I like to think of the Great Emergence as reported in the book by Phyllis Tickle as  “Post-Religion”.

•  It moves beyond what we call currently call religion into the next phase of focusing on the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

• It moves beyond building cathedrals to building relationships and love between all of God’s people not just those in our particular version of Christian community.

• It moves beyond needing to pay someone to lead our worship services and tell us what to believe to our personal study of God’s word untarnished by religious baggage.

• It moves beyond strictly enforced beliefs to requiring each of us to find God in his/her own person life.

• It moves beyond hunkering down in our churches being afraid of the “big bad world” to getting out into our communities and showing God’s love in our lives.

• It moves beyond our engrained bigotry to opening our minds to each other and that includes all of God’s children.

• It moves beyond spending most of our giving on our Sunday creature comforts to spending it on helping our brothers in need.

• It moves beyond being stubbornly  focused on one particular form of worship to being open to praising God in a variety of different way but particularly by our actions and not our words or even beliefs.

Quite frankly I am holding on to the dream that the emergent church will help me and millions of others like me to one day return to a formalized God praising establishment.  I have high hopes that someday we will return to the teachings of Jesus and away from the partisan beliefs invented by man.