post-modern, post-humble...Post cereal, post-office

Do you ever get tired of the "postmodern/emergent church" lingo and discussion? I get paid to be a Christian for a community called Horizon Church (www.soulhorizon.com, this was a shameless plug). We would be considered by most to fit the label of "emergent." But isn't one of our postmodern characteristics that we don't like to be labeled? So why are we all doing it again?

Raise your hand if you get tired of reading blogs that show how superior emergent church is to "traditional church." Raise your hand if you are tired of your own arrogance about your "new" way of doing church. (I have all my arms an legs raised in the air with my thumbs and big toes pointed toward the sky.)

It seems like we are all cursing the wombs from which we were born these days. I would venture to say that most "emergent" church leaders came out of "traditional" churches. And sure, our angst and disillusionment which has driven us to "rethink" church may have come from that church of origin. But isn't that also the place where we learned about Christ? Wasn't it in the "backward" thinking "traditional" church where so many of us got on the path of following Jesus?

I don't know. Maybe I am just being a pain in the ass. No, I am sure of it. I am being an ass right now. But sometimes my arms and back get tired of all of us going around patting each other on the back for being such brilliant and innovative Christian leaders.

Lets have some confession. We aren't brilliant. In God's eyes we are bumbling around much like the first disciples. And he loves us just as much as he did them. While we are celebrating our mantras of "mystery" and "organic" we also, as a whole, seem to be "sinning all the more so that grace may abound." Something Paul warned us against. We are a community of young people that have experienced very little of life and most of us are addicts of some kind. And Jesus loves the crap out of us.

But lets not pretend that we are doing something "so right" while the rest of the Christian church is "way off." Maybe our epidemic of having "authentic" as a core value should be switched with "humility" in the future.