A View From the Yellow Chair: Not Pilgrim, But Nomad

5/20/05 Nashville, TN Emerging Church Conference

As I look back on my 16 years as a Church Educator in the Presbytery of Charlotte, I have come to recognize that God has steadily recreated me as that rare creature, an interim educator. I go where the need is within the presbytery. It is only today, however, that I have identified my journey as not of a pilgrim who moves from one place to a predetermined destination, but as a nomad who wanders within a specific area, gathering, gleaning, replanting, renewing. I’ll give some history of that in my Prologue.

For the latter half of those 16 years, my spirit has been restless. I have felt as if I spoke in some uncommon dialect and was only partially understood by those around me. And that, indeed, is how it has been. Now that I am part of the community known as The Portico, I have a new language. I am a postmodern and didn’t know it. I have been thinking, and creating and communicating as part of the Emergent Church and had no idea.

At this moment I am looking out over the Nashville skyline, remembering those whom I have met at this conference, who hunger for the Church Emergent. Who labor in traditional settings and wish that their faith communities could catch on, catch up, and quickly. And of the Presbyterian folk who will say it, (because all here have committed to being in conversation about this scary, exciting time,) that the PC(USA) as we know it will be very different about 15 years from now.

I am proud to gather and worship as part of The Portico. I am thrilled to be in a place at a time when being part of the Body of Christ in a fun, funky, holy basement in the Elizabeth neighborhood, means starting by building community. That our work is not to meet quotas, track numbers, or write programs, but to grow in our intimacy with one another, enjoy our safe place, to worship creatively in a relaxed atmosphere, and most of all, to listen with anticipation for the Holy Spirit's song of who we are becoming.

My yellow chair is not a front row seat, but The Portico is. We ride the crest of a wave.