The Leadership Team would like me to highlight the many movements that are happening within and because of our community and get us ready for a conversation of where we want to go next.
What do we do next?
Are we good with what we are doing or does our success in networking suggest we are called to continue on this path? More to the point, what do we hear from the Holy Spirit? We could be scared to do anything new or complacent or overwhelmed or even overly excited. As an Ignatian Spiritual Director, I know the importance of careful discernment. And in part 3, we discussed the power of Sacred Conversations in the process of discernment. The SEC Leadership Team has been discerning for over a year and we believe we are in a unique situation and are being called to continue to evolve. We think something is emerging and that we are part of it. But we need to bring the whole community into this discernment.
Third Pillar: Emerging Church
This brings us to the idea of a third pillar. We are proposing to the community that we add a third pillar that builds on the first two and that it is already emerging from the fruits of our efforts (see what I did there?). This pillar is: emerging church.
Before we define what that means, we need some context. Pardon me while I geek out for a moment in the next few paragraphs talking church “processes”. I promise it will come together.
Leveraging the sadness of feeling isolated
We in the SEC are not the only ones who have recounted both the joys of being church and our sorrows and deep pain over the sins of the church and its slow evolution. We are not the only ones weeping for both those who feel left out and those who have left. But if we are honest, we have felt like that for decades and it has been hard – feeling like we are all by ourselves in this. But what did God do? We looked to God and God redeemed our pain by calling us into action: Creating the Servants’ Entrance community. But it turns out, we are not alone.
Emerging Church – The Bigger “Servants’ Entrance Community”
The truth is, there are many people from all denominations who have been questioning some aspects of their faith traditions and trying to heal from religious pain, spiritual abuse, ineffective organizational governance and toxic theology and leadership. The response of these people has been to create innovative org structures, worship practices, and norms. Just like we have. This organic experimentation is what is termed “emerging church” and it is all over the globe.
Before you start thinking “schism”, while some people have left their denominations to do this, many people are doing this within their denominations. There are formal sanctioned Lutheran and Anglican emerging church models. Organizations have sprung up over the decades to support this slow, but consistent revolution of the Holy Spirit. A revolution that is much bigger than the Servants’ Entrance, much bigger than Detroit, and even Catholicism itself. From post-evangelicals who are deconstructing a fundamentalist background and Anglicans, Lutherans, and Catholics who are doing the same, there is a movement and it continues to grow.
What does emerging church look like? It could be a group of people that meet in a pub or coffeehouse for innovative worship services and Bible Study. The Center for Action and Contemplation is one example of people coming together to build “what’s next” and Richard Rohr has spent his life defining “Emerging Church”. As I said, by definition, the Servants’ Entrance Community is also an “emerging church” model. Again, emerging church models don’t necessarily seek to destroy “current church”. It can seek to experiment and then inspire and refresh and refocus current church. Taking that in, we can say that Jesus’s movement when he started it, was essentially “emerging church” for Judaism. You could even make a case that Pope Francis is igniting emerging church within Roman Catholicism through the Synod on Synodality, because in the documents, it mentions the formation of intentional communities such as the Servants’ Entrance Community as being a legitimate part of this new way of being church. By promoting a synodal norm for the church, Pope Francis is very much in the mindset of emerging church.
We are already plugged in.
I know all of this about Emerging Church, because Kirsti was part of the early movement in England when we met and before she became Catholic. I also know about this because since 2011, Kirsti and I have been attending and in 2016 began helping to run the largest gathering of these “Emerging Church” people in the country. It’s called the Wild Goose Festival ( (you can click here for more info). Sorry for keeping this mostly quiet, but now you know. I am currently the vice chair of the board of this massive event (taking over from Brian McLaren) and Kirsti is the Stage Manager and we are also both responsible for the music side of this organization that sits at the intersection of Spirit|Justice|Music|Art. Many of your social justice and theology heroes are at the festival. Richard Rohr was at the first Wild Goose Festival if that gives you an idea.
I mention all this now, because by the nature of our roles in Wild Goose, Kirsti and I are plugged into the national/international emerging church community. This vast network can be of value in our discernment of what’s next for the SE Community. The SE Leadership team believes if we can focus our energy on the third pillar of “emerging” church, and work with similar organizations within the Wild Goose Community, that the Holy Spirit can multiply our efforts and energy to have a greater impact on Michigan. We can reach out to the Wild Goose community and leverage talent, speakers, resources, and ideas. We can start to take our pain AND our creativity and passion and join hands with others in our area to increase our capacity for care of creation, for service to the poor, for church reform, and for creating more effective ways of communicating with those who think differently than we do in order to be more effective in building the Kindom.
Meaning, we can work ecumenically with our SE Michigan neighbors who have the same SEC values – just like we are doing with the Climate Justice/Season of Creation. But we can go to the next level by leveraging the Wild Goose brand name and network. We can bring Wild Goose type events that are meaningful to us here in our region. By working together, we can put in for grants to support initiatives, create common spaces for gathering, and we can have national speakers like Jim Wallis, Diane Butler Bass, Jacqui Lewis, Brian McLaren and Rev William Barber and musicians like ValLimar come to this region and work with and inspire us. And hopefully in the process of creating these powerful events, we also increase opportunities for and spaces for the SEC to come together (our first pillar).
So now what?
This is just the seed of a vision. But there are concrete reasons to think it is at least plausible for us. But we will take a small step at a time. We first need to come together, assemble in prayer and discern what the Holy Spirit might be calling us to next. Just like we discussed in Part 3.
So to begin, we all have our “Godwork” (God homework). It will be easy to feel overwhelmed and think “I don’t have time or energy for anything else.” Our mind might be racing and posing all sorts of questions. But remember, God works in small ways. We ask God to “Dream your dream in us” each week. Well, here we are. This is a dream, but is it GOD’s dream? Only by coming together can we know.
Perhaps listen to and pray with “Open My Eyes Lord” to start. Then, in prayer, consider:
What have you heard in your prayers this month and as you’ve pondered these articles? What has stirred in your heart? You don’t have to run national events, but are there things you would like to see or be involved in that we can’t do right now? Do you see us staying small and focused solely on keeping people from the former SJFC community together? That can be a valid answer. Are you hearing that we do that and do a few network activities like we are now. That is also a valid answer from the Holy Spirit. Are you sensing that in addition to that, the Holy Spirit might be leading us to take our seeds (gifts/resources) out to a larger community, to plug into a bigger network of like minds to demonstrate what the power of collaborative emerging church can do in this world and shape “what’s next”? Keep praying and pondering and we will have our own special Conversations in the Spirit/Sacred Listening Sessions to discern as a community.
I think even I am sobered as well as excited about the possibilities. The SEC Leadership Team is looking forward to journeying together with you in discernment (see what I did there?)
Much love,
Terry
servantsentrance.com 