Over the past few years, I’ve found myself more and more involved with the Emergent conversation, and I currently serve on the Emergent Village Coordinating Group. If you want to know more about what Emergent is all about, check out the Emergent Village website. However, I am also pursuing ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA), so it is quite interesting to think about how I might be able to interact with both Emergent and PC(USA) folk.

During January 2007, at the Mainline Emergent/s Continuing Education event at Columbia Theological Seminary, I started a website called presbymergent.org. The name came from my chapter in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, entitled “Presbymergent: The Story of One Mainliner’s Quest to be a Loyal Radical” (you can download the chapter here). The website is less than a year old, and we currently have over 200 Contributors and 139 posts with over 700 comments. The site is creating conversations amongst those who are affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and involved in the Emergent conversation. We also have a very active presbymergent Facebook group with over 230 members. We are currently working on a presbymergent podcast, and will be having a booth and possibly an event at next year’s General Assembly in San Jose.

Over the past year, presbymergent folks have been active in showing up for a variety of PC(USA) and Emergent events, and beginning to network and form relationships amidst those Presbyterians who are interested in the conversation. In October of 2007, we hosted our first official conference at Pittsburgh Theological Seminar (photos can be found here). Presbymergent is growing, and I am honored to be a part of such a community.