up/rooted.west April Recap

We had a thought provoking wrap-up discussion to Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change Tour and book last night at the Gino's East in downtown Wheaton. We started by asking if everything must change, how will that be accomplished? Where do we start? What can we do, specifically, practically? And is it just hopeless to think that our small efforts are really going to make much difference ultimately in the face of such a broken, suicidal system?

We share a number of specific steps that several of us have taken, from buying more ethically, to eating organic or vegetarian as much as possible, to reducing consumption. We talked about getting veggie oil conversions on cars, and speculated about whether someone in the west suburbs could set up an operation to make it easier for people to do the conversions and get access to used veggie oil. We talked about the difficulty of even knowing what options are out there for living more ethically and making a difference, and about the need to start collecting information and websites to make them more accessible. Our up/rooted.south group has had the idea of collecting information about all the local social justice/missional projects around the Chicago area that people can plug into, and our up/rooted.west group talked about possibly doing something similar with ethical buying websites & stores - just collecting a database of resources.

We also veered a little bit into the theoretical/theological as we wondered how to balance hope in the kingdom as a present reality versus a recognition that we cannot bring the kingdom about through our own efforts and ingenuity. Jen Pare suggested that we needed an "active pessimism", i.e. a pessimism about our ability to bring about ultimate justice or compassion through government or activism or whatever, but at the same time a dedication to serve and be active anyway. In other words, we need to do our part and be faithful to living out the message of the kingdom, even if when it all seems utterly fruitless.

We also talked about upcoming plans for up/rooted over the summer, and it was suggested that perhaps we'd like to take several "field trips" to visit missional projects around the area. In other words, to go and observe and even participate in whatever ministries of compassion and justice that we are familiar with. If you have any ideas or suggestions bring them or up/rooted.west (or email them to us at uprooted.chicago@gmail.com) during the next couple of months, and perhaps we can plan something for July and/or August.

For June we decided to have another communal cook-out where we can share more of our stories and reconnect on those personal levels. However, before that for our May gathering we want to discuss the topic of racial diversity in the emerging church. Our up/rooted.city coordinator, Rebecca, recently posted on this topic at her blog following the SCUPE conference, and the theme was then also picked up over at the Emergent Village weblog. I'd definitely recommend reading these posts in preparation for the gathering.

I'm also a bit uncomfortable about just having a bunch of white suburbanites sitting around talking about race, so I want to especially encourage those of your in our up/rooted network who are minorities to please make it a point to join us this time if you're at all able. We need your voices and your experience. Or, if you're not a minority, but you know of someone who is and who would understand and resonate with the emerging church church conversation, please invite them to join us as well.

We will meet Tuesday, May 20 @ 7pm at the Gino's East in downtown Wheaton again. Hope you can join us for this important conversation.

-Mike Clawson
up/rooted co-coordinator

Debbie Blue, Russell Rathbun and Linda Buturian

Hello emerging folks. Doesn't it feel good to identify with that word in this season of emergence? Buds from barren sticks, you know?

Last week, we had a phenomenal gathering of 17 folks, 3 speakers and 4 people that knew the speakers. Our speakers were Debbie Blue, Russell Rathbun and Linda Buturian, all members of the House of Mercy up in St. Paul, all folks that have books available at Cathedral Hill Press.

Russell started out the conversation by describing their church, which they formed when they got out of seminary because they wanted a church where they would actually want to attend and that their friends, who were artists and stuff, would also want to attend. Russell, who looked like he would fit in quite well in Wicker Park with his black cowboy shirt with embroidered banjos and funky glasses, pointed out that their church had been around for 12 years, which is ancient for an emergent church.

I liked watching the energy of the two pastors: Russell and Debbie. Both were a little twitchy and awkward. Obviously, they wanted to be there and had such beautiful, honest and vulnerable things to say. But, part of that honesty and vulnerability involved allowing themselves to be the self-proclaimed introverts that they are, even in front of a group of strangers. As someone who has been trained to pull out my most charismatic identity when addressing groups of people, I admire their courage to simply be themselves.

