Really Long, but Really Good Post on Emergent

So, here is a great post on the American Academy of Religion conference in San Diego. Some Emergent conversation was part of the agenda. There is the good and bad, or the pro and con of it in this post by Christine Scheller. Go here.

Article in USA Today about some of our Emergent Friends

So USA Today had an article about the Emergent Church. It is well done, and worth a read here.

Some Post Halloween Thoughts - Dialogue with Fiona Horne

Having been in Seattle at the Off the Map conference for the last 4 days, I am only now getting to posting some blogs about the Halloween season. I will add a story here and there as I have time to do so.

So here goes a mention of the Pagan/Christian Dialogue: Fiona Horne (from Mad, Mad House - a Sci-Fi channel reality series), Christian Day from Festival of the Dead, John Paul Jackson, and myself (Pastor Phil from The Gathering) held a dialogue about the Christian and Pagan worldviews, both what we might have as agreements, and what we certainly have as differences.

The church was a packed house on a Saturday Night October 28th. We passed out flyers, and at 8pm the people came flooding in. The interns from Streams, our friends from the Bridge Church, Pagans from the community, and visitors who were familiar with Fiona all came in.

The discussion centered around each person defining their spirituality, and describing some practices which were important to them. There was also reference to Spirituality and the media with the recognition that a media presence often causes people to perceive on individual as shallow.

I found Fiona gracious and intelligent. She has a deep sense of spirituality wiithin her Witchy practices, and although they are far different than my own, they are marked by peace, and graciousness. Only if some Christians I know were are gracious as she is. I found this to be true both in preparation for the dialogue, and during. Fiona shared her experience with a remarkable incident when "the Christian God" spoke to her during the filming of Mad, Mad House.

Christian Day is highly entertaining, and creatively funny. He had people laughing throughout the meeting. He and I have a friendship which goes back almost 12 years now, and it was good to hold this dialogue with him.

John Paul Jackson really did well in a setting which was new for him. Too many preachers would come off as judgmental, and condemning. John Paul never does, and he was as gentle as ever.

People attending laughed (Dennis laughed so hard he nearly busted some stitches from a surgery he recently had), cried, and people wanted to stay around and talk after.

It was a remarkable event, and we hope to do more of the same in the future.