Emerging, Institutional, Blah Blah Blah

Yeah, you could take offense at the title of this post. You may just. But bear with me and I'll explain it a bit - and then perhaps you won't.

I've just finished blog-trawling my usual reads for the morning (it used to take half an hour, now takes at least 2 1/2 hours!), and wouldn't you know, a lot of them are arguing about emerging church, post-emerging church, institutional church, no church at all. Not like it's a new topic - it's been going on and on for ages!

Now I can fully understand the need to thrash out all the issues (heck, I do a lot of it right here myself), but a part of me wants to shout "Stop the issue-picking and just get on with the living it out bit, will ya! Oh, and tell us how it's working - practically!".

Us humans like to get nit-picking. Give us an issue and we'll debate it from all angles until we've forgotten what the issue is all about. We jump into pulling things apart with relish. But we can get so caught up in the analyzing that we never get around to practicing what we're preaching.

OK, in all fairness, those who've blogged about the various church things generally ARE practicing it. But where are their stories about what's happened today as they live out what they're standing for? Where are the goose-bump God-working experiences that you can't help but share? Where are the "today I found God in a homeless man I spent hours talking to" or the "you know what? God's working big-time in the neighbour I always just say hi to over the fence"? Where's the battle-field victory stories, where are the great stories that make us want more of that too? Where are the falls and the speed-bumps as human nature hits God-nature?

I guess I'm hardly one to talk, so I'd better shut up now.