i just blue myself

is this what awe means?

lately i have been overwhelmed by complexity.

when i try to see the gospel through the clouds of two thousand years of interpretation and four thousand years of judeo-christian history it often feels like i have been struck blind.

when i advocate for the poor and am expected to passionately support failed initiatives alongside services that are desperately needed the haze of hypocrisy covers me like a cloak.

hell, even when i enter an industrial building and glance at the sophisticated masonry, hvac systems and intricate wiring i feel like a neanderthal transported to tokyo.

in this world it often seems that "success" relies upon reductionism and nuance is the precursor of impotence. i am profoundly dissatisfied with the polarities, yet am trapped in the tension between.

Lord Jesus, if you want to these scales, remove them.

if confusion is my thorn teach me to bear it.

i do so believe, help me with my unbelief.

mid-afternoon time waster

if you couldn't live in sunny, luxurious possum kingdom, texas, would you rather live in:

a) rat's nest, louisiana
b) segregation city, mississippi
c) jumping genocide, oklahoma
d) incest, arkansas
e) crystal meth, missouri

on shifting sands

yesterday talked with a former colleague about the shifting role that sertoma plays in the disability community. when sertoma was founded in 1976 many of its participants were transitioning out of state institutions and into group homes and other supportive community settings. organizations like sertoma rose up to provide job training for these individuals so that they could make their way in the marketplace just like they were learning to make their way in the local communities.

from facility to facilitation
sertoma was able to help some individuals transition into the workforce, but a number, perhaps even a preponderance, of others were allowed and/or encouraged to spend their career working in sertoma's packaging, cedar shim production and recycling businesses. transitioning out of separate institutions and into the community is no small matter, so it is not surprising that many individuals were encouraged by family persuasion, state funding and/or personal choice to go for the gold watch at sertoma.

however, now it is 2009 and the sertoma employees who initially transitioned out of the institutions and into the workshop are either retired or on the precipice of retirement and younger individuals with disabilities have never known anything but integrated disability or rehabilitation services. as a result, the government has reaffirmed their commitment to integrating people with disabilities into the workforce and they are restricting or removing long-term subsidies for individuals who work in workshops like sertoma. this transition makes sense for younger individuals with disabilities, but it is understandably threatening for individuals who have logged 30 years cutting cedar shims and are now wondering whether sertoma's businesses will survive the funding shift and, if not, what role they will play in the marketplace and how they will spend their days.

in response to these challenges, organizations like sertoma are shifting their emphasis from being an employer to being a resource that provides health and life development supports for individuals with disabilities. traditionally, sertoma integrated elements of the institution such as case management, nursing supports, etc., with the elements of a business such as the opportunity to participate in real work, earn a paycheck, follow employee guidelines, etc. in a sense one could say that sertoma is transitioning from an institution - that tries to provide comprehensive services for individuals with disabilities - to a network or a hub that will help connect individuals with disabilities with the employment and life development opportunities as well as the personal supports that they need.

my friend reported that some of the staff members are navigating the transition from the institution to the network well, while others are finding the shift difficult. she said that many of the support staff have worked at sertoma for such a long time that they are as unsettled by the shift as the participants with disabilities are. others, especially the younger staff at sertoma, seem to be making the transition well. but, whether people like the transition or not, my friend said that the "writing was on the wall," and change was coming to sertoma whether people liked it or not.

unexpected revelation
somewhere in the midst of the conversation, i think when my friend was talking about the transition from an institution to a network, i felt the shock of revelation and i literally cradled my face in my hands. since sertoma is no longer the quasi-institution that it once was, the staff needs to find out how to network the individuals they serve with the diverse, individualized services they need. sertoma's future is not in building the institution but expanding the network.

in a similar way, my role to play in the church, that community of people who have been called out by God and inclined towards his Kingdom, is not to build the institution but to expand the network.

my role is not to build the institution, although i was trained to do just that by becoming the engaging preacher for a local church that was committed to providing more and better services so that we could build a bigger congregation, expand our real estate and help buttress our brand.

my role is to expand the network, by loving, listening to and collaborating with other Christians and seekers of any stripe so that we can embody the gospel, serve the inheritors of the Kingdom and reflect the awe inspiring unity and delightful diversity of the Three-in-One who was, and is and is to come.

my job is to expand the network. others have noticed this long before now. hell, pastor phil has directly told me on an occasion or two that, whether i realized it or not, one of my great gifts is networking. others, tasked with building up the institution, have noticed it too, and so have parted ways with me and gone off to serve. i'm not going to lie, the separation from the institution builders has been painful for me, since we love the same One and are called to assist, encourage, exhort and accompany the same body. fortunately, this recent, shocking revelation of our divergent roles has served as a bit of a salve for my wounds.

