A New Kind of Christian - Brian McLaren

Part 1 -


Part 2 -


Part 3

Introduction to the Emerging Church

Religion and Ethics Newsweekly - the Emergent Church


Introduction to the Emerging Church - Part 1


Introduction to the Emerging Church - Part 2



Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the strengths and weaknesses of the Emerging Church



How is the Emerging Church viewed in the Anglican Communion




Church of the Apostles - Seattle, WA




Church of the Apostles - Seattle, WA - Brigit House

Phyllis Tickle - The Great Emergence

The Great Emergence - an Introduction

The Great Emergence



The Gathering Center



20th Century Impact

Tickle and Rollins

Introduction to the Great Emergence

Our thanks and praise... an opening post.

Hi, I'm Sean, and I am a priest. (Did that just sound like the opening lines of an AA meeting?) ;) I am a priest in the Episcopal Church, and I am looking at blogging for the first time.

For the most part, I can't believe I have gone and signed up to have a blog. Don't get me wrong... I do find myself appreciative of the blogosphere. I read a handful of blogs everyday. In fact I read daily the person who is considered to be the first blogger. And yet, there's a part of me that is more than a little leery of all of this.

I think particularly of the flame wars found on many blog sites these days. And it's not just the political blogosphere. Consider the church blogosphere. There are more than a few blogs dedicated to the current conflict in the Episcopal Church. Christian people are not being good to each other perhaps because of the anonymity of blogs. (Do people reason that because they may post anonymously, that what they say doesn't matter?)

There is good news. I believe there is emerging, a new paradigm for doing and being church. As Brian McLaren so delicately put it, a "transcend and include spirit that is above liberal and conservative." There is something here that is reminiscent of the traditional Anglican ethos that I love: the Via Media - or the middle way. However this is so much more than simply a middle way, because it seeks to transcend our differences. Perhaps, more than just being a middle between two polls, it is a fourth place to abide on the spectrum, somewhere above the rhetoric and the dischord. Perhaps it is a new "via transcendere" or transcendent way.

My hope with this blog is to live in this "via transcendere". Because of who I am and what I do, I should expect that I will discuss the wranglings of our Anglican Communion from time to time. My hope is that we can live without the wrangle and re-engage the mystery. So on this Fat Tuesday, this priest gives a new Lenten discipline a go.

For a new way of being faithful Christians following our Lord into the desert these next forty days, it is right to give our thanks and praise.