welcome to the story.

Excerpted from the emergent southeast site. All conversations evolve, that�s a given. I mean, everything evolves so it stands to reason that a conversation should also evolve. But I think the question is, �what do we evolve too?� If we look at the �natural� evolution of the Christian faith do we see a model of what the evolution of a conversation is, or should be? Let me explain how I see it. Christianity started as a conversation in Bethlehem, moved to a movement in Jerusalem, developed into a philosophy in Greece, became an institution in Rome, organized as a tradition in America, and truly needs to return to the conversation and not to the movement stage. Let�s Talk: When Christianity was a conversation, Jesus was the key spokesperson for that conversation. Others, while having a voice, were not the guiding force of the faith. Others spoke, and even added to the conversation, but all eyes where on Jesus. Then, after Jesus left, the conversation stopped and the movement started. You see, while Jesus was alive, the movement could never happen � once Jesus left, then a movement could be formed. I fear that if we become a movement, we will no longer seek to see Christ as the center of what we talk about � we will turn to the voices of others to guide us. When the conversation turned to a movement, the voice of Christ was filtered thought the voices of others. We no longer look at Jesus as the core teacher, and we started to look to people [like Paul] for our faith walk. We took the words of Christ and filtered them via Paul, as opposed to taking the words of Paul and filtering them through the words of Jesus. But movements do that, they replace the founder of the conversation with others who they see as �just as important� and we are on the verge of such action, and that frightens me greatly. Because one of the next steps is to become a �philosophy� and then an �institution� and I am not at all willing to head in that direction.