Notes on Journalism… and unrelatedly, the Emerging Church
My brief experience with journalism last year taught me something. I don’t like fast-paced deadlines. I think it would be fine if an article or two was the only thing I was working on, that way I could devote my whole attention through organizing interviews and actually writing the thing. But when I do it as an added on thing, on top of my schoolwork, I always end up feeling frustrated. That happened again this week. Part of it was that I had no idea what I was writing about. All I heard was there was some sort of meeting with all these different student groups that have acronyms that I hadn’t quite figured out yet. So I went in to my first couple interviews having one idea of what the article would be, and then it ended up being something quite different.
It was an exciting topic I realized afterwards… but another frustration was that I’m supposed to pretend to be objective. I don’t think there is any such thing as being objective, and pretending to be so is useless. The words I choose to use, the lines I quote, the organization… all these things are very subjective, and would have been different if someone else wrote them. I would much rather be more open with my own role in the process of writing, not in an overbearing way, but in a natural, here’s what I think, sort of way.
Another thing, to switch topics real quick… I don’t really know what to say about the emerging church-bashing that’s going on. I’ve always been a bit skeptical, thinking that they are appealing too much to how people are now instead of expecting them to change, but that can be said of many movements. I haven’t had any real intimate aquaintance with anyone in this movement, so in that respect I don’t know how they would feel about this… but I do think the movement has gotten so broad that you can label just about anything “emerging” and you’d be fine. It also goes hand in hand with the term “postmodern” church.
Maybe, for the sake of having precise language, it would be good to change the name. but I don’t know if that is going to cause the individual churches to change at all. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
Hey there,
I’ve done a lot of talking with emergent church people, and you are so correct, it is very broad. The bashing that’s going around, in my opinion, most of it is unwarranted. Many emergent/post modern church people are still centered on the Bible, they simply want to live it out through community, attempting to do church differently, and be the church of Acts. In some cases (but I believe few) there has been an emphasis on “accepting” everyone, while of course we should accept people where they are, we should also be encouraging a change that comes with a direct relationship with God through Jesus and our nature changed by His Holy Spirit. There are many post modern/emergent church folks out there who are very founded in the Word, and love Jesus in graceful, practical AND relational way. If you are ever in Seattle for an extended amount of time, check out Mars Hill church in the Ballard neighborhood, excellent example of what I believe to be a healthy post-modern church (albeit, as I think most critical thinkers do, I have some reservations, but accept them as a living piece of God’s church body).