The Submerging Church

Maybe that could be a title for my first book. This post is mostly to let my reders know that I have been thinking about removing, and finally have removed the word emerging from my description. I have been planning on doing it for a while, but an article I read put me over the top. You can find it here (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/011/12.36.html). S it's gone, and let me try to explain why. I love the ideas that go along with the emerging church. I completly agree that the americain church is poised for something, and that it is going to take a "new kind of Christian" to get that ball rolling. Talking about the emerging church makes me salivate. I love the idea of taking the world by storm, one person at a time. I love the idea of being on my own spiritual journey, and don't need to be told what kind of spiritual journey I need to have. There is so much that I love about these ideas, but I just can't buy in.
One thing I remember well from a church planting class I took was this idea: Do not base your churches strategy on what not to do. I am not saying that we are not to be very critical of the current church, because Lord knows I am, but I just don't know If I am ready to buy into a answerless idea. All the emergent church seems to have is criticism. I have so much that i want to do and feel called to do, I cant dwell on what I am not going to do. On top of that, I don't feel that I fit in with the post-modern movement. I am a 24 year old, hawaiian shirt wearing, sports enjoying, slightly overweight man. Nothing screams dorky evangelical more than that. What does the emergent church do for those who don't wear tight black clothing, nor have a knack for acrylic painting. And the trouble is that I feel like I am in the majority. Last I checked football is still as popular as it ever was, and althogh its popular most of us in my age group still don't have tatoo sleeves and guaged ears. What does postmodernity say to us? I love all those things, and some of my best friends are those who I am describing myself as not being. There is a place for those people in the church, but do they really need their own. I think that only hurts the church as a whole.
As I type this I get to thinking, maybe we are entering a new era as the church. No we surely are entering a new era as a church. And with it I know that we will see great things. I just don't want to go the way we have gone in our past. I don't want to create another divide like the one we see between today between the consrvative and charimatic churches. That started durng the pentacostal revival which was an amazing time in the church. What 75 years from now we will look back at this time period as the time of the cultural revival. I would love to see this revival run a little differrently. I don't want to separate myself from evangelical tradition. Postmodernity places a huge value on tradition as long as it is at least 100 years old. We need to esteem the same value on every era of our history. In each one we got a few things right and many things wrong, but lets not re invent the wheel this time. Lets just come to the understanding that we are creating the history of christianity as we speak. If we look back at all the movements of yore, we have a great history, but how much better would it built rather than rebuilt? So tonight I coin the term submerging church (although I am deeply hurt that my originality has long been usurped. I dicovered this via a google search). I am not sure where this church will take us, but it is just an idea. I am out of steam. it's 1:15 am, my wife has been in bed for a couple of hours. I got to stop, but expect to hear more from me on this topic. Please don't take this as a downer for all you emergents out there. I love these principles and everything you stand for. I apoligize to anyone reading this, as you can tell it is very raw. just me thinking late at night, but your comments on this, if it made any sense at all, are very welcome. good night.