Twin Cities Emergent Cohort

Join us on Thursday, March 13 at noon for this month’s gathering of the Twin Cities Emergent Cohort. We’ll be joined by special guest Mark Scandrette, author of Soul Graffiti, Director of ReImagine! and founder of Seven (an intentional community in San Francisco).

Mark will share his community’s “experiments in truth”–their attempts to live into the way of Jesus.

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Join us at noon on February 14th (at Solomon’s Porch) for a special Lenten season discussion.

Lent is a traditional time of preparation for the commemoration of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. It is a time of prayer, self-sacrifice, and self-denial. Lent is a time of solemnity and fasting. In the spirit of the Lenten season, we want to explore this question: In our affluent society, what sorts of fasting, self-sacrifice, and self-denial can help us to be a faithful witness to the life, death, resurrection, and continued presence of Jesus Christ?

Also, several people expressed a willingness to help coordinate our cohort. After the regular meeting, there will be a discussion for those that expressed interest in helping take over the coordination of the cohort from Mark.

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Thursday (January 10th) at noon, we’ll gather at Solomon’s Porch. After some introductions, we’ll hear a few words from Tony Jones, National Coordinator for Emergent. Tony will share a brief history of Emergent and where things are headed, followed by some Q and A.

With our remaining time, we’ll discuss: What are the biggest issues facing the emerging church? This conversation will set a trajectory for upcoming conversations.

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Yesterday, I had a long conversation with Tony Jones about the future of the cohort. We agreed that the Twin Cities is a unique place in all of Emergentdom. We have so many emerging churches—and such a cultural open-ness to emerging approaches to things. Right now, the way we are doing our cohort works for cities with a small emerging presence. In those places, it serves as a sort of support group. But our area doesn’t have as profound of a need for a support group. We are thriving here. So, we need to make a shift.

We’ve had a solid run at the Acadia. In many ways, it has been the ideal location. But October’s cohort meeting will be our last there. Instead, after a two month break for the holidays, we’ll relaunch the cohort at Solomon’s Porch. When we relaunch, we’ll be looking for someone new to take the helm of the monthly cohort meeting. Let me know if you’re interested.

My role as coordinator will change a bit. Starting in the new year, we’ll attempt to start a monthly discussion group at three of the local seminaries. This will provide an opportunity with up-and-coming leaders in the church to engage in emerging church approaches. This way, we can tap into the amazing emerging church leadership in the Twin Cities as we invite some of you to come and share thoughts and ideas with seminary students.

In addition to this, we’re considering having a quarterly lecture or guest speaker (probably speaking at Solomon’s Porch) address emerging church issues. This quarterly event will serve as our on-ramp.

So, in summary, we’ll continue the existing cohort under new guidance, go on the offensive with new seminary-focused discussion groups, and create a new on-ramp through quarterly events. It is a pretty big undertaking, but I’m hoping to find some people to coordinate this stuff with me. Any of you interested? I need to find a new cohort coordinator, a student or staff at the seminaries to coordinate the discussion groups, and would also like to know if any of you are interested in presenting to some of these student groups in the future.

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We have a cohort meeting this week (Thursday). Sorry for the late notice. Its been an intense last few weeks and I thought NEXT week was the 3rd Thursday of the month. My bad.

Nevertheless, things shall continue as scheduled. I’m working to get someone to share for the ministry spotlight (that first 20 minutes of the meeting where someone shares about their ministry context).

The topic for this week will be: Emerging Leadership Part 1: How to lead in an age of postmodern, post-Christian, post-denominationalism. In our changing context, how do we lead in the local church (and beyond)? How do organizations need to change? How do we form and lead new organizations? What wisdom do we keep from the past?

We will continue our conversation on Emerging Leadership next month.

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The summer is over. That means that the cohort is getting back into its regular rhythm.

Our topic for discussion this month?s meeting is ?truth and revelation.? We have the opportunity to discuss an unpublished manuscript by John Franke. The manuscript is entitled: Manifold Witness: On the Plurality of Truth. It will be published shortly through the Church and Postmodernism series of Baker Books.

The book explores revelation and truth in a postmodern world. This is the area where most of the controversy is happening. How one understands ?truth? and ?revelation? clearly has implications for how one understands Scripture, the Gospel, the nature of Salvation.

Here?s the thing: the conversation will be ok if you don?t read the manuscript?but the conversation will be great if you take the next couple of weeks to at least skim the manuscript.  If you want a copy of the manuscript, contact us.   

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This month, the Twin Cities Emergent Cohort comes one week early. At noon, on August 9th at the Acadia Cafe, we’ll be having a conversation with Mark Scandrette. Mark, an Emergent Fellow, is an innovative spiritual leader in San Francisco. Mark will share his story, and invite us into a conversation about some of the ideas of his book, Soul Graffiti.

Soul Graffiti is a poetic, prophetic call to follow the radical Way of Jesus. In the book, Mark rips off the scab of encrusted, safe, sentimental American Christianity and invites the reader into the provocative, fresh, improvisational riff of discipleship with Christ. The book is a call to imagine the Way of Christ for the Post-Christian West.

Also, for those interested, that evening Mark Van Steenwyk (our cohort-inator) will be hosting a night of poetry, friendship, food, and drink. Mark lives at 3312 31st Ave S in Minneapolis. The event starts at 7pm. Mark Scandrette will provide the poetry. If you’d like to join us, bring some sort of appetizer or a beverage and please RSVP to Mark [at] Missio-Dei.com. 

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We do indeed have a cohort meeting on July 19th.  We haven’t met for a while–partly because of our unsuccessful attempts to throw a “Parade of Churches” and partly because of the slowness of summer.

I know July is a time for vacations and travel, so I don?t expect a huge crowd, but I would like there to be a decent sized group present, since we are going to do some ?visioning? for the future of the cohort.  We should discuss together what our hopes and ambitions are for the coming year.

Even if you’re a first timer, please come.  We want to know what the emerging community needs in a cohort–and we also want to be aware of different things we can do together.  I think it may be helpful to remind you that our cohort isn’t just a monthly occurrence, but a network of people.  We want to not only meet monthly, but strengthen our network.  We can do this by things like working together on conferences, letting one another know about interesting events in our area, etc.

So, come with thoughts, hopes, concerns, and/or dreams.  I hope that we are able to blaze a new trail together.

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Just a reminder to everyone: there is no cohort meeting this week. We had originally set aside some Thursdays leading up to the Parade of Churches for planning. Though the Parade has been postponed/cancelled, we decided to keep the cohort meeting for this month off the calendar. Instead, we had the BBQ at Tony?s last week. I?m sorry if this wasn?t communicated very clearly.

We?ll continue as regular next month. Next month?s focus will be about the future of the cohort.

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