One of the negative things about writing a blog post is sometimes you just use blog posts as a way to start voicing what your feeling or starting to think, and sometimes these are just thought fragments. (You especially do this with low readership).
This becomes a problem when you have an obscure blog that only a few tight nit group comes to read and you think that it is just among close friends.
Apparently I have jumped into a pot that I didn’t even know was boiling. Who knew that the world was saying that Emergent was dead or Fizzling or whatever?
Not me, but I have been out of touch.
I come back to the states and I am working through culture shock and figuring out what my place is in the world and I am realizing my expectations are different than my current situations and I vent. This venting then turns to a thread of comments that outnumber all the comments I have written for the past year.
Add them up. Check it out. People could care less about skydiving and pictures of world travels, but when I get a little jaded about Emergent I am attracting a lot of links.
I don’t want to be in the limelight. I don’t want to bash Emergent, Doug, Tony, Brian, Phyllis, Bob, Richard, James. Or any of those guys. They took me in when I didn’t have a theological home, and I don’t want to shit where I eat.
I posted feelings not facts. And I am sorry that I poked at a sacred cow. The truth is I like a lot of these small expressions around the country that are doing awesome things. And I hope that Troy Bronsink (did I spell that right) will be my friend when I move to Atlanta.
I didn’t mean to upset Tony(even though I know he sabotaged his hyperlink to me in his article on purpose :::shaking fist:::), or join a ‘meme’. I don’t even know what a meme is.
So here is what I am merry about.
I am merry, that when I go through a point of disappointment I have good friends that can say, “I have been there”. I like it that Steve Knight emails me and says, “Hey Dude, call me, let’s work through this”. I like it that the drummer from the best rock band of my lifetime emails me and says, “Let’s video chat”. I like it that there are people that help me to reframe what I am thinking. And people that ask what change I want to be a part of.
I like it that it is okay to be wrong about stuff. These are things that are at the heart of the conversation and these things will never die.
I like it that the publishing house and emergent may be parting ways, if the rumors are true. I love that things are going grassroots. I love that we can take some of the leaders out of the spotlight and let new ones rise up.
But I want to say thank you to everyone that came around and said, its cool that you are feeling this way, want to talk about it. That is the conversation that I joined in the beginning, and how could you ever walk away from something like that?
I may have given up on church, and thus lost my ability to criticize it, but I guess I am locked into this conversation as a whole. So, thanks guys. Most of you are really helpful.
Sorry to join a ‘meme’. Who knew people were saying that emergent died?
Viva la conversation!
Okay I am going to go listen to Jimmy Eat World now.
Alright, that’s it. I’ve been reading your blog, listening to your podcast, and keeping up with your tweets for almost two years now.
It’s time to take this relationship to the next level.
Let’s Skype sometime.
meh.
btw, i’m making some scandalous rum punch with a homemade brown sugar syrup recipe. smexy and 10x’s better than all this other drivel. wish you were here.
Did Blake just hit on Nick?
Anyways, I don’t know if all of the big harsh reactions came from your blog post, or the digression of comments made after your post. I think the latter had more of a ripple effect than your original post. What you said in your post was actually quite agreeable, but it does/did need to be addressed/worked through, which I think folks like Makeesha have done a well enough job of.
Perhaps we all got a bit out of hand (by we all, I mean not you, but those of us who reacted), perhaps your post touched on a sensitive nerve that we’ve been ignoring? I don’t really know, but I’m a bit amazed at all of the reaction and the full gamut of reaction it’s caused.
I’m thinking it was a good thing you posted that though. We shall see how it turns out, eh?
Didn’t know you’re moving to Atlanta, look forward to seeing you at a cohort sometime.
Blake, done. . we just became friends.
Josh, when I get to ATL whiskey sours will flow like water
Hey, I didn’t know you were moving to the ATL. Or if I did, I forgot. Where at? We are moving back this summer, to Decatur or West End (ish) most likely.
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Nice to see you remain a “hopeful” skeptic. I share your sentiments about the joy of what’s happening at the grassroots level – the whole point of idol smashing as a religious satirist is once we deconstruct anyone and anything that keeps us from the love of God (and that includes me and my idols for sure) then the glimpses of God can shine through.
Sometimes it can be a challenge to sift through the white noise to find those underground voices. I find it interesting that recently both Mark O. and Tall Skinny Kiwi are halting their blogs at least for now. Over the past six months, I found I had to seriously cut back on my use of Facebook (and I refuse to join twitter or host my own blog) and visit more folks in person or engage in more intimate email/skype interactions if that’s not doable.
Mike, yeah I think we will be living in Decatur eventually. Come July.
Did anyone feel like that other post turned into the fight scene in Anchorman?
Nah – more like a scene from “Life of Brian” …
BRIAN: You are all individuals!
CROWD: YES, YES, WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!
BRIAN: You are all different!
CROWD: YES, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT!
LONE VOICE: I’m not.
PERSON NEXT TO HIM: SHH!
