emerging reality

I take one weekend off and I'm hopelessly behind. So instead of trying to play catch-up with this week's chapter, I thought I would share some words from a pastor of an emerging church in Seguin, TX. This is where I grew up and believe me, it is no metropolis. So it's very encouraging to me to find that this "emerging" thing is happening all around us, even in Seguin, TX.

Here are excerpts from Jim Taylor's summary of their 9 year journey to birth Mosaic:

"We began by examining our identity and mission. Once we established that both fall within the Great Commandment & Great Commission. We decided that we needed to live out the Gospel incarnationally in our community. Because our identity is in Jesus Christ, we are Christo-centric in our faith & practice. For us, Jesus Christ forms our interpretive grid for what it means to be "Christian." This would exclude, by the way, various doctrines that are plucked out of the Bible from other places. Not that there might be meaning somewhere in there, but it won't be central to our faith & practice. We seek to be the presence of Christ in Seguin as a local expression of His church (community gathered by the Holy Spirit). We are ecumenical, post-modern, social justice oriented, and emerging. We celebrate diversity, dialogue, spiritual formation as journey, and service. We think it's critical to be in the world, active, living out the Gospel in front of people by what we do. We hope to be a blessing to our community in the name of Jesus Christ!

We are still looking for "labels" that can truly identify us. It's a bit difficult b/c no one label really does clarify what we are as a church. I like to tell people that we are just trying to get the label "Christian" applied well! Of course, everyone wants to know what kind of Christian? ... It seems it's not enough to say ones like Jesus ..."