Not "Emergent" but emerging...

I am not Emergent but I do believe that I am emerging. I am not a fundamentalist but I do believe that the Bible is without error. I feel uncomfortable at church but I can't stop going. I love Jesus but I can't stand most believers.

Now, my question is this, am I alone? I don't think so.

I accepted Christ during the new year of 1997. A chaplain was sharing about Jesus and about the "Last Days," towards the end he asked if anyone would like to say the sinners prayer. I was willing. I do not think it was the prayer that day that made me one with Christ but I believe it was a realization that Jesus was real and that I was in need of a savior. After that day my life would change forever and it has never been the same.

I began to attend a church called Calvary Church in Grants Pass, Or., it was a former Calvary Chapel disaffiliated because of a difference in dispensational thought. I was so new to the faith that I loved anything and everything that had to do with Jesus. I was a zealot without meekness and I believe that I pushed more people away from the gospel than I did bringing them near.

However, I also attended a church called Applegate Christian Fellowship in Ruch, Or.. There the head Pastor Jon Courson was in his 20th year of pasturing that church in the Applegate Valley. I began to grow as a believer and as a follower of Christ while under the teaching of Jon and I loved the atmosphere of that church and I still do to this day. It is a church that I believe almost any follower of Jesus could feel conformable in some fashion. That is absolutely not true with the majority of churches I have frequented in the past.

As the years went on I began to attend Calvary Chapel Grants Pass in 1998. The first service I attended had about 20 people in attendance. I loved the intimacy of the smaller church and the genuine relations that I had with many of the members at the time. Also the pastor was young and fiery which appealed to me. As most Calvary's do this church began to grow. That's when I received the call to attend Bible College and because I was a Calvary guy I applied to attend Calvary Chapel Bible College in Southern California.

In September of 1999 I began my first semester as a student at CCBC. It was at this time that I began to develop a foundation in fundamentalism. During the first 2 years of my walk with Jesus I studied deeply the gifts of the spirit, eschatology(end times), and fasting and prayer. Never was I concerned with "once saved always saved", "bible validity", "hermeneutics", or any other subjects that were non essential. I just figured that God was God and I was not. I was not worried at the time to win the lost world to Christ. Sure I shared my faith but only when it was necessary.

It wasn't until I was trained up in the way of a fundamentalist that I began to be dogmatic in all I thought and believed. After college I was given the opportunity to be a worship leader and then later an assistant pastor at Calvary of Grants Pass, Or. It was there that I toned my skills of being a right winged bible thumper that never gave anyone a chance to be real. Primarilly because I was a pastor and a dogmatic fundamental one at that.

Then that is when it started.

I began to see what the ministry life was all about. I began to see what really went on behind the scenes. I wish I would have never known but I am glad that now I see from a insiders perspective. I don't believe that Christ meant for His church to be the way it is today. Oh how corrupt the church of man has become; will we ever learn?

When I saw the church for what it was that's when I was introduced to the emerging church that we see and hear about today. Little by little I began to question what was not exposed to be questioned. Like, what it was to be a Christian, or what it really meant to be saved, or why we do church this way or that, or what is the point of a Seinor Pastor anyway. These questions will rarely come up within a fundamentalist ideology. They are never considered because Fundies have it all figured out.

However, although I am emerging I do not agree entirely with the "Emergent Church". That is why it has become a conversation with questions rising up without necessarily needing an answer. I would like to distinguish that I believe there is a difference between the "Emergent Church" and the "emerging church". The "Emergent" is headed by a select few chosen from within the confines of conversation, which is fine. They are becoming a church within themselves and a denomination if they like it or not. And I cannot entirely support their views on theology just like I can't with almost every movement within Chrsitianity. Thank God we are given a choice to believe what we believe.

On the other hand I see another church and another movement. I believe birthed from the early conversation of the "Emergent" but is now becoming a church and movement with no other leader than Jesus Christ himself. There is a global cry not for "Emergent" but for an emerging generational church that is beyond human control and thought.

Within the next few years we will see the "emerging church" birth new and refreshing bodies throughout the world, even as we already have. These people of the emerging generation are not about rethinking theology entirely but rather re-defining Christianity as it relates to our generation.

We believe church changes with each and every generation, we believe His word to be true, and we believe that Christ is the center of all that we are and we seek to know Him. We are an emerging generation...are you in?