Part of the Good Work that keeps surprising and delighting me is the Emerging Church movement. A postmodern, post-Church Growth Movement thing, the Emerging Church finds expression in a number of small communities, monastic-like orders, and networks of leaders around the world. One of the latter is Emergent, which describes itself as “a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” This movement, as I understand it, is peopled largely by Evangelicals. Those are my roots, too, as the son and grandson of Southern Baptist preachers. But for the past 15 years, my faith communities have been progressive-liberal congregations and associations of like-hearted folk. So I am happily surprised to witness the exploring, generous, Spirit-led conversation underway in Emergent — which, actually, all the “post” language aside, is very much a part of Evangelical heritage.

Anyway, what caught my attention this morning was a reflection by LeRon Shults on why Emergent should resist formalizing a statement of faith. I was smiling and amening all the way through. Shults writes,

Whatever else Emergent may be, it is a movement committed to encouraging the lively pursuit of God and to inviting others into a delightfully terrifying conversation along the way…. Emergent is dynamic rather than static, which means that its ongoing intentionality is (and may it ever be) shaped less by an anxiety about finalizing state-ments than it is by an eager attention to the dynamism of the Spirit’s disturbing and comforting presence, which is always reforming us by calling us into an ever-intensifying participation in the Son’s welcoming of others into the faithful embrace of God.

Hallelujah! Read Shults’ entire reflection here.