Join the North Shore Emergent Cohort

Hi All,

The North Shore Emergent Cohort is having our first meeting on Tuesday, December 1st at The Vault (217 Essex Street) in Salem. Please mark the date on your calendar and plan to join us around 7 pm.

Since this is our first meeting, we are going to start by sharing snippets of our own stories and discussing our hopes & intentions for this conversation.

Then we are going to discuss Patrol Magazine's provocative editorial on the potential death of evangelicalism. Please take the time to read this short article - http://www.patrolmag.com/opinion/1867/get-over-it - before the meeting.

Although the cohort has facilitators, the shape and the content of the emergent conversation is determined by the people who choose to attend. Thus, we will all be poorer without your presence and hope you can make plans to join us.

Much Love,

Cyndi Bauer, Jesse Browning and Jeff Gentry

If you have questions about the cohort or would just like to shout, email Jeff at gentry13ATgmail.com.

know thyself (you muddled son of a bitch)

i don't know how to write about this, but i'll try.

oftentimes my life feels like a screen that is stretched between apparent opposites. for instance, i am a contrarian by nature. as most of you know i am a passionate fan of a storied midwestern team, but i take great pride in being much meaner than my compatriots. however, while i will immediately move towards the margins in almost any social grouping i am also a fiercely loyal to those i both love and live to contradict. this is the reason i have remained faithful to the christian churches, churches of christ (ccoc) and sought my ordination in this tradition, even though i've never been a recognized leader of a ccoc church and have serious doubts whether that will change, or whether i even want that to change, in the future.

in my more charitable moments, i suspect that the lives of others are displayed on similar screens and i long to view those projections through a much softer lens. unfortunately those moments are few and far between. something to pray about, i suppose.