh a little.
Jeremy (#29),
While some may feel enough security in their faith to enter into an honest dialogue in the conversation, I believe many more in this W Mich area will entrench and play the role of mini-Holy Spirits protecting us all from the slippery slopes of theological doom. That makes them feel really good about themselves.
Bob (#28),
They are not under rocks at all; they are in tiny, tight little theological ghettos feeling smug about *their* faith and taking the role of *Judge* about everyone else’s faith.