Here it is -- the first official post for the young adults website. My thoughts on the matter: blogs are a huge trend (sidebar: it’s rather funny that the young adults user name is always ‘trendless’). But, perhaps this is one of the few trends that holds promise. My hope is that this space will both inform and connect our Convergence community, it will provide information on what’s happening @ Convergence, some of my thoughts, and hopefully some of your thoughts. There are two ways to join this cyber-conversation: leave a comment, or email me some of your writing and I’ll post it. We can consider this a sort of ongoing, community-building Spontaneous worship evening.

An empty space is both scary and exciting. Like this blog, and so many other things in life, it holds great potential. Before I start writing, I sometimes feel overwhelmed as I stare at the blank page. In my experience, the only way to overcome this feeling is to jump in with both feet. That being said, here goes…

Freedom. Interesting concept. Kind of like the blank space. We fight for our freedom, but sometimes when faced with freedom, it’s terrifying. I’m reading a book right now called ‘A New Kind of Christian’ by Brian McLaren, discussing what the church might look like in a postmodern culture.

This book proposes that human beings are currently experiencing a transformation of worldview, often referred to as ‘post-modern’ –- a term that generates fear in many Christians. Contrary to most pop-Christian sources, McLaren’s simple definition of post-modern is that we’ve experienced modernity, it has changed us, and now we’re moving beyond it. The trouble with transformation is that it hurts. It’s uncomfortable. It’s messy.

Often during transition, the boundaries and guidelines that were once effective no longer make sense. Before a new way of thinking or understanding can be established, there is a period of vulnerability that comes with uncertainty. A place of freedom. Sometimes it’s the scariest things that hold the most potential in life.

We’re going to be continuing this discussion over the next couple of months as Convergence becomes slightly more interactive and topically focused. Right now, the only conclusion I can bring to these thoughts is one of my favorite quotations.

“I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language, don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…”
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

I am a firm believer that we were made to ask the questions, live the questions. So, as we approach God together, united in community, feeling our way through the dark, let’s not forget to ask the tough questions. More than that, let’s live them.

J.