Debbie read first from her book, From Stone to Living Word, and I was impressed by the clarity and originality that she wrote about Biblical interpretation as idolatry and then about love. It's so easy to say the same old Hallmark-card-for-the-rest-of-us things about love and I felt like Debbie really avoided that. She even wrote that it felt corny to even talk about love, "like I'm young and I don't know anything." She also said that love wasn't "consistently positive regard" because "who could live with anyone and feel that?" I bought a copy of the book even though I haven't read a book that wasn't for class since last August.

Russell read from his book, Post-Rapture Radio, a novel that at one point describes a hipster pastor in a mocking tone and I want to give Russell the benefit of the doubt that he read that with utter awareness of the irony. The excerpt he read was beautifully written and my church's resident atheist loved the whole book when he read it.

Finally, Linda read from her book that had only been released the week before. She lives in an "intentional cul-de-sac" with Debbie's family and a couple of others and her book, World Gone Beautiful, is a collection of memoirs from that experience. Her reading resonated with me the most because I think her neuroses are probably the most like mine. At one point she described feeling like "the world is a model airplane that I must assemble in the dark" while she lay awake being unable to fall asleep. I think this might have been one of the first times she's read from this work publicly since she kept laughing to remember the events that was reading about. That connection of the words to the actual events rather than connecting the words to a particular way to tell a story effectively was utterly charming. The words themselves were also terribly vulnerable and lovely. I bought a copy of her book also.

They wrapped up their presentation by talking a little bit more about their church and how they find relevance in traditional worship by singing old hymns with irony and discussing how they find success because their people are "allowed, encouraged and required to poke fun at the structures" of the church. They answered great questions and hung around for a long time to talk with folks after we formally closed.

Next month's meeting will be on Monday, May 19 at 7:00 at Wicker Park Grace (click on the link in the sidebar for directions). We're going to focus our discussion on the talks that Brian McLaren gave here in the area but everyone is welcome to join us, even those that didn't attend.

-Rebecca

Won't you be my neighbor?

One of the delights of the Everything Must Change tour was meeting so many people who have been on the up/rooted mailing list, but haven't been able to make it to the city meetings. They invariably revealed themselves when they saw my nametag and said, "Oh, you're the one who writes so much about tea!"

I'm touched that my informal and somewhat whimsical writing style is enjoyed by so many people. I've developed it over the years on my blog, Wild Rumpus, which I started when "an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for [Princess]Max and [s]he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are," otherwise known as Orcas Island, off the coast of Washington state.

It's more of a narrative blog than most blogs run by Emergent cohort facilitators, so probably only 1 out of every 8 posts is about any particularly emerging topic. The others are about quilting and living in the city and looking for community.

However, yesterday, I posted about racial reconciliation and the emerging movement. I think it's crucial that we make the membrane that surrounds the movement more permeable to non-white folks. But this is not necessarily true for all the leaders in the movement and has some major obstacles to realization. I'd welcome a conversation of people from all modes of thought over on my blog. If you have a minute, will you make the trip and leave a comment?

Thanks,
Rebecca

Upcoming up/rooted meetings

We have a lot of exciting things coming up in the wake of the Everything Must Change Tour, not least of which is the formation of a new Wheaton College student cohort, and the re-formation of our up/rooted.south group. We're also hoping to shortly put together an Evanston branch and a new Southeastern Wisconsin cohort if you happen to be in that neck of the woods. (If you are interested in being a part of this, send an email to Justin Worley at Emerging.SeWi@gmail.com.)

Here are the gatherings that are coming up for this next month:


up/rooted.south will be meeting this Thursday, April 10 @ 7pm at Grace Fellowship Church in Mokena for a follow-up discussion on the ideas presented at the conference this weekend.

up/rooted.city will be hosting a special evening with authors/emerging pastors Russell Rathbun and Debbie Blue next Wednesday, April 16 @ 7pm at Wicker Park Grace .


up/rooted.west is meeting at the Gino's East in downtown Wheaton and will be brainstorming how to put the ideas of Everything Must Change into practical action on the last Monday of this month, April 28 @ 7pm.


up/rooted.north currently meets every week on Thursdays @ 7:30pm at the Barnes and Noble in Lincolnshire.


