playing tag

I’ve been picturing a group of neighborhood kids playing tag in the backyard when all of a sudden one of the kids sees something in a tree. She stops playing the game as it has been played and goes over to look. The other kids notice that she is playing the game differently and they wonder, “What’s up with that?” She makes her way over the tree to take a closer look and she sees is a cocoon; and a butterfly struggling for freedom.

The overwhelming desire of the child is to help free the butterfly.

She remembers from science class that if she tries to help, or control the cocoon emancipation the butterfly will die. So how does she best participate in the in the ongoing transformation of the caterpillar. She and the other kids watch, and it becomes their focus – their all consuming interest.

This is one of the questions core to the emerging church movement, how do we best participate in the emancipation of Christ’s church? Core to emergent is the idea of living into churching on the other side of rationalism, modernism, authoritarianism, etc. Emergent and many of the other missional movements signal a transition the move to a liminal place. To spend one’s life studying the cocoon may in some cases mean the loss of playing tag.

May the tag playing children of emergent continue to play.

peace, dwight