The use of anchor man as an analogy is so pejorative and mysogonistic.
I agree.
BTW, I apologize for anything I did that contributed to the “fight scene” feeling. Personally I thought it was a healthy, interesting, and productive conversation.
Nick,
Thanks for the last couple of posts. I completely agree. I’ve had the same problems with Emergent. I’m still hopeful, but I’m not sure how much room remains in Emergent for the skeptics.
I thought Emergent offered hope for preserving the word “christian” in the 21st century. If all it is now is a way to push NT Wright’s apologetics, rehashed in Americanized books, then I’m very disappointed. That’s all I’m hearing lately.
Dude, Matt don’t hate on my soliciting skills. My Skype offer extends to you as well.
I haven’t been part of the conversation at all … and I seem to be quite a bit older than most of you (elderly white male) … and I don’t even have a blog, nor am I about to start one (pace Martin Kelley)….
So maybe I shouldn’t be talking. But one thing struck me about the original post: the call for (re-)definition. My own fairly long church experience (Religious Society of Friends – Quakers) is that as soon as believers start feeling a need to define themselves, hardening of the arteries has begun to set in. Definition is an ongoing process; any attempt to be definitive is a snapshot of one point in time.
To put it another way, structure is necessary to support the leaves moved by the Holy Spirit. If it becomes rigid, however, either the Spirit can’t get through to move the leaves, or the tree gets blown over.
Analogies are dangerous – though Jesus liked ‘em a lot. Let’s just say that if Emergency were able to offer much more than provisional, “this is where we’re at right now” definition after a mere fifteen or so years, I’d be seriously worried. I’d be even more comfortable with “this is where some of us are at right now – what do you think?”
Many of you may have been there already, for some time. I can certainly understand frustration. Lord knows I’ve felt it in my faith community often enough! From the outside, though, dipping into your blogs and overhearing the conversation, it’s very exciting. I’ve learned a lot from you, da’ath elohim, not book-larnin’. I hope to learn a lot more that will enrich my life.
I also hope I can bring some of what I’ve discovered among you, perhaps translated into my own idiom, back into my world. Be not discouraged.
Can I just vent my own deal with Emergent, coming from the wife of an emergent “follower”. Whenever I heard Emergent talked about in groups it seemed like a bit of a cult following. I was soon sure that my husband would have us moving to a ranch in the middle of nowhere is other emergent people, and we would all have emergent kids, maybe be forced to do acid and have group sex. I wasn’t opposed to this new life just found that emergent followers seem to talk of the emergent movement as if it was their own God to be worshipped and that scared the shit out of me.
[...] Nick Fiedler – The Great Disappointment (A post about Emergent) and The Great Merriment (A post about Emergent) [...]
Nick, there is a beautiful humility here that is hard for many of us to reach. I can share your reasons for merriment with great joy – and for what it’s worth, I live in Atlanta as well, right on the edge of Atlanta/Decatur next to Emory, and would love to share a beer as well, if you’d be open to that.
The more I read about this stuff, the less I like it. Especially after seeing the kinds of responses to the previous entry.
It just shows that we haven’t really learned anything about anything, and we’re all just as lost today as we were two thousand years ago.
Nick, I really love the humility that you’ve shown by apologizing for your disappointment, but there was no need for it. You said how you felt, openly and honestly and it turned into a debate. Whatever.
For all the crusades and charades, the only question really worth asking at the end of the day is, “How do we leave this world better than we came into it.”
I don’t know why it’s so hard to grasp this sometimes.
tagged: hasty, incoherent, largely irrelevant
If it wasn’t so inappropriate I’d give you a big smooch Nick
like Mike, I thought that by you sharing your feelings you allowed a whole lot of folks work through stuff and I for one think that it has been good…but that’s kind of the way I roll.
But if I sounded mean spirited or defensive or (god forbid) like a bully, I apologize.
Ready….and….group hug!
Group hug. . . and squeeze.
Mak, your tone was fine, especially as we talked more and more.
I was just reading about the bullying, and where as Mak I didn’t feel that you were, I find it interesting that my friend Clint, who isn’t part of ‘the conversation’, identifies the tone as the thing that stood out to him.
[...] then, I shall follow Rick (against my better judgement, no offense Rick) and Nick (to the grave) as freedom fighters that declare that everything must change. This entry was posted [...]
Nick…
Great post in late May. Great post here as well. I love your honesty.
Just so you know… people daily continue to “stumble” into the whole emergent/emerging conversation. That’s a good thing man…. it is the Holy Spirit moving in and through the body. I am so glad you posted. Not just because you started a new chapter in an ongoing conversation but because you were honest. And humble.
It’s good… these questions, this conversation and our actions that are a result of it all. Either as a large group, a small cohort or as individuals it comes down to the daily actions that reflect a life lived (as best we can) like Jesus. Simple… yes indeed. And Thank God for that!
Keep posting…. thanks for doing it!
[...] 3. Did I expect to come back and see everything different. No. I don’t know what I expected, but I address this topic here. [...]