Troublesome words

Having an issue in some conversations I've been having about postmodern ministry. It seems that we can't agree on our vocabulary, and so we're spending some time arguing about words that could be spend really exploring how we might be about ministry and relationship-building in postmodern culture. An example: in talking about the emerging church and the concern that some parts of the movement are focusing on relationships to the exclusion of doctrine, we realized we don't agree on the meaning of the word "doctrine". I guess maybe I've sort of reappropriated it for myself to mean the foundational teachings that invite us into relationship with God and others, and help us to live in community. Some of my peers reject "doctrine" as a narrowly defined, rigid, and exclusive set of rules that no longer have any real meaning. We've spent most of the conversation this week disagreeing when we mean to agree, I think, that narrow doctrinalism is bad, and something we reject. But I've had a hard time agreeing that all doctrine should be rejected, due to my own definition. And I've been told that insisting on knowing what things mean is "modern" thinking, not postmodern...well, so be it. Anyone out there have a term you'd like to get rid of, or redefine? Hit me in the comments and let me know!

Exploring with explorefaith.org

ExploreFaith.com is another sort of parachurch expression...it is our catechesis, perhaps, but not a community in real relational sense. While their website indicates that ExploreFaith.com thinks of itself as such (see the Who We Are page), what it really amounts to is a very general summary of what an ideally accepting church might look like. Visitors can find answers to all sorts of questions about what Christians believe and what the church teaches, and all of their answers are easy for me to accept (as a lifelong United Methodist). There are some big names behind the site (Michael Battle was at Duke when I was there, Phyllis Trickle is one of only a few women cited, Marcus Borg is a part of it as well) and perhaps that's the issue: so many names and so many positions that it all seems very fuzzy and welcoming in a way that I'm not sure is faithful to the way we often struggle with so much of our faith. As far as building community, they don't. Any relationship with this site will be a "public space" relationship, with no real provision made to encourage life-changing encounters with Christ or even with other Christians. There are worship components (prayer and guided meditation) but nothing that points to a relationship apart from the individual and (maybe) God. I think the site is founded on a good idea, but in its desire to be welcoming and inoffensive, I find it bland and uninteresting. Pity. I would not have said that at all about the contributors.