These two individuals just have the amazing ability to construct beautiful paragraph art pieces with words. In short, they take better notes than me! Here goes some excerpts …
From Messy Christian’s Emergent Malaysia’s first meet (click the link for some cool pictures from her point of view)
Wah, sound so grand but actually it’s just a couple of folks getting together to tell their stories. It was a ‘safe’ place to confide, hence therapy – something I didn’t think the meeting could be.
Meeting people who knew who I am is a little weird … apparently I have “fans” who read my blog in Malaysia and again, it’s really weird. I just write what I feel … I’m honoured you guys are reading. Terima kasih! 😛 But anyways, each of us shared our story. I think mine was really disjointed because halfway I forgot what the heck I was talking about!
But hearing the stories, I was amazed at how I could relate to so many things that they said. We laughed at our experiences, and how refreshing that was! The fact that we’re not alone in our thoughts was wonderful. Apparently I share something in common with two of the women who attended – we’ve all been labeled backslidden and rebellious by our fellow Christians. One of them said something that really hit me: “We expect Christians to act better, but somehow they are even more cruel to each other for some reason.” (paraphrase)
The fact that we could do something with our way of looking at Christianity and our faith and affect some kind of change was exciting. (The ability to create change is a big part of who I am.)
From Alwyn Lau’s Story Loci
It was a lively session, facilitated by Sivin (who, if I’m not mistaken, sought to ‘deconstruct’ the Asian inclination towards silence! *grin*!). Met up with my Hedonese pal whom I haven’t seen since, well, some time, and who introduced me to the phrase, ‘evangelical Muslims’ (how about ’emergent Muslims’, some of whom we may be seeing at the UMNO General Assembly this past few days?). Also present were Messy Christian (who boldly kicked off the conversation by sharing how relieved she was that her questions didn’t prove her ‘weirdness’ – in some ecclesial eyes, at least – but have in fact been pondered on seriously by many emergent authors, e.g. Kimball, McLaren), Yew Khuen and his fiancee (“I’m here because of her,” said YK who also added with a grin that there’s something profoundly true about the statement), pastor and church-planter Alpha and his wife (from whom some of the best lines of the day were spoken, e.g. “Emergent represents church history in the making”, “We ought to care for the 2 and 3 as much as we care for the 2 or 3 thousand”). Delightfully, there was one theme constantly, err, ’emerging’ which kept the stories united, giving everybody common ground, that of how drums were equated with ‘revival’ in some churches! (And do I hear somebody thinking of African tribal music?!)