Rebuilding Eden is a special cohort just for college students that meets at the Wheaton College dining hall (Todd Beamer Student Center) every Saturday @ 12:30pm, and is currently discussing the Everything Must Change book.

Everything Must Change Tour Round-up

As you all know, this past weekend was the Everything Must Change Tour in Chicago. Here are some articles and reviews on other blogs that you should check out if you're interested:

First an article written just before the conference in Oak Park's Wednesday Journal that I was interviewed for.

As usual Helen has a great play-by-play review of the conference. (And she gets the credit for the picture. I forgot to bring my camera.)

Also check out some of Jason's raw notes on the sessions.

Chad Farrand, leader of the Mid-Michigan cohort, has a good recap of his experience as well.

And for a totally unique, very personal take in her usual "wonderfully rambling" style, check out Rebecca's posts.

Also, regardless of whether you were there, you can contribute to this revolution and share ideas about how to bring real change over at the Everything Must Change web community.

And if you live near Seattle, Kansas City, Goshen IN, or New York City, or know someone who does, it's not too late to sign up to attend the Tour.

UPDATE: I've now posted my own review.

up/rooted.west March update

A half-dozen of us met again at Gino's East in Wheaton this past Monday to discuss the central sections of Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change (chapers 19-30). Having reframed Jesus' message in terms of not just personal forgiveness and hope for the afterlife, but also one of global transformation in this world, Brian then applies this message to what he believes are the three biggest crises we face today: crises of security, prosperity and equity.

Our discussion began by reminding ourselves that Brian's main task throughout the book is not really to give us a laundry list of ways to fix all these problems. Instead the point of the book is to first change our way of looking at the problems in the first place, to see them through the lens of Jesus' story rather than the lenses provided to us by this world. For instance, we talked about how many of Brian's approaches in the book don't really fit into the typical Left-Right, Democrat-Republican categories that usually tend to only want to tweak the existing system, rather than seeing how the whole the thing is broken and suicidal and in need of something radically different (something Jesus called the Kingdom of God).

We also asked whether these issues - questions of violence, of environmentally destructive consumerism, and gross economic inequalities - could actually be talked about in the kind of churches we were familiar with. Since four of us attend emerging churches, one is currently de-churched, and the other is a pastor at a liberal mainline church, we granted that most of us probably could at least have the conversation; however we also recognized that these topics would have been totally off-limits or completely misunderstood at some of our former churches. And the mainline pastor admitted that even in his church where most of the folks would consider themselves "liberals" there were many topics raised by the book that still would have been considered either too extreme or would have gone completely over their heads - again speaking to the fact that Jesus' framing story doesn't fit well into our conventional categories.

Each of us expressed at one point a desire for more specifics in this book on how to actually bring about change, despite the fact that this was not Brian's purpose. If "everything must change" then we want to know where to start. That's what we want to talk about next month both as a conclusion to our discussion of this book and as a follow-up to Brian's Everything Must Change Tour coming to Chicago next weekend (it's still not too late to register and there's a new special student rate of only $35!) We want to get into specific, practical ways each of us can join this "revolution of hope" that Brian writes about. So come, once more to Gino's East in Wheaton on Monday, April 28 at 7pm and help us brainstorm how we can change our world. (Oh, and also read the final section of Brian's book, chapters 31-34, to help spur your thinking.)

See you then (and hopefully next weekend too!)

-Mike Clawson
up/rooted co-coordinator

Update from the city

On Monday I put my quilting down long enough to head over to Wicker Park Grace for our March up/rooted.city meeting. (Did I mention I'm on Spring Break? I'm still in my pajamas!) Six of us met up there to discuss the first chapter of Everything Must Change. I think it's terribly neat that the two new folks, Chris and Maria, knew each other from other places but hadn't known they would be in the same place that night. It demonstrates to me just how pervasive this emerging movement might become.

We had a great discussion about the first chapter and our speculations about the rest of the book, which were tempered and bolstered by those folks who had actually read the rest of the book.