new metaphor, new world
i love those who for almost 40 years have built up sertoma and i can see why they grieve the transition of their beloved institution. but, in all honesty, i resonate more with the individuals that are envisioning sertoma 2.0 and expanding the network of resources that individuals with disabilities will need to live a holistic life in this integrated world.

in a similar way, i love those who have built the Christian Churches, Churches of Christ and i acknowledge that without their dedication to the gospel shaped institution, i probably would not be following Jesus, who is the greatest joy of my life. however, my role is not to buttress the institution, but to build a network of diverse individuals who are seeking, expressing, embodying and exclaiming the Kingdom that is here and somehow is yet to come.

i realize that this metaphor shift is simple and something should have realized long ago. however, though i'm late to the show, i cannot fully explain how surprised and blessed i have been by this revelation.

i'm starting to suspect that if you change the metaphor, you change the world.

channeling perkins

a couple of months ago a local group of well intentioned, church planting obsessed anglicans asked our andrew the protester how they could balance their passion for evangelism with the biblical demands for social justice.

andrew's response: "if you plant your churches in areas of great need the balance will take care of itself."

i think there is a world of wisdom in the protester's response. in fact, it sounds downright perkinsonian.

out of the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. my friends, this should not be.

last week as we were rushing out the door preston grabbed the sleeve of my 2006 world series jacket, pointed at the blessed insignia and said: "daddy's bird?" "yes," i quickly replied. "my bird?" he asked. "yes!" i immediately responded.

that moment nearly brought tears to my eyes. such great hope.

tonight, as kellie and i keep doing 30 pound curls as we drag our screaming tot back to bed he caught me stealing glimpses of the cards/reds game on the laptop. for about ten bed runs thereafter he kept screaming "baseball! baseball! baseball!" and darting towards the laptop.

that dirty little schemer.

cheshire cat
by: ramos


My friends and I gathered together at my old apartment in Beverly off Rantoul to celebrate the significant moment of my graduation from Gordon-Conwell. I had just walked across the platform and smiled for the camera with my degree in hand, and said all my departing goodbyes and farewells to all teachers and friends who were close to my heart. After the ceremony my friends and I had two things intensely occupying our mind: beer and food. I worked very hard to get to this moment of closure, so it was crucial that we finish with a toast and celebration.

We broke our group into two tasks teams: Jeff (my friend who came from Dallas to visit) and I were to get the Spirits, and Marcos and Brittney were to get the Food. There are two local liquor joints on Rantoul that are a few blocks apart from my apartment. There is the one owned by Indians, who have the best hours and are super friendly towards me, believing that I too am Indian, and they call me ‘bro’. I went to them for the longest, but I began noticing that their beer tastes bitter and metallic. I can’t explain it, other than perhaps they store it improperly. So I vowed to never again buy beer from them again. I then started going to Chrispy’s liquor next to the Pickled Onion. The store, which has a bit of a dirty, grimy dive feel, has a large neon sign that says “Liquor” that hangs above the sidewalk of Rantoul, and has strange people buzzing around underneath the large sign who smoke cigarettes and seemingly have nothing else to do all day but stare across the street. Chrispy’s has better prices than the Indian store, and I never bought a sour tasting beer from them. But they are super stringent about I.D. rules, so I developed the habit of always throwing my I.D. at them first thing every time I made a purchase, even though they recognized me personally by this point.

Jeff and I brought a Patron Silver Tequila and a twelve pack Ipswich Ale to the counter, and out of habit I immediately threw my I.D. at the lady. She briefly glanced at it from afar, and continued ringing, failing to ask to Jeff for his I.D., which I found at first quite odd given the stringent ID rules of the store. I guessed that perhaps she was about to ask for our ID’s within the next moment, so I pushed my ID which laid on the counter closer to her direction. She then grabbed my ID, went over to some scanner and ran it through, and within a few seconds she came my way, said “It’s a fake, get out of my store,” threw my ID in some cardboard box behind the counter, and ignored my plea. Confused, I left the store and called the police. I explained my situation to dispatch, who responded that “she can’t do that, we’ll send somebody over right away.”

