A call to Ubuntu

…the call to transcend and include is a call that comes from the Holy Spirit, in whom all of us live, move and have our being. So we cannot escape. We can throw a temper tantrum. We can sit in the corner and pout. We can cower in the closet in fear. But then we hear music from another room playing faintly. Gradually, eventually, we are enticed and magnatized by the Spirit’s jazz, and we have to come out of our closet and dance, to join in the unending improvisation and lively rhythm of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

-Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity

What is emergent? Trinitarian based values

what is emergent?

Read Part 3 :: What is emergent? Missional

From what I’ve seen of the emerging conversation, Trinitarian based values aren’t something that come up on a daily basis, but a number of folks are pointed to it as one of the great strengths of the movement. In fact, I can’t think of it being mentioned in any of the books I’ve read (I apologize to any authors that may have brought it up and I’ve overlooked it), and I don’t exactly recall it being brought up in any Bible classes in college (granted I didn’t make much higher than a C in any of them). But regardless of if it’s talked about, written about, or not — it still seems to be a strong point in the emerging conversations I’ve been a part of.

Perhaps Ian Mobsby (as quoted on Wikipedia) explains this idea best…

I suggest that perhaps the Emerging Church had found, or been led to a Trinitarian ecclesiology which had inspired a model, the values of which reflected God’s desire for what the emerging church should be. This is what Volf is talking about in After our Likeness. A Church whose values reflect the Trinitarian God. This development appears not to have been a consciously mediated action, but to have emerged out of the experience and practice of those involved in the projects. Is this a God-led re-imagining of the Church? I believe that it is.

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Ubuntu community of faith

I think Ubuntu would be a great name for a community of faith:

A community with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

HT the corner