The Emerging Church is something that I have been a part of for the past 7 years from helping start a church plant in West Seattle that grew to about 150 attendees to seeing the limitations of the model evolve out of a lingering postmodern mindset.
The church I had a pleasure of being involved in was called Doxa Church and we had a church building that was given to a group of a couple dozen of us that were meeting in the basement at the very beginning.
From that group, Doxa Church grew out of an emerging church model embracing the arts and music while continuing to root itself into the DNA of the community of West Seattle. [Pictured here is the coffee shop that later was created in the same basement Doxa grew out of]
In the Spring of 2006, the Elders decided to merge into the larger Mars Hill Church congregation and share the [admittedly generous space] large facilities with 500+ of their members that were commuting from West Seattle about 20-30 minutes to Ballard [a section of Seattle just Northwest of Downtown]. This caused many of the attendees to leave, included my family and small group of about 20+ individuals. In retrospect, the decision is a good one for God in allowing 500+ believers to worship in a building directly in their community where they live. But the differences of beliefs of Mars Hill versus Doxa were extreme for most [the biggest three differences being the archaic role of women in the family, aversion against women in ministry, and aggression towards gays & lesbians] and the events still harbor deep wounds for many, including myself, that may never fully heal.
The healing continues in my life. And I pray to continue to learn from my experiences. In the past months, I have felt called to write about peoples lives and how the Church has wounded them through doctrine, traditions, and beliefs that alienate people instead of loving them for their differences.
So if anyone has story they'd like to share, please let me know. I'd love to talk about it over a hot cocoa or cold soda.
Monday, January 28
Reflection: Week 4 [Monday]
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5 comments:
interesting story you've got! Some great learning experiences to say the least.
i feel ya buddy.
i still feel skeptical about any church now.
what do we do with that?
Shooting from my (sexy) hip, I am going to say skepticism isn't bad. Go ahead and question "church", just make sure you are questioning the only authority on it, God. Weighing out scripture with your discussions with Christos.
Also, I check the Stranger.
Ah, my friends from the North. I think we need to get back to the original intent of "church" as a gathering of one or two -- and get creative from there.
Scott, I'm both curious and excited to see where our experiences from Doxa take us in the future and do believe that our lives will meet again to create something new and vibrant once again.
Ryan, did you mean "(not) questioning... God" ? Don't forget to vote today, fellas.
How about I change it to "asking"? Consulting God generally works out pretty well.
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