The cop shows up minutes later. He gets out of the car with his Oakley’s on and has a smile that seemed happy, almost as if he recognized me. We greet each other and he immediately asks for my ID. I respond, “Well, I don’t have it because she has it,” thinking to myself “Is this not precisely why you are here, did they not communicate to you why you were being sent?”. He goes “Oh right, she has your ID, so you can’t give me one, ahh.’ “Ahh, yes”. Jeff, who is standing next to me, reaches into his back pocket to present his ID, saying “here is my ID officer”. The cop reacts: “whoa whoa, did I ask you for your ID? Put it back slowly. From now on this is how we are going to operate: you do only what I ask for.”

At this point Marcos and Britney are getting out of the pizza joint next door where they have placed our order. They notice Jeff and I outside Chrispy’s talking to a cop, so they curiously walk up to us. The cop spins around and blurts “Whoa, Hey, who are you guys?” with that same smile and apparent jovial cheer. Marcos extends his hand, “hello officer, my name is Marcos,” and the cop stood back refusing the shake, “I don’t shake hands”. “It is policy for me, you could be a threat”. Marcos, who is about as threatening in appearance as an ice cold beer on a hot summer day, says “I can understand that”, to which the cop replies “I could drop you to your knees if I wanted to. In fact I could drop a man who is twice your size, three hundred pounds to his knees”. With that statement being said, which abruptly fell from nowhere and left us in bewilderment as to what was his point and what does this have to do with anything whatsoever about our current situation, the cop proceeded inside to talk to the counter lady, only just after he lined us up against the car and telling us to “stay put”. I thought it humorously ironic that 30 minutes after my graduation from Seminary I now find myself with the police lined up against a car in front of a shady liquor store on the dirty side of Rantoul.

The cop returns with his bright teeth shining through his grin and a piece of paper with my ID photocopied on it. He first comments that the lady is a loner and her only help behind the counter is about “this big,” quickly questioning the boy’s manhood by extending his pinky finger in reference. He then proceeds to show me the apparent flaws with my ID, which were deficiencies with lamination and margin setting. It scans my age apparently, but didn’t provide some other info that should be provided in her scanner. Behind all the jargon the point was that “it works, but there are problems with it.” But in his wise judgment he left the ball in the ladies court. He said “this is a problem between you, her and the commonwealth of Mass.” (I will note here that he took the time to correct me when I said the state of MA; “It is not the ‘state,’ it is the ‘commonwealth,” he pontificated).

Frustrated at this point, I tried to plea with him that my flight to Texas was in two days. In his brilliantly powerful reasoning ability, he deduced “Ahh, and you cant get on the plane unless you have your ID, and she has it” “Ahh, yes.” It was here where I noticed that his fixated grin contrasted with his eyes that began to move erratically, which betrayed something wild and savage hidden underneath. Marcos acutely observed that he reminds one of the “Cheshire Cat”. He replies “You look like a smart guy, and I hate repeating myself: this is not my problem.” He walks to his car and turns around, guffawing a friendly chuckle and offering one last remark “You know, I am glad that this happened to you. I have a lot of Bad Luck in life, and it is good to see someone else having Bad Luck in their life also. Bye,” and waves his hand farewell.

musing...

after the first piece in GIMP, in which the dancers stand directly before you in their brokenness and beauty, lawrence carter-long begins the second piece with the stem of a joke, "so three cripples walk into a bar."

carter-long fails to complete the joke and so trusts the audience to make the connection* between three objects of the joke and the three individuals with disabilities in the crew. look at us, he slyly suggests, as we struggle through the violence, soak up the intimacy, shrivel in alienation and strive before your very eyes.

look at us, carter-long demands, in all of our brokenness, boldness and beauty.

look at us, he telegraphs with his distinctive gait, but don't forget that we've been watching you too.

and though our observations could be full of bitterness and our jokes could easily objectify three able bodied assholes, i think you are beautiful. i look at you in all of your beauty, i see the risks you take and i cannot help but be changed.

i suspect that christian homiletics** are the last thing on carter-long's mind when, objectified under the stranger's eye he refuses to reduce the object before him to anything less than beauty. but i think christian preachers*** can learn so much from his self-awareness, refusal of reciprocity and his proclamation of beauty.

lawrence, i echo your assertion that "this has changed me...it has been an honor and privilege to have the time to stop and really look at you."

