Emerging Underground

I'm starting to think that finding any "emerging" churches, especially here in South Africa, is similar to the Romans trying to seek out the Christian movement - you hear rumours, you know it's happening, but for the life of you, you just can't find them!

It's no use asking within known denominations. They just look at you funny and behind your back whisper "Back-slider alert! What's that woman on about?".

I guess our culture here is still very much traditional. We've always been a ramrod-stiff-back people, brought up in churches that have hard pews, hard-cover hymnals, and hard-line religion. We went forth into the land in ox-wagons, with dry-dust hearts and drought-lined faces. It's a heredity that's hard to move beyond.

Yes, there are those doing things differently, like the Soul Gardeners folk. And still in my area, house church, emerging church, alt.worship, they're all just whispers on the wind. They're an underground movement, only showing by cracks in the dehydrated earth above that there's activity somewhere below.

There are hearts ready, I can feel it. Hearts like my sister-in-law's, crying out for refreshing, reality, connection. Lone voices hearing echoes of others bouncing off the walls, groping in the dark toward the sound, but yet not quite connecting.

What will it take to let the underground workings emerge above the surface? A uniting voice, a public cry for more? A hunger that can no longer go unheeded? A falling-away until the sleeping saints wake up to the reality of only two or three gathering? Is a leader all it will take for an army to form? For leaping faith to manifest in reality? For microcosms to unite in a mighty body?