Princeton Cohort Hosts Tony Jones

Don't forget that tonight we will have the privilege of hosting the National Coordinator of Emergent Village, Tony Jones, at the cohort. We'll be meeting at 8pm at the T.G.I. Friday's in Princeton's Market Fair Mall. Tony will be sharing with us about his new book, The New Christians, and will be sharing with us a little bit of the "state of Emergent." You won't want to miss the cohort this week.

For directions to T.G.I. Friday's, go here.

Three Upcoming Events

Just wanted to let you know about three upcoming events of the Princeton Emergent Cohort. But first, I wanted to introduce you all to Charlie Pardue, who has been an active member of the Cohort for the past year or so. Charlie is going to take over leadership of the cohort next year, as my wife and I are moving to Berkeley, CA. You can check out Charlie's blog here. Also keep checking out this website for more details on the cohort. Now, on to the three events:

Brian McLaren at Princeton Seminary / April 15
Many of you already know this, but Brian McLaren is coming to Princeton Seminary on April 15th to discuss his new book, Everything Must Change. The discussion is from 6.30-8.30pm in Stuart 6 and you can find more information here.

After the event, Brian will be hanging out with the Princeton Emergent Cohort at the Yankee Doodle Tap Room in downtown Princeton. He only has an hour or so until he'll have to drive home, but this is a great opportunity to connect with Brian with a small group of people. We'll be there from 9-10pm, so please plan to meet us there, or walk over with us after the lecture on the campus of Princeton Seminary. If any of you know for sure you'll be there, and aren't planning on attending the book discussion, if you could show up to the Tap Room a little early (8.45pm or so) and begin to start saving tables, that'd be great! Thanks!

Cohort Guest: the National Coordinator of Emergent Village, Tony Jones / April 29
Our next cohort meeting will be on April 29th, from 8-10pm, at TGI Friday's in Princeton (directions here). Tony Jones, the National Coordinator for Emergent, will be in town for the Institute of Youth Ministry at Princeton Seminary. He'll be joining us for the cohort to discuss the "state of Emergent" and to share with us about his new book, "The New Christians." You won't want to miss the chance to connect with Tony.

Brian McLaren and the Everything Must Change Tour / May 2-3
Finally, May 2-3 is the "Everything Must Change" tour in the Bronx. The two-day event has recently been underwritten by a church, so the total price is now only $20. A few of us from the cohort will be going up, so if you want to join us, send me an email back and we'll be in touch. To find out more information and to register, click here.

See Brian McLaren in NYC for $20

The Everything Must Change Tour is coming to the Bronx May 2-3. Because a church graciously has underwritten the event, you can now go for just $20. It is a really important event that has been getting some great press during the past few months.

If you are able to, I'd highly encourage you to go to this event. For more info, and to register, go here.

.bE, Alternative Worship Gathering, at Princeton Seminary

If you're around Princeton, I encourage you to check out .bE, an alternative worship gathering on Tuesday, March 18th at Princeton Theological Seminary. It will be on campus in the Auditorium in the Mackay Campus Center (map here) and it will start at 8pm. I hope to see you there.

Cohort - March 4 - Discussing Phyllis Tickle's idea of "The Great Emergence"

The Princeton Emergent Cohort will be meeting Tuesday night, March 4th at 8pm at the Princeton T.G.I. Friday's. It will be led by Charlie Pardue, co-leader of the Princeton Emergent Cohort. This is the description he sent me:

Phyllis Tickle recently gave a message at this year's Youth Specialties convention which will soon be a book by the name of The Great Emergence. In her message she drew a diagram as a way of illustrating what's happening in Christianity that we're calling the emerging church (see link). Her diagram illustrates the ways in which Christianity has been split into different streams that tend to "specialize" in a particular way of being Christian. The "Great Emergence" or the emerging church is in many ways the attempt at (re)joining those streams. In emerging Christianity it is not uncommon for Evangelicals to embrace high-church liturgy or on the other hand for social-justice minded mainliners to embrace a radically personal relationship with Christ. We'll spend some time talking about our own experience in crossing these borders and where all this might be taking us in the future.

It should be a really great conversation, and in order to get your mind thinking about the issues that Tickle addresses, take a look at these two very short articles:

• First is a blog post written by Charlie after hearing Tickle give the talk / link
  
• Second is an article written by Tickle entitled, "The Emerging Twenty-First-Century Christianity." / download
  

We hope to see you all there!

John Franke at the Princeton Emergent Cohort

As mentioned in the last post, our next guest for the cohort is going to be John Franke, professor of theology at Biblical Seminary in Philadelphia. He's going to be hanging out with us, and we'll probably be talking about the plurality of the truth in scripture and the voice of the other. John's spoken at the past few Emergent Conventions and was the keynoter for the first Presbymergent Conference at Pittsburgh Seminary, last fall. He's a wonderful thinker and a good friend of Emergent.

