it begins

one of the honest heartfelt calls of tony jones was that we "all get along" for a while, and i would agree - in that, he brings out the idea of streams [given by jay voorhees - who seems to be someone connected with the "E"mergent] and all that was cool - then, people started to ask questions - one of them being "why" - and that seemed to be the problem.

tim bednar asked some very honest, open and direct questions, and in my opinion the questions were not argumentative, at any level. i do not find them pushy, but i think he did speak for many people when he asked some very important questions:

My question is who are you organizing or leading?
Would the emerging church be any different if there had not been a Emergent Convention?
Who exactly is asking to be organized that Emergent feels its a good time to make these structural needs?

now, these are harmless questions that would help place light on the subject, and can help bring about understanding - but, if honest questions are going to be met with anything less then open, honest, gracefilled answers then the conversation is closed. jay voorhees starts his post [entitled, "We Know More Than Tim Bednar"] with this, "Actually, we probably don't know more than Tim, but he's been living for so long off the reputation of his article "We Know More Than Our Pastors" that I couldn't resist the title." bad form bro, and it starts the flavor of the rest of the post - just straight out bad form - the back handed jab was just so not cool. if those who claim to support "E"mergent desire the discussion to breakdown to personal slaps and jabs, and back handed compliments then it is no longer a conversation, and i for one have no desire to be part of anything that is unwilling to be 100% open and transparent - in a kind and graceful way.

jay does ask one question that should be answered, "by the way, which came first, the "emerging church" title, or Emergent Village as a web site?" well, as a drew grad [and an "ex" umc pastor], and someone who has been doing this for a number of years [starting way back when stephen shields started faithmaps] i can say that the idea of "the emerging church" was around long before the site. they did not coin the name.

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