Yesterday, Pam and I had the privilege of spending the day with a NJ chapter of the Order of St. Luke. The Order is a liturgical renewal group. This chapter was predominantly United Methodist. Since they were reading Gibbs & Bolger's book on Emerging Churches, they invited us to come and talk about Vision, how we do church, how we started etc..
As we sat in the beautiful sun room at St John the Baptist Retreat Center, I couldn't help but think how improbable this whole conversation would have once been. Here we were, two people in our forties leading a church that has a video screen and rock band, sitting with a group that was mostly a generation older than us whose passion is liturgy and the sacraments, finding commonality in one another. While many church subcultures are still mired in "worship wars" here we had come full circle to find ourselves beyond category.
We discovered how real the sacramental life is and I think they saw how liturgical we are. We had vibrant conversation, a shared meal and sacred mysterious worship together. It made we wonder if all the things we now seek to call "emerging" were just latently there all along.
Pam and I are thankful to have been invited to share time with these wonderful, gracious and wise people.
Just wanted to say that I enjoyed your sermon podcast titled "speechless." I'll be visiting your blog, good stuff.
Posted by: sacred vapor | January 15, 2008 at 02:07 PM