John has sent us a short article he wrote for a "Reforming Ministry" gathering he participated in at Columbia Seminary last December. It's on the plurality of truth in scripture and the voice of the other. If you have a chance, please give it a read to prepare for our discussion at the cohort. You can download it here.

Again, this cohort will be meeting at the T.G.I. Friday's at Princeton Market Fair Mall. It will be Thursday, February 7th at 7pm.

Jim Wallis & Brian McLaren at Princeton Seminary

As part of Princeton Theological Seminary's Spring Book Club Series, both Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren will be at Princeton Seminary during April of 2008. Jim Wallis will be speaking about his book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America on April 10th from 6.30–8.30pm (register here) nd Brian McLaren will be speaking about his book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis and a Revolution of Hope on April 15th from 6.30–8.30pm (register here).

These events are free and you can register for them here. I'm guessing these will fill up soon, so I would recommend registering early. The Princeton Emergent Cohort will be meeting after Brian McLaren's talk, on April 15th. Brian will most likely have to head home after the Book Club, but if he decides to stay in the area, he said that he may be able to come and join us for the cohort.

Princeton Emergent Cohort in 2008

We had a great discussion about Preaching in the Emerging church - thanks for those who showed up for the dialogoue.

I just wanted to share with you our schedule for the spring of 2008.

• February 7 @ 7pm: John Franke will be with us, probably discussing some along the lines of plurality within the scripture
• March 4 @ 8pm: Discussion topic TBA
• March 18 @ 8pm: .bE Alternative Worship Gathering at Princeton Theological Seminary (photos from past alt.worship events here)
• April: Brian McLaren and Tony Jones will be in Princeton toward the end of April, dates will be announced when available

Put these dates on your calendar, and I hope to see you all at some or all of these events!

December 11th Cohort: Preaching in the Emergent Church

The Princeton Emergent Cohort will be meeting Tuesday, December 11th at 8pm. We'll be meeting at the Princeton T.G.I. Friday's in Market Fair Mall again. If you need directions, go here.

Last month we met with AKMA and discussed biblical interpretation in the church, and in the end, we touched on the significance of interpretation for preaching in the church.

I thought we should continue discussing preaching in the Emergent church for our December cohort. Solomon's Porch pastor, Doug Pagitt, wrote a book entitled Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith. In Preaching Re-Imagined, Doug argues that we in the church (and I'd add in seminaries like Princeton) have let "preaching" actually turn into something he calls speaching:

"The speacher decides the content ahead of time, usually in a removed setting, and then offers it in such a way that the speacher is in control of the content, speed and conclusion of the presentation." (22)

Doug would prefer that instead, we move toward what he calls progressional dialogue...

"...where the content of the presentation is established in the context of a healthy relationship between the presenter and the listeners, and substantive changes in the content are then created as a result of this relationship." (23)

In the second section of the book, he goes on to give a more detailed examination of his understanding of speaching, and then shares what he imagines preaching as progressional dialogue could look like. I have uploaded the second section of his book "Preaching Beyond Speaching" for you to read before our next cohort. It's in PDF form and it looks like a lot, but it really doesn't take too long. As our discussion will be based off of the selection, I'd encourage you to to at least read a few pages of it. I think you'll really like it.

Download the selection here.

Looking forward to seeing you there - please RSVP by leaving a comment here so I know how many seats to reserve. Thanks! See you all then!

Nov 13th Cohort Guest: A.K.M. Adam

The next Princeton Emergent Cohort will be at 8pm on November 13th. We'll be meeting at the Princeton T.G.I. Friday's in Market Fair Mall again. If you need directions, go here.

We are lucky to have a special guest with us, the Rev. A.K.M. Adam (usually known as AKMA). AKMA is a professor of New Testament at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (an Episcopal seminary), and is currently a Member-in-Residence at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton for the year. AKMA blogs regularly at AKMA's Random Thoughts and writes extensively on postmodern biblical interpretation.

I was first introduced to AKMA through his little pink book, What is Postmodern Biblical Criticism?, and Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible. You'll really enjoy hearing from him. The morning after he is with us at the cohort, he and his wife will be flying out to San Diego for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and he'll be giving a paper entitled, "Rene Magritte, Krazy Kat, and the Truth of Interpretation." I met with him last week at lunch and heard a brief synopsis of the paper, and was very interested. He'll be giving us a shortened version of his paper and his thoughts on postmodern interpretation and we'll be discussing what this means for the church, and how we can practice this different form of biblical interpretation.

In preparation for the cohort, please try and read through AKMA's article in Reading Scripture with the Church - "Poaching on Zion: Biblical Theology as Signifying Practice." Download it here.

If you know for sure you'll come, please RSVP by leaving a comment here on the blog or on our Facebook group so I know how big of a space to reserve. Peace!