Worship: Emerging

The emerging missional church is not "the next big thing" -- and is not trying to be. Nor can one define with any precision what "emerging worship" looks like. But the emerging missional way is a movement happening around and within The United Methodist Church, and whose core insights about mission, disciple formation, theology, and worship are spreading and growing.

So I simply want to invite your attention to the whole of the emerging missional way, including its insights about worship.

Part of our work in this regard happens on the pages of this website. More of our conversation across the denomination and more ecumenically happens on the blog we've started for folks in The United Methodist Church and elsewhere who are already engaging the emerging missional way. You can find the blog at http://emergingumc.blogspot.com.

What we want to do at GBOD is function as a hub for connections and networking among those in The United Methodist Church and beyond who are pursuing these pathways or are interested in learning more. If that includes you, or a ministry or congregation or people you know, please pass that information along to me at worship@gbod.org.

One cynical (realistic?) caveat: Emerging worship has already been co-opted as a "brand" by the marketing, showbiz, institutional drivers of church and commerce. So if you see crass, "tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear," postmodern pc jargon at work AND folks are using it to try to sell you things, trust your senses and flee.

While folks in the emerging missional way do sell books and other resources themselves -- as a means to make a living and as a means to propagate their/our ideas -- the best among us aren't in this for the money. And we'll never sell you anything that says, "Do these ten things and you'll attract the postmoderns into your church" or "Don't do these ten things and you can be sure NOT to attract postmoderns into your church."

The emerging missional way is not about attracting anyone; it's about being faithful about being SENT into Christ's mission already happening around us everywhere. And so it's not just about "postmoderns" either -- because in the places where we each find ourselves functioning as missionaries, whether we live there or have been sent there, they may not be postmodern themselves.

And, by the way, it's not about teens and twenty-somethings, either. That's another pitch you'll see out there. Don't believe it.

So . . . keep us posted here; and see where, whether, or how the emerging missional way and the ways of worship that form in and out of it may connect with where you have been sent in mission as well.

Taylor Burton-Edwards
Director of Worship Resources