My Emerging Church credentials

Let me explain.

I was surprised and pleased to find that the Cartoon Blog is listed in a list of blogs being researched as part of a dissertation on the Emerging Church.

In case any readers are wondering what ‘the Emerging Church’ is my definition is: “People who are going about being ‘the church’ in a bit of a different way to the way that most people are going about it”. All straightforward enough, I’m sure you’ll agree. In the UK at least the Emerging Church mainly came from the ranks of those who were doing ‘alternative worship’ (ie worship, but a bit alternative) services. They then decided that, good as alternative worship was (and is), there was more to life than sitting in a darkened room listening (but not dancing) to dance music and so they joined forces with various people in the USA and also Australia who were either doing some similar things in darkened rooms or who had written some books on not-unrelated subjects, and together they became the Emerging Church. Again, nothing too complicated there.

Now, I have had some involvement with such goings-on in the past. Imagine my horror then, when I read on the same dissertation research weblog that my Emerging Church credentials were being doubted. By my friend Mark Berry, no less, who comments:

…some of the Blogs are most definitley not influential EC Blogs (Cartoon Blog for example is a wonderful Blog but not a leading voice in the EC in the way you seem to mean… perhaps because Dave posts occasionally on EC he gets a Tag but his links come from his cartooning/humour – Worship matters… seems to bare no resemblance to the EC at all as far as I can see)

Not a leading voice in the Emerging Church??? No resemblance?? Good heavens. I am flabbergasted.

I need somehow to establish my Emerging Church credentials before I get disqualified from this dissertation, with all the shame that that entails.

OK, Mark, I raise you one defunct slide projector previously used to project deeply meaningful words onto sown-together sheets, and a box containing upwards of 50 half-used tealights. Do better if you can.

You can add this cartoon to your blog, subject to one or two very basic conditions. To do so, either save the cartoon and upload it to your own webspace, or simply copy and past the code below:

<img src="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cb/emerging-church-1.gif" alt="cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com" />
<p>Cartoon by <a href="http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/">Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href="http://www.weblogcartoons.com/">We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>