I thought I should perhaps share with you why I am interested in the Emerging Church and what led me to study it.
Through my work I meet many people. There's is a true mixture or mindsets. I live in an area which isn't very ethnically and culturally diverse, it is predominately white British. I experience the contrasting views on Christianity which tends to be it's either a go-er, it's boring and irrelevant to our lives or they really don't know what it is about.
I had an assembly a few months a go in a primary school, I was telling the story of Noah's Ark, a story I have known well since being a child. However this one boy who I asked to be Noah, turned around and said 'I'm not being a girl'.
At first this really shocked me, then as I thought, we live in a mixed time now, where many of the older generations have experienced the time of Christendom where they know the stories, our young people and children are experiencing post-Christendom, their knowledge of the Bible is minimal.
Now this can be seen in two ways; we can be devastated that people no longer know the stories and the history of Christianity or we can see it as a new opportunity to bring these stories to life as they haven't been heard before.
I opt for the second option. We need to be having this emerging conversation if we are going to be serious about reaching these people in a post-Christendom era, and we need to be radical in knowing how to re inspire those who know the stories and see them as irrelevant. Too many people slip through the net because churches don't know how to reach them in the context of the 'traditional' church who may think we still live in a time of Christendom.
I pray that we will seek a church which is about people and community, a place where people with little or no knowledge can seek and find a spirituality and life in God.