We talked about the historical pattern that the small band of rebel fighters grow to become the dominant force in society, which spurs a new band of rebels to splinter away, fight for the right to exist and ultimately grow to be the dominant force of society. We talked about Constantine and about Christianity being a prophetic voice from the margins. We talked about Shane Claiborne and whether we are called to drop out of society or to reform it. We sat in remorse for a little while over that fact that examining our lives on any level shows that every act hurts another person in some way. Walking on concrete, wearing clothes, using toilet paper.

Those of us that haven't read the book yet wondered if it would actually show us hope, actually show us how Christianity can help us change how we live our lives and maybe the world.

John sent me a follow-up email pointing to an Emergent Village post addressing these concerns here. It refers folks over to Andrew Jones' blog (I love the internet) but summarizes it saying:

Andrew’s three concerns [about Everything Must Change] were:

“The apparent absence of the CHURCH as God’s primary instrument in accomplishing his mission on earth — and the gaping hole in [Everything Must Change] where the example of equality and justice in the early church of Acts 2-4 should have been”

“The apparent absence of HOPE in your view of future things … the afterlife, resurrection of the dead, etc.”

“An uncritical appraisal of the liberation theology movement from Latin America … [Everything Must Change] appears almost giddy and accepting without reservation”

Brian McLaren respond on Andrew's blog.

As usual, our conversation ranged around several other topics as the spirit and our hearts led us but I spent only a small amount of time taking notes. We did talk a little about charity vs. justice, whether the emerging movement should stick to internet posts rather than book contracts, the relationship between economic theory and broken human nature, and what issue exactly it was that sent us from conventional church to the emerging church.

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, April 16. Yup, not a Monday this month. We're hosting the Reverends Debbie Blue and Russell Rathbun (if the poetry of their names does not draw you in, I don't know what will). Their church, House of Mercy, is emerging in St. Paul, MN and has the delightful tag line for their Sunday services stating, "you should come, it's not that bad." Of course, I wish they had used a semi-colon in there, but not all of us are blessed to have been high school English teachers at some point our lives, so I won't judge. Regardless, come and eat the snacks we all bring, drink Wicker Park Grace's tea and listen to their stories and possibly a little bit from their books, both published and upcoming.

Josiah Community

Hey folks, this is Rebecca from the up/rooted.city cohort.

One of the things I've been doing lately that isn't school or up.rooted is working with a group of folks to develop an intentional community condo development. I was brought into the whole thing by my roommate in Africa, Arloa Sutter. Basically, we're converting a warehouse in North Lawndale to about 45 condos that people will own individually. However, the condos will be design to encourage interaction with neighbors: kitchen windows facing into hallways, "front porches," lots of common areas and a community cooking and dining area where folks will rotate cooking for anyone that doesn't want to eat mac and cheese in front of the TV every night. I like the combination of privacy and community since I can always retreat to my condo but have the freedom to knock on people's doors if I need them.

All decisions of the community will be made by consensus. When I apply what I've been learning in my poli-sci classes, this means that the status quo regarding community life will be hard to overturn once we get going. I see this as a good thing since I'm one of about 8-15 people that are the core group of ground-floor decision-makers. We'd love to see this number get bigger, though. Our next meeting is April 30.

This will be a Christian community, however, we haven't set in concrete how that is defined. Since I'm involved, I'm hoping to sway the group toward an inclusive, emerging definition of Christian. More folks like me involved with this project early on will make this more likely. (hint, hint)

One of my major concerns in these discussions is that we emphasize relationships rather than rules. While I'm happy to sit down over coffee with a neighbor to discuss my lifestyle choices, I'm not at all interested in being held "accountable" by my neighbors for them. So, if the idea of being surrounded by other Christians and their tendency to judge gives you the willies, please be assured that I have those same willies (or heebie-jeebies, whatever you want to call them) and I'm working to make sure that doesn't happen in our earliest conversations.

Our community will be made up of whoever shows up and the culture will reflect those folks. How cool would it be to have a building full of emerging folks?

All sorts of information is available at the blog. www.josiahcommunity.blogspot.com Or you can email me about it personally at rebica at aol dot com.