* a connection i failed to make, by the way, until i read the globe's review
** a five dollar seminary word for preaching
*** of which i, in my off-work hours anyway, am one

blessed are the acehnese

check out this fascinating story about muslim refugees who were abandoned at sea by the rich and have been embraced by the desperately poor.

the poor acehnese hosts have put in more than all the others, for out of their poverty they have put in all they have to live on.

i suspect that the kingdom of God belongs to these acehnese.

ht: nytimes; lk. 6:20; jam. 2:5

An Open Invite to Cohort and Cavort* with Gordon Students

On Tuesday, April 21 from 7 to 9 pm several members of Boston's Emergent Cohort will be attending a debate at Gordon College (255 Grapevine Road, Wenham, MA; the debate is taking place in the Ken Olsen Science Center which is pictured on the left and located, um, somewhere on campus; if you're taking the rail you'll need to stop on the Beverly Depot, North Beverly or Montserrat station on the Newburyport/Rockport line and get a ride from someone like me). Sounds exiting, I know...but wait, there's more!

The question being considered at the debate is "whether the movement commonly designated 'emergent' church or 'emerging' church bears witness to the positive flourishing of Christianity in our time." This is a huge conversation taking place within evangelicalism (we always like to foster an internecine feud or two to keep us from the real work of mission:), so I'm excited to hear what the students say.

Since Emergent is more of a conversation than a proposition or ecclesial practice, after the debate a number of us are heading over to the Salem Beer Works (278 Derby Street, Salem, MA - easily accessible from the Salem stop on the Newburyport/Rockport Line) around 9:45 to discuss this topic at greater length.

I hope that a number of you are able to join us for the debate and/or the beers and pseudo cohort gathering after. If you're going to attend, please RSVP so that I can keep an eye out for you. If you have questions about this event, please shoot me an email at gentry13ATgmailDOTcom. If you are looking for a couple of home remedies for prostatitis, I can share a few of those as well.

Be Well,

Gentry

* Single seminarians, don't get the wrong idea.

Ordinary Resurrection

Although my blogging fast was successful, I had a mostly busy, ambiguous, unholy Lent. I entered the season with every intention to enter the desert in order to conduct a “fearless moral inventory” and I ended the season relieved that I wasn’t slated to preach the resurrection. I don’t know quite what to make of that.

Fortunately, early last week I received the proclamation I was so hesitant to offer.

Shortly after arriving at my satellite office (also known as the Beverly Public Library) I ran into Jandelle*, an enthusiastic, uber-intelligent young adult who had attended the Beverly Bootstraps Homework Helpers Club I helped sponsor years ago. Although Janelle has the intellect and intrinsic dignity of Michelle Obama, she hails from a challenging family background and a neighborhood that most would consider less than ideal. Her background, along with the fact that I had witnessed a brutish twenty-something bullying her in a parking lot a couple of years ago, left me worried that she would fail to fulfill her potential.

So it was with a little hesitancy that I asked Jandelle what college she was planning on attending next fall.

Immediately she smiled and said: “I’ve already received acceptance letters from UMass Amherest, BU, BC and St. Mary’s, but my first choice is Columbia and I should be hearing back from them within the week.”

Somehow I avoided tears as I congratulated Jandelle and wished her good luck. Then, as quickly as she appeared, she was gone.

When Jesus proclaims a blessing on the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of God, I believe him. For that reason among others I consider it a privilege to empower, and be empowered by, people throughout my workday.

However, in the darker moments, working in social services feels an awful lot like servicing poverty and one is tempted to wonder if all of the hours, dollars and prayers contributed is going to do a damn bit of good.

For that reason, I treasure moments of ordinary resurrection like these. Jandelle’s story serves as a powerful reminder that God is always in the business of bringing life out of death and if I had been slated to proclaim the resurrection yesterday morning her story would have been my text.

* Not her real name.

musings is going dark

for the next forty days. have a blessed lent.

emergency water landing - 600 miles per hour


blank faces, calm as hindu cows.

musing...

this morning the nytimes is reporting that robert allen stanford, the alleged perpetrator of yet another financial fraud, has been served papers by the f.b.i.

during these difficult times in which an overwhelming amount of financial fraud is being uncovered, i suspect that much of the fraud and dross within the church is going to be revealed as well.

i fear that when the foundations of the church is laid bare we will find that:

1. the church is just as addicted to easy credit as consumers.
2. the church's commitment to "staffing for growth" has led us to underutilize the latent gifts of the laity.
3. the church has replicated far too many services for the silliest of ideological reasons.
4. the church's narcissistic spending patterns has rendered it largely incapable of assisting and empowering the poor.
5. the church has used a frenzy of activity to avoid the desert of prayer.

i share these suspicions not to accuse, for, God knows, i am the guiltiest of all. rather, during the upcoming season of lent i hope that the body of Christ, God's church, is inspired by the Holy Spirit to confess our sin, embrace obedience to Christ's mission and be surprised by new life.

