Emergent Holiness

Watercooler Wednesdays

I have to admit… it’s already 2:30pm CST on Watercooler Wednesday, May 21st and I hadn’t even read Randy’s post for today yet, but interestingly, we had a conversation about this very thing at lunch!

Besides wine, we also discussed the use of profanity (or what most would consider profanity to be).

I believe my church is against wine.  We have grape juice during communion and no one really talks about drinking (wine or otherwise).  It’s a fairly traditional church, with a bit of charismatic/holiness history.  I personally don’t see anything wrong with wine, but do try to be sensitive to those around me… leadership, those I serve, etc.  It seems to be a good rule of thumb to err on the side of caution. A good friend of mine once said “too much of a good thing is not a good thing”.  I agree with her.

Josh Mayo and I were discussing the emergent church and holiness at lunch. We talked about how the lines are continuing to blur between “the world” and “the church”.  We talked about a well known pastor I saw last night on the web who said what some might consider a cuss word.  He quickly apologized and even mentioned editing it out.  It didn’t offend me, and I laughed to my wife and said “Cool… see, he’s HUMAN.”

Some people would have been deeply offended to have heard that word come from this influential pastor’s mouth.  Others wouldn’t have even noticed he said anything wrong at all.  Many of our differences boil down to preference, beliefs and morals.  Just as racism and fear are learned, we get some of our beliefs about things in incorrect ways and places.  My grandmother never wore pants… never cut her hair… never wore jewelry (unless you call her watch jewelry).  I grew up Pentecostal Holiness and there was so much legalism.  To this day, I point out “holiness” people to Jill.  She laughs at me because she knows there will be some story or anecdote to follow about my life experiences and my take on legalism.

But at lunch, we talked about where holiness is in the emergent church.  Is there a place for it?  Is it something not being considered enough?  What exactly will be our way of letting others know we are Christians?

This is a very interesting topic and much more could be said about wine and so much else regarding what churches believe and why they believe it.  I’ve often heard the reasoning that wine (even during communion) would not be good for, say, those who struggled with alcoholism.  I can see the point.  There are lots of things that are not inherently wrong, but when viewed through so many different lenses of people in church, it gets tricky.

Thank you Randy for such a great topic of discussion.  I think I said a whole lot without saying anything, but I believe this is the kind of discussion we all need to be having with each other… hammering out what we believe and why we believe it.  I love the story about the mom who was baking a ham for Christmas… Her daughter asked, “Mom, why do you cut the end off the ham before you bake it.”  The mom replied, “It’s what your grandmother, my mom, always did.” She then said “let’s call grandma and ask her.”  So they called grandma to ask why she cut the end off the ham and grandma said, “it’s what my mother always did.”  They then called great-grandma to ask her why she always cut the end off of the ham and her answer was funny and enlightening.  She said, “Because my pan was too small and the whole ham wouldn’t fit.”  I think we do a lot of things that have just “always been done that way” without ever questioning or discovering the reasons behind it all.

Happy Watercooler Wednesday everyone!