The other major element of this project is that a major portion of the community space will be dedicated to a non-profit that facilitates theological study, often in the form of folks taking sabbaticals. There will be a hostel available in the building for these folks that will spend half their day working in the community, and half of their days studying.

Optimistically, condos will be ready for moving in in a little over a year. I see this as an experiment in living within the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth by living in community in the midst of urban community development.

Want to do something a little radical and join me?

Not Too Late to Register!

Good news! The deadline for registering for the reduced rate for Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change Tour on April 4-5 has been extended until the day before the conference, April 3rd. So if you forgot to sign-up this weekend, you can still do so for under $100. Click here to register.

Hope to see you there!

Something to read for the city gathering

Hey folks,

For those of you considering attending the up.rooted.city gathering a week from Monday (and please feel free even if you’ve never been and even if you don’t live in the city), let’s try to read the first chapter of Brian McLaren’s new book, Everything Must Change. You can find it on line for free at Barnes and Noble . We’ll let that start the discussion and take it from there.

Please feel free to bring snacks but it is also fine to just bring yourself.

Go Gently,
Rebecca

Recap of up/rooted.city 2/25/08

On the morning of our last up/rooted.city gathering, I got on the bus to head south to school and was greeted by the bus driver calling, "Welcome to the Happy Bus!" Each stop got a new name: "Happy Financial Place!" "Happy Franklin!" He also had a variety of phrases that he regaled us with through the speaker system:

Don't let nobody steal your joy.
Don't complain about your job. Oatmeal is better than no meal.
Don't let nobody steal your j-o-y. (The second time he spelled it out.)

I couldn't help but smile and feel a little bit like I'd just taken off the roller skates as I walked away from the bus at "Happy State Street!" It was a good way to start a day that culminated in our February cohort gathering. We had a smaller group this month but still some new faces, specifically Eric, our second Moody-ite, and Rachel, who is considering Div schools and had some experience with Quakers to bring to the group. Susan, Nick, Nanette, John and I rounded out the mix.

We started the evening asking and answering the question, "How is emerging defined?" with a follow-up question regarding the future of the movement and whether or not someday we'll set down an "Emerging" theology. Although I recoiled in horror at that idea, the other members of the group were able to discuss it with tact and grace. We talked about paradigm shifts, big E's and little e's, and asked if it was a post-evangelical movement with some mainline elements or a post-mainline movement with some evangelical soundings, as Marcus Borg asserts.

I have the words, "Brueggemann" and "dialogic perspectivism" written in my journal but I'll be danged if I could tell you what that means.

We did talk about the flat social network of the emerging movement and discussed whether or not Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren are leaders simply because they have book contracts. We speculated that in the same way folks at Moody all get painted with the same brush, so might emerging folks.

We landed on the concept of making space for conversations as a major element of the emerging movement and asked what should we do with people that don't want to have the conversation. This caused us to reflect on our own tendencies toward hubris and we talked briefly about arrogant progressives and our need to keep humility at our center as a movement.

Today, I went to a meeting about an intentional community that I'm working as part of a group to get started as a new condo development. I offered a guy named Chris a ride home from the meeting and in the getting-to-know-you conversation, he asked, "So what else do you do?" I mentioned that I facilitated the up.rooted.city cohort and his face lit up as he said, "I just sent you an email! When's the next meeting?" My car was a tiny little Happy Bus at that moment.

Our next meeting will be Monday, March 24 at 7:00 at Wicker Park Grace, which can be found for a little while longer at 1741 N. Western. Snacks will be welcome, as well as warm and imperfect souls.

I'll send out a reminder email (hopefully sometime before the day of the gathering) with some readings to get us started on a topic.

