I've been spending a lot of time thinking about church stuff, especially the emerging church. (Yes, Dorothy, I will be emailing/calling you back as soon as I get a chance - sort of swamped with a sermon for class tomorrow.) I have the pleasure of working with a local team that is planning a regional conference on revitalization - our theme is the emerging church. I like the topic - it's near to my heart, even though I may not always be up on what is the most latest and edgy. However, authentic, relevant church is always on my agenda.

Tex Sample writes about "pitching the tent" in his book, Powerful Persuasion. He illustrates that Jesus lived in history, was part of a culture, spoke through that culture, spoke against that culture, and was entirely immersed in that culture. By being word made flesh, God essentially pitched a tent, showing that God's story, God's actions, God's movement is about life, human life. Jesus did not work to make his words relevant to life - he was relevant by simply living, by showing up in a particular time and a particular place in human history.

It's a tricky little way to look at it, and I'm still mulling it over.

Life is about tension. One of the challenges of being a Christian today in North America is trying to live out your faith in the midst of the competing ideals of consumerism and physical pleasure. We are in the culture, no doubt, but we are also, at least in some fashion, trying to take a different path from that culture. There are parts of the culture that are fine, we accept and deal with. But there are other parts that are not cool with what we believe and find to be life-giving and enabling. How do we deal with that tension and make a committed go at life as a believer?

I was just at a conference this past weekend, learning about numerous justice issues and needs for our world. There is a tension that arises from being concerned about the world. There are needs in Africa, there are needs in South America, and there are needs right here in DC. If we do care about those issues, it's far too easy to get worn out from trying to work on everything. But yet - we must build a "system" so we can respond to those issues. We must have an over-arching ethic of life that comes from what we know of God. So, how do we work on what we can while being in constant concern for the whole world?

I need community to thrive, and yet, I must have time alone to center myself and contemplate what I have been doing. How can I figure out when I am spending too much time serving others and not enough time strengthening my own walk?

Tension.

If God, as Christ, pitched a tent with us humans, there must have been tension there too. Maybe that is what the Garden of Gethsemane was? Maybe that was the 40 days in the desert? Maybe that tension for Jesus was trying each day to deal with needy folks, grabbing his robe, stopping him in the midst of his walks across Galilee, and bursting through the roof of his meeting place? Maybe our own faith is best served by accepting those tensions and just living into them, letting them be something that is not easy to be worked out. There are no Cliff Notes for faith.

And maybe that is some essence of what I want out of church and what I think the emerging church is hopefully providing space for - a place not to be swayed from one side to the other in reckless frenzy - but a place to be called to go deeper, in the midst of the tensions of life and this world... a place to pitch tent with God?