musing...

if pithiness is next to godliness
i'm going to need an assload of indulgences

fun with metaphors

on march 7th the gathering gang is leading a breakout session on the topic of worship at the brian mclaren/everything must change conference that the episcopal diocese is hosting.

as i've been preparing for this discussion, i've started thinking about the liturgy at the gathering as a "mashup." i'm a bit of a technological idiot, but as far as i can tell a mashup is an artistic piece that is a creative combination of two or more divergent video or audio sources.

for example a cursory search on youtube yielded this mashup of office space and the trailer for xmen 3 and that brilliant mashup of christian bale's latest profane tirade.*

at the gathering, we often offer up a new mashup every week. last week's mashup might be pentecostal worship whipped with a evangelical "big idea" sermon, while next week's mashup might be classic hymns of the reformation intertwined with lectio divina and a zwinglian framed communion. sometimes these mashups are inspiring and provocative and sometimes the juxtapositions are cumbersome and distracting. however, since we are a diverse community each member has to trust that the elements that do not connect with them speak directly to someone else in the congregation, while another element which does speak to them might not connect with the other at all.

i'm not going to lie, sometimes i wish our worship had the cohesion of a catholic mass or the plodding regularity of a presbyterian order. but i love our quirky community and believe that the mashup is the best fit for our diverse congregation.

one side note: while reading the most recent modern reformation david wells states that "emergents" have rejected the niche marketed vacuity of the megachurch and have instead embraced "casual blending of different belief systems in their churchly experimenting-a bit of Catholicism here, a bit of Greek Orthodoxy there, a hip rendition somewhere else-has also come about because of a rejection of traditional ideas of authority and because the self is exercising its autonomy to shape its spiritual context the way in which it wants."

i think that his former assertion is right on, but i don't believe that the tendency of the participants in the emergent conversation to drink deeply from multiple streams of christian tradition and to weave the strands of that tradition** into their worship is, necessarily, a rejection of "traditional ideas of authority" or a narcissistic pastiche. rather, i think that many of the participants in the emergent conversation are trying to respect and practice their received tradition of the christian faith while also exploring and utilizing the untold riches of resources that have been discovered by christians throughout the centuries. although i'm a evangelical protestant by birth i think it would be foolish for me to ignore the valuable practice of lectio or lenten fasting just because my immediate forbears did not embrace these practices. i'm proud of my christian church/church of christ tradition, but my forefathers and foremothers are many, and i don't think i am dishonoring alexander campbell - neal windham for that matter! - or rejecting their "authority," by listening to the words and being shaped by the practices of st. francis of assisi, martin luther king jr. or henri nouwen.

second side note: feel free to share mashups that you love. i've just started to explore this art form and would love to receive your recommendations.

* this clip is inappropriate for children and those who are easily offended. consider yourself warned.
** talk about your mixed metaphors.

in context

is a sailboat. stupid head!

read and reviewed: creating a world without poverty by muhammad yunus
submitted by: anita

I thought that I was a dreamer and an optimist, but compared to Muhammad Yunus I would almost be considered a cynic. In Creating a World Without Poverty, not only does he envision eliminating poverty in his native country of Bangladesh, he envisions "putting poverty into museums" throughout the world so that future generations of children could go and marvel at the way large parts of the world used to live.

He acknowledges that he is a dreamer. Yet he has in fact reduced Bangladesh's poverty level from 73% in 1973 to 40% in 2005. The poverty level continues to decrease by 1 percent each year and so in the not too distant future, his dream of eliminating poverty in his country could become a reality.

How is he doing it? It's pretty simple. He has dared to think outside of the box. He has refused to buy into the capitalistic, maximizing profit model that the developed countries have lived by. Instead, he introduces the concept of social businesses. These are businesses that are created not to be PMBs (profit maximizing businesses) but businesses that have as their goal a social benefit to the world's poor. People who invest in the businesses get their investment back, eventually, but they do not receive any profit. Instead any profit that the business makes is re-invested into the business or else it goes to the shareholders who are the poor. As an added benefit, the investors in these businesses can then invest in another social business and keep perpetuating the benefits. It is much better than a hand-out, for both the investors and the recipients.

How can a model like this work? Yunus has shown that it works well. He started out by offering loans to poor people who had no collateral and who would be poor risks by most bank's standards. He found that these poor borrowers had a far better rate of loan repayment than more well-off borrowers. He also found that the poor were extremely resourceful and hard-working when it came to using their loaned money. As a result many of them were able to create viable businesses, pay back their loans and better the standard of living for themselves and their families.