Go Gently,
Rebecca

up/rooted.west February update

Sorry it's taken me a week and a half to get this update out. Between traveling to Texas for a grad school interview, and getting our house ready to sell so we can move next summer I've had very little time to catch up on cohort stuff.

up/rooted.west met on Presidents Day in downtown Wheaton to discuss two more sections of Brian McLaren's book, Everything Must Change. This section dealt specifically with two views of Jesus, which Brian contrasts to show how the "conventional" view is often an accomplice to the destructive systems that have cause the global crises we see around us, while what he calls the "emerging" view can actually help to heal some of these problems. (You'll have to read the book to get the details on these two views.) We had some excellent discussion and even debate, as not everyone in the group was sold on Brian's ideas, or on the dichotomy he appears to set up between the two views. Some felt he was overemphasizing the critique of "empire" found in the gospels, making it more significant than it is, or reading it into passages when it isn't actually there. Others suggested however that Brian was emphasizing those themes because they were relevant to the topic of global crises even if he wouldn't say that they are the only things the gospel is about.

The discussion also drifted into many other questions and topics, some related to the book, and some that grew out of the discussion itself. As with all good conversations, it was free flowing, respectful, and diverse. We closed with a "lectio divina" style reflection where each person shared one thing from the discussion that they would be taking away with them. It was good to hear how the Spirit spoke to each person differently in the course of the evening.

I hope you'll join us for our next round of discussion on this book when we'll tackle the central three sections (chapters 19-30) that deal with the three interlocking systems (Security, Prosperity, and Equity) that Brian believes are at the heart of the global crises facing our world. We will meet once again at Gino's East in downtown Wheaton on Monday, March 24 at 7pm.

Also, don't forget that Brian's Everything Must Change Tour will be coming to Chicago on April 4-5. The deadline for the lower $99 price has been extended till March 15, so you still have time to register. Click here to do so.

After the Tour we will meet again in April for one more book discussion on the final section and, more importantly, to brainstorm more specific ways that we can put the ideas of this book into practical action. The expectation is that we will be joined at that meeting by a good number of first-timers who will hopefully connect with up/rooted at the conference. I'd like to use the momentum of that event, as well as from our discussion over these past few months, to launch a revolution of active engagement with global and local justice issues among our communities all over the Chicago area, and I think our April cohort meeting would be a great place to kick that off.

So yeah, hope to see you for the discussion March 24, and again at the conference the week after that!

-Mike Clawson
up/rooted.west co-coordinator

Emerging Church in Indy

Indy.com recently had an article featuring the emerging church in Indianapolis, Indiana, highlighting four emerging churches as well as our friend Sarah Notton (pictured on the right), founder of the Indianapolis Emergent Cohort and one of our co-conspirators for the Midwest Emergent Gathering we did here in Chicago this past summer. It's good to see the conversation flourishing in our neighbor to the south!

Can't we all just get along?

Whether you've been around the dialogue between the emerging church and the evangelical church a lot or a little, you've noticed there can be some sharp disagreements. There are quarrels about the role of the church, definitions of success, theology of the atonement, salvation, the Kingdom of God, mission, understandings of the Bible, truth and more.

For those trying to navigate the changes in our culture and in the church, we find quite the maze to sort through. Must everything change? Is there a war on Truth? It seems the emerging church and evangelicalism are antithetical; if you're one you can't be the other. There are many emerging voices tearing down evangelicalism as nothing more than American consumerism and individualism, and many evangelical voices decrying the emerging church as having left orthodox Christianity behind.

If you're looking for a thoughtful gathering without all the rhetoric on just what all the fuss is about, up/rooted.north is hosting a 10-week discussion on evangelicalism and the emerging church: not just on the differences, but also how the emerging movement is closely linked to evangelicalism historically and theologically.

We will be meeting on Thursday nights beginning February 28^th, at 7:30pm in the Barnes and Noble at 920 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Lincolnshire. We’ll be in the little coffee shop area. Our gatherings will be led by fellow up/rooted.north-er, Dustin Underwood. If you’re an evangelical, emerging, a bit confused, or all of the above, come listen, learn and add your thoughts. Hope to see you next Thursday in Lincolnshire!

Jon Berbaum, coordinator of up/rooted.north

up/rooted.west this Monday, Feb 18

Just a reminder that up/rooted.west will be gathering this coming Monday, February 18 for part 2 of our discussion of Brian McLaren's new book, Everything Must Change. We'll be discussing chapters 10-18, but even if you haven't read you should have no trouble diving into the conversation.

