Yeah, the title caught my eye too when I saw it on Andrew Jones’ Blog this morning, and I promptly clicked through to the article he was pointing at, by Earl Creps. It’s getting some blog attention as one might imagine.
Basically he suggests Canadians just naturally “get it.” Quite significantly, he says that “Canada is over the horizon. If Europe is roughly 50 years ahead of us in terms of evolving into a post-whatever society, Canada might be more like 20-30 years.” This is of interest to me, as I’ve stated elsewhere that the emerging church in Canada is not taking shape like that in the USA, but rather is shaping up more along the lines of that in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. In this respect, the suggestion that Earl is making would fit. I hope that the church in the USA would take on a more missional focus, and one which is less enamoured with the megachurch. That said, I’ve never considered Canada the deliverer of the USA. If the Americans want to follow our example, that’s great — but I do hope we get to figure out what we’re doing first.
Here if I could insert something intelligent by way of advice, I would take it from an Aussie and pass it on. Namely, Alan Hirsch is cautioning, don’t emerge before you get missional… which is part of what I was trying to say in the previous paragraph ;^)
Yes, NZ and Canada are very similar politically, so are AUstralia and the US, however in terms of emergence/missional/post-christendom etc, NZ, AUstralia and the UK are leading the way
Dave, my contention exactly. What I’m saying is that Canada needs to follow those guys and their missional path to emergence. If the US emerging church follows a similar path I think that’s good… but it’s outside my realm, as I’m Canadian ;^)