An Oral History
of the Emerging Church Movement
Qtr 1, 2024
Emerged can be found on Patreon here - https://www.patreon.com/Emerged/posts.
From 1999 to 2019 my family and I were part of the emergent church movement through Mars Hill Church, of Grandville, Michigan, ala Rob Bell, as explained earlier in a previous post. And though I didn't drink the Kool-Aid I found the emergent church movement spiritually refreshing and thought provoking.
Because of questions pertaining to my own conservative evangelical faith I began an exploration of the Christian faith after Rob Bell had left Mars Hill and bye-and-bye came upon a philosophic-theology which can embrace my faith's past, present and future... and possibly would've answered a lot of Rob's questions. It's called Process Philosophy and Theology ala A.N. Whitehead and John B. Cobb, Jr., a second generation protege of Whitehead's.
I cannot say whether Rob's philosophic theology has changed much from the "Christian Realism" position he seemed to have held back in his Mars Hill days. But I do know, he, like myself, have explored a lot of different directions to come to where we are today as I have detailed over my past years of journey-writing since 2011. Looking around today at the church's (Trumpian) state of affairs I can only say thank you to the Spirit of God in leading and guiding my explorations that it might help those who, like myself, have become dissatisfied with American Christianity and needed a vibrantly real Jesus-faith rather than an institutional-faith built on an unloving God I no longer recognize.
Through this coming year I will be following Tripp and Tony's historical oral journey through their podcasts and videos. I will publish these as quarter-to-quarter summaries. You may sign up and follow along on your own through the link provided above.
Thank you for your interest,
R.E. Slater
Feb 6, 2024
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