We'll be meeting at 7pm at the Gino's East Pizzeria in downtown Wheaton. You don't have to get food, but if you'd like to, bring $5-10 bucks for pizza.

Hope to see you there!

-Mike Clawson
up/rooted co-coordinator

Summary of January up/rooted.city gathering

I love the rotating nature of attendance in the community that we are forming. 10 folks gathered on a Monday night: some male, some female; some Jewish, some Greek; some religious, some not; some new to up/rooted, some new to the new people. All of us slave to something, all of us free in some way.

We drank tea and ate Garrett's popcorn while conversation started with how we are trying to live out our spirituality and went a variety of places from there. We kept coming back to the ideas of "obligation" and "practice" and what those two concepts meant for us in a post-modern context while still being faithful with what many of us feel we're commnaded to do.

Our next meeting will be Monday, February 25th at 7:00. We'll be meeting at Wicker Park Grace (1741 N. Western). We'd love to share the wealth of hospitality opportunities. If you'd like to bring a snack for the group, please do. It's always a delight to see what different people love to feed their friends.

January up/rooted.city recap

BTW, Helen has an excellent (as usual) recap of this past month's up/rooted.city gathering over at the Conversation at the Edge blog.

Here's an excerpt:

Nick, an atheist, and Anachim, an Emergent Jewish Rabbi, were back. I was glad I wasn’t the only not-Christian in the group. Not because the Christians have been other than welcoming to those of us who aren’t. Rather, because I like the diversity and challenge of friendly conversation between people whose beliefs are different.

After introductions we talked about ‘practising’ which was partly because I’d asked Rebecca if we could. I’ve been thinking lately about how Off The Map is practice-based rather than belief-based and how glad I am about that. It’s in practising that I often find common ground with people whose beliefs are different.

Go check out the rest.

January up/rooted.west recap

We had a great discussion over deep dish pizza and beer at up/rooted.west last Monday. A dozen of us gathered at Gino's East in Wheaton to talk about the first couple of sections in Brian McLaren's latest book, Everything Must Change. We talked about framing stories - about how Brian's intent with this book is not to give us a list of action steps, but to first help us change our whole way of thinking about the problems facing this world. We talked about the value of deconstruction and whether it can go too far. We talked about the bigness of the gospel, and how it includes both the hope of heaven and hope for this world. We talked about trying to decipher Brian's systems diagram and about what we can do about the big problems in our world. We talked about the difficulty of living in the suburbs and what important gospel issues we are often blinded to as a result. We also spent some time getting to know one another and just enjoying the company.

We will continue this conversation over the next few months in preparation (and follow-up) to Brian's Everything Must Change Tour coming here to Chicago in early April (don't forget to register!). My hope is that this will be a transformative conversation where we can find ways to participate in this revolution of hope. We are at the front edge of a movement here, and I am eager to see it take shape and move forward as we pursue God's dreams for this world. As Gandhi famously said, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

Our next discussion will be on Monday, February 18 from 7-9pm at the same Gino's East in Wheaton. We'll be moving on to the next two sections of the book, chapters 10-18, though you won't have any trouble jumping into the conversation even if you haven't read them yet.

Hope to see you there!

-Mike Clawson
up/rooted co-coordinator

Announcing up/rooted.rockford!!!

A few months back I encouraged you all to think about helping us multiply new cohorts and branches of up/rooted around the greater Chicago area. Several of you responded to that asking whether something could happen in Rockford, and as it turns out, a discussion group was already meeting in Rockford, led by Dan Hinz. Dan enthusiastically agreed to partner with us and open the discussion group to anyone who is interested, so I am pleased to announced the beginning of up/rooted.rockford!

The first meeting will be next Wednesday, January 23rd at 1:30pm at Meg's Daily Grind (coffee shop) on Alpine and Guilford in Rockford. Right now, the group is just connecting and talking a lot about what it means to be the church here in Rockford (and bringing to the table what is happening in their local ministries, encouraging each other, etc). Everyone is welcome (especially if you're already in the Rockford area). And stay tuned for email and blog updates from Dan about future Rockford gatherings too.