For example, some poor women would take out a loan and become telephone ladies. They would purchase a cell phone and then sell minutes to people in their village. This provided benefit to them and also to others around them. And connecting a poor village with the world helps to remove them from isolation which further increases the likelihood that they will escape poverty.

It is a hopeful book. Yet it also is pleading with the world to adopt this same model of social businesses in order to save our planet as well as eliminate poverty. As has become obvious to many, the world can no longer afford to maximize profit and ignore the effect that this idea has had on the world's resources and on the use of the these resources by the privileged few.

I found it an inspiring book, with lots of practical insight. Putting its ideas into practice should be given serious thought by the developed nations. Success will only be hindered by a stubborn clinging to the current model of business that has benefited only a small portion of the world's population. Yunus believes that investors and people in general, are capable of and even attracted to making a choice that does not result in financial gain, but instead contributes to a world where those at the bottom of the socioeconomic structure are benefited and given a way of escape.

on "emergent"

lately i have had a number of people ask me what "emergent" is. actually, they usually ask me what the "emergent church" is and question what the "movement" is all about.

i'm not a philosopher and i'm not all that qualified to hold court on such issues, but for what (little) it is worth, emergent is a conversation.

in our cohort anyway, the conversation usually centers upon theology, ecclesiology and missiology. when our crew meets at danny's diner we bitch occasionally about dissonance we feel with our church traditions or the anemic expressions of christian "culture" (see: fireproof), but generally everyone around the table is there because they are in awe of Jesus Christ and, individually and collectively, are committed to finding a way to persevere upon this journey in order that they might be, as Jesus promised, saved/reconciled/redeemed/resurrected/made new.

i'd encourage you to question sweeping generalizations about the "emerging church" or the "emerging movement." last time i checked, emergent isn't looking to plant any churches, pen any creeds or establish the clear leadership structure* and steady income stream that movements generally require. since emergent is a conversation, i think most of its detractors are simply protective of their authority structures and/or they need a new whipping girl to take the place of open theism, the mega-church, carman, contemporary worship, third-wave charismaticism and whatever other developments have threatened (that also hard to define thing we call) american eeevangelicalism over the past bundle of years.

if you would rather hear it from the horses' mouth, here you go:

"Emergent Village is a growing, generative friendship among missional Christians seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ." - emergentvillage.com

"As a follower of God in the way of Jesus, I've been involved in a profoundly interesting and enjoyable conversation over the last ten years or so. It's a conversation about what it means to be 'a new kind of Christian' - not an angry and reactionary fundamentalist, not a stuffy traditionalist, not a blase minimalist, not a wishy-washy liberal, not a New Agey religious hipster, not a crusading religious imperialist, and not an overly enthused Bible-waving fanatic--but something fresh and authentic and challenging and adventurous. Around the world, millions of people have gotten involved in this conversation, and more are getting involved each day. (One reason we keep calling it a conversation is that we can't find a short way of describing it yet," Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, pg. 3.

* what little leadership structure we had was deconstructed when tony jones stepped down as emergent's national coordinator in the fall of 2009.

Impending Emergence

Hey There,

Our friends at The Boston Faith and Justice Network and The Crossing are hosting a few killer events in in February and March. Take a look at what's on tap:

What: The Gratitude Economy Event featuring Shane Claiborne
When: Saturday, February 21st from 4-9:30 pm
Where: Park Street Church
How (Much): $0
Visit: The Boston Faith and Justice Network at http://www.bostonfaithjustice.org/.

What: The Everything Must Change tour featuring Brian McLaren
When: Saturday, March 7th from 9:30 am-3:00 pm
Where: George Sherman Union, Boston University, 775 Commonwealth Ave
How (Much): $15 for adults, $9 for students, $10 for a box lunch
Visit: This site to register: http://www.diomass.org/event/diocesan/brian-mclaren-one-americas-25-most-influential-evangelicals-keynote-spring-learning-e. Seating is limited.

What: The Crossing Presents Phyllis Tickle
When: Thursday, March 26th from 2-7:30 pm
Where: Cathedral Church of St. Paul, 138 Tremont Street, Boston, MA
How (Much): $25
Visit: This site to register: https://www.regonline.com/checkin.asp?eventid=697167. Seating is limited.

We hope to see you at one or some of these events. If you have any questions about these events, feel free to email me at gentry13ATgmail.com.