to seek out new life and new civilizations...

today officially began the sabbatical journey.

my intention includes experiencing worship in a dozen different "emergent churches," some of them two or more times, reading a couple of dozen books from or about emergent leaders and churches, and attending five seminars or conferences on the emergent movement. i hope to accomplish several things:

to clarify my sense of what is and isn't happening in the emergent movement

to sort out reality from misconception, fantasy and hype

to get a feel for how much of this is fringe and how much may be central

to undertand how mainstream churches connect to this movement

to learn something for the blessing of our own parish and my own ministry

i'll attempt to integrate all this with my other experiences of renewal over the last decades: liturgical renewal, spiritual renewal, church renewal and ministry renewal.

today i visited cedar ridge community church, home of brian maclaren. in my next post i'll give a short review of my impressions, somewhat similar to what you might expect from a "mystery worshipper" review. by the time i've visited a dozen of these, i imagine some commonalities and unique characteristics will begin to, ahem, emerge.

the lord be with you,