Sorry about the tedious delay between posts. Perhaps I will get the next one up sooner.
However, this is something I've been thinking of - we quite often talk about things being 'cutting edge' or (better still) 'bleeding edge'... and I certainly see that there's something wonderful and inspiring about things that are are the very forefront of their field. But somehow, this doesn't really seem to fit with my understanding of the things that we do at Ambient Wonder, or the wider world of the Emerging Church.
For a start, Cutting Edge suggests something refined, defined, clear and deliberate - cutting in one direction, and absolutely focussed on a single point with a single purpose. And I suppose that many Christians might say that this sums up what our faith should be. But in terms of how we function as a community it seems a little bit too... prescriptive? In my experience, movement forward in a creative community is (and should be) a little bit more all over the place than that. It's kind of, unpredictable, nuanced, experimental, and (here and there) wrong. People have ideas, other people contribute, and we end up with something that is somewhere ahead of where we were before.
So perhaps we're more 'scruffy edge' than 'cutting edge'. We are cutting something, but in our own, wartsandall, ramshackle, makeitupasyougoalong kind of way. It seems to be a little how the early Church functioned. Perhaps I just wanted to coin a new phrase. Your Thoughts?
2 comments:
I really like that phrase. Reminds me of Yaconnelli's messy spirituality.
to say something is "cutting edge" is such a 'modern' idea - it says we know where we're going and we know it'll be better than where we are. I agree that that doesn't sum up a more experimental, experiential approach to change and 'doing different'. I also think