Where am I in the Emergent Movement?

Good Question. Am I even in it? I got cautioned over lunch today by a former youthworker to "Be careful of the Emergent Movement" and just listened to his concerns. I didn't tell him my background in it.

So here it is: My background into this dialogue called the "Emerging Conversation"

(I could go all the way back to creation and my birth but I won't)

It all started when I became disenchanted with the structure and institutionalized church and was kindly asked to resign in 1997. Since then I've been online and found some common voices of concerns that the church was too structured, too institutionalized, too focused on self and not on God. Thus my exposure came through other church leaders, pastors, through Youth Specialties, and ultimately theooze.com in the late 90s early 00s.

Because of this disenchantment I read books Stories of Emergence (It was almost like me) edited by Mike Yaconelli, Adventures in Missing the Point, The Emerging Church, and even this year General Orthodoxy. And of course other resources by Miller, Jones, Bell, Driscoll and so forth.

In 2001 I joined theooze community. I had already been a part of the YS community. In 2003 I started to blog about my own frustrations with the church and my own journey. Mark Driscoll has pointed out some valid criticism of the Emergent Village and some things he'd like to distinguish as that of conservative versus liberal.

There have been many critics of the Emergent Movement. I like it for it's missional, and call for us as a church, to BE THE CHURCH.
Some concerns would be of issues of a few - I don't embrace Universalism like Spencer Burke does; nor agree all the time with Tony Jones or Brian McLaren - and vice versa. If there is one thing I do like about the Emergent Movement/ and the Emerging Church is the way to relook at things, question our motives, and see if we are really doing things because God wants us, or doing them because of our own modernity and comfortable state.

I'm a part of the Emerging Church dialogue and with all things use discernment and wisdom. I love the church. I don't like her as I see her now but what she can become and that is why I want the Church to be emerging day by day to be more the Bride of Christ than she was before.