This is a 47 minute version of Phyllis Tickle’s lecture on “The Great Emergence”.
Phyllis unpacks church history in a way that I’ve found incredibly insightful in understanding of the current state of Christianity and where we’re heading. I’ll post a clip from my one-on-one interview with her in a couple weeks, but in the meantime I highly recommend watching this video of a talk she gave at the Vineyard Community Church in Shoreline, WA on November 22nd, 2009. I know this sounds boring, but I promise you won’t regret it!
If you want more, check out Phyllis’ book on the topic The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why
WOW, what an amazing perspective!!!
Wow. This may be one of the most important pieces of video you’ve ever recorded, Craig. I didn’t get to hear her whole thing at the OTM event, so I doubly appreciate this short synopsis. I’m going to gather some folks at my house and show this.
Wow.
Thank you for posting this. Every time I listen to Phyllis, I capture a new nugget of understanding of how we have arrived where we (Christians) are today.
She is a very wise woman. I realize Phyllis is expressing her view and understanding of history. How she applies it to what is happening today and where she sees this leading, I find very prophetic – it gives me hope for our future. I can see the possibilities of what could be.
While I believe I will not live long enough to see this new world fully born – I am challenged to bear witness and help facilitate what new thing God is doing and respectfully, bring closure to the old, broken dysfunctional ways of being together. Transitions can be hard for us human beings. (we are bearing witness to the death of our financial, education, religious, business systems and more, because they were built on the foundation of power and control – not love and compassion. Many of these systems were originally created to “serve” the communities and became corrupted and have the community serving the institutions.)
Where ever I show up, the communities of Off The Map, A Small Group, Open Space, Art of Hosting, World Cafe and more – I see the Holy Spirit moving across this planet. When I am able to let go of my habits of gathering and just experience these alternative ways of being together, I am set free. This new thing resonates in my deepest core – and, I believe it is actually a very ancient way of being together – it is how Jesus was with us – my spirit recognizes it even while my “brain” resists.
Surrender to what the Spirit is calling us back to…
being a ‘church planter’, i’ve been wrestling a lot with the way we were ‘doing’ it… i was trained in the purpose driven,’launch large’ concept of church and i haven’t read a whole lot on missional church (or anything with ‘emerge’ at the root of it’s name, b/c it basically declared sacrilegious in the denom i came out of!) – but i know what i’ve been drawn to do… and what i’ve been involved with just wasn’t it… i recently had to stop in my tracks and our church plants’ tracks to let our friends know that something just wasn’t right… we had tried something ‘different’, and experimented by starting out without structure (we thought this would be a good idea – it’s not!) it morphed within 6 months into a ‘genX’ church service… it’s wild/painfully frustrating how we wanted to be missional and less institutional, but we fell right back into the trap of the system that grew up in… live and learn!… btw,i love this site… it has connected me with a world that i was sheltered from… thoughts, questions and realizations that i had that were suppressed in the system that i’ve been part of for so long…
so anyway, THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS! really great insight and very timely…