12/17/07 Up/rooted city meeting

Posted by Helen on: 12.18.2007 /

The Up/rooted city group held its third meeting last night.

In the first two meetings, as best I know (I was only at the second) people shared their stories for the whole time. At this meeting people shared briefly about themselves and then we discussed the issue “Should meetings end with the Lord’s Prayer?” I liked that format, because I like to hear peoples’ stories but I also like conversation and having a discussion topic seemed to encourage more interaction than having people share stories for the whole time.

I had raised the question about whether it works to end with the Lord’s Prayer on here after the last meeting. In view of that I thought I had better go and be part of the discussion about it. I was interested in going anyway but I don’t generally go out on weekday evenings unless I have to, especially in the winter. So it helped to feel that I really ought to be there, since this was ‘my topic’. (I congratulated Rebecca on thinking of a way to get me there!)

I was aware that if I didn’t go there might be no-one there who wasn’t a Christian, so the discussion wouldn’t necessarily make sense. In fact, two atheists and an Emergent Jew came as well as me. I was pleased because it makes the conversation more interesting (to me). Also because it indicated it was worth discussing whether any meeting practices might make people who weren’t Christians feel excluded.

I said that the question about the Lord’s Prayer is related to the purpose of Up/rooted - are atheists welcome? If they are then if the Lord’s Prayer is used to close I’d like some language acknowledging their presence. For example, the Christians saying “We’d like to say the Lord’s Prayer together and we ask those who don’t say it to bear with us for a moment”. That would be fine with me.

Everyone seemed to agree that while they were a little surprised atheists were showing up to the meetings they were not unhappy about it; they wanted everyone to be welcome. Evidently this is only happening in the city group; the suburban ones never have atheists show up (except me, I suppose, when I went to a couple of their meetings). Maybe that’s why closing with the Lord’s Prayer has not been questioned before.

The discussion about the Lord’s Prayer indicated people like closing with a sign of unity. Some people indicated they could go either way. Steve (atheist) said “What’s not to like about the prayer?” and I agreed that it’s not the content so much as it being a prayer to God and I don’t pray. I like the part about doing God’s will on earth as it is in heaven insofar as I think that is intended to encourage people who pray it to work towards that end. I don’t think it ever was intended to mean “God, it’s up to you to do this - we’ll just watch and wait for it to happen”.

There was consideration of whether some other sign of unity would work better in view of some people there not being Christians. This could be verbal or non-verbal. We didn’t come to a definite decision but closed this meeting by standing up, holding hands and squeezing the hand of the person to the right. I thought this was simple and easy and effective, but I’m open to other ways of doing it too. There was a suggestion that we close with going around and sharing a words of hope each. I like the idea behind that, but takes it some thought, in the moment - I’m not sure if it would be doable without getting stalled as people try to think of words and wonder what sort of words to say.

There were about eleven people at the meeting - about two-thirds had come to at least one of the other meetings; the others were new. It was fun to meet new people and see that some people were interested enough to come back a second time.

I hadn’t heard of Emergent Jews. I was interested to learn a little about them from Anachim, rabbi of Mitzuit, an Emergent Jewish group. Evidently some Jewish people in their 20s and 30s have felt dissatisfied with what what the traditional Jewish communities are doing and so they’ve been forming their own groups. They want their faith to be relevant to their daily life and to incorporate such things as social action. Noticing that the Emergent Church has similar concerns these Jews invited the Emergent Church leaders to meet with them and share what the Emergent Church is all about. As a result of that meeting they decided to call themselves Emergent Jews.

There were a few students there and a few people said they’d come to learn more about ‘the emergent conversation’. One of the students was at Moody Bible Institute. I hope he felt welcome. I said at the meeting, I actually think the people most in danger of being marginalized are ‘conservative Christians’, not atheists. I could see a conservative Christian showing up and being bothered by some of the remarks made, since people at groups like this often have a conservative Christian background and are still working through difficult experiences of being marginalized themselves by conservative Christians. With that being a strong commonality in some Emergent groups, it can be easy to fall into reinforcing each other’s stereotypes and labelling conservative Christians as a ‘them’ it’s ok to, say, make jokes about. Well, like me, because when Scott said he was a student at Moody I said “Do they let you come here?” which was a joke - and a number of people laughed - but it probably didn’t make him feel more comfortable or accepted. I probably shouldn’t have said it.

Rebecca brought up a fear that if conservative Christians attended they would judge her - which she also, admirably, owned as her issue. I’m sure she’s not the only one who feels that way. And feelings like tend to have some basis in reality. The challenge is to avoid generalizing and assuming all conservative Christians are judgmental. I think it’s important for these meetings to be ’safe’ and it makes sense to me that having people come who make them unsafe would not be good.

One person there (Susan) was at my workshop in July at the Midwest Emergent Gathering. It was neat to see her again. And I was glad Lainie and her husband Steve were there again this month. It was interesting to hear Steve’s comments about why he comes. It’s significant that his wife invited him; also that he trusts this is a group where his fears/negative stereotypes about Christians would not be reinforced.

I appreciated James sharing how powerful the Lord’s Prayer closing was for him last month, yet being open to other ways of closing. Nanette’s experiences of leading a community in which not everyone self-identifies as Christian were helpful. I appreciated what Lindy and Nick (?) had to say. After the meeting I enjoyed talking to Chris and hearing about Anachim’s work helping homeless young people in Chicago. And about where Rebecca, who did a wonderful job of facilitating, got her T-shirt (Anachim asked)

I was glad I went to the meeting. The next one is January 28. Mark your calendars! :)

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Semi-Related Posts

• Lunch with Lainie
• 1/28/08 city up/rooted meeting
• Presuppositions about Mexico City
• Chicago Up/rooted meeting
• Up/rooted meeting with Spencer Burke, Neil Cole and Alan Hirsch
• Update on my newspaper dialog with Dean
• May 19 up/rooted meeting about Everything Must Change

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