I'm excited to see this conversation multiply! I hope you are too.

-Mike Clawson
up/rooted co-coordinator

Summary of December up/rooted.city gathering

On Monday, December 17, 12 of us gathered at Wicker Park Grace to drink mulled cider, eat a variety of cookie that involved cinnamon and create a safe space for discussion regarding the use of liturgy (The Lord's Prayer) in these meetings and our unique characteristic of being attractive to agnostics, atheists and folks of other faiths. That last category included Menachem, who identified himself as part of the emerging Judaism movement, which was super-cool to hear about, in my book. We also spent a good portion of time telling the stories of our lives to strengthen the community that we're creating.

It has been awhile since the meeting (almost a month), so this summary will lack a certain immediacy in the retelling. Helen wrote about it in a much more timely fashion here. I haven't read it yet because I didn't want it to color my own report, but Helen's always interesting and reliable in her perspective.

These are the quotes (possibly paraphrased) that I wrote down during the meeting. I think they represent well the flow of the conversation.

"A concatenation of words can't offend. It offends as a symbol." -Steve about the Lord's Prayer

"We're pursuing truth. It shouldn't surprise us that atheists come." -James

"The word truth, I try to stay away from because so many Christians use it to describe absolute belief rather than their experiences." -Helen

"What if we called it the Lord's Poem?" -Lyndi

"Liturgy inevitably draws a line. Why do people recite words together?" -Nanette

"How can we better serve each other and love God? How can we be human together?" -Lyndi

"I want to say, 'Your church would have a really hard time with me,' but I shouldn't because you're [indicating the group] part of your church." -Helen

The major ideas that I got from the conversation were that we all valued the group for creating a space for theological conversation but at the same time, many Christians liked that the conversation could tie together it's loose ends at the end of the meeting with an affirmation that something, probably God, connected us together in a common purpose. The atheists, agnostics, and others present were extremely gracious in their desire not to "take that affirmation away from us" but in retrospect, I personally don't like the divide that creates in the group. I have a real desire for the group to be organic in its purpose, forming naturally around the people that compose it. And the reality is that although up/rooted has some very Christian statements of purpose as it's founding principles, this city branch of it is composed of people that are not necessarily Christian. Doug Pagitt talked at the Midwest Emergent Gathering ( audio here) about how the adoption of two Hispanic kids into his family changed the family as well as the lives of the kids. He used this personal anecdote as a metaphor for the emerging church. I think that if we believe in a generous orthodoxy, we must not simply tolerate and make space for those that do not claim Christ as a leader, but embrace them as truly family, changing each other as we meet and are vulnerable in telling our stories, expressing our opinions and asking our questions. (Did you notice how many of the quotes that struck me were questions?) If we believe that a loving God is at the center and that we're all simply on different paths heading toward the same goal, we should be able to trust that -through our thirst- she'll keep us traveling in the right direction regardless of who we find to travel with on the journey.

So, some suggestion of possible alternatives to reciting the Lord's Prayer at the end of meetings involve:
- acknowledging that not all present necessarily agree but asking their indulgence as the rest of us pray
- ending in some sort of silent, personal prayer
- reciting something else

There were probably others but grad school is really getting in the way of my ability to remember them. I'm really sorry. Please add what's missing in any comments to the post on the up/rooted website.

We tried the silent prayer and although we didn't discuss it, I was personally dissatisfied with it. It didn't give quite the sense of "tying up the loose ends" of the discussion, as James said. I'd love to try the recitation of other words. Please suggest possible texts (secular and religious) that are more inclusive either in the comments section of this post or in an email to me. I'll figure out a way to let the group vote on which ones are best once I've received some suggestions.

I am so thankful for the role this up/rooted.city group is playing in my life. I am itching for our next meeting, which won't be until Monday, January 28 because of the MLK holiday. We'll be meeting again at Wicker Park Grace, which is located at 1741 N. Western and we'll start at 7:00 with the intent that folks will be able to start heading back home around 9:00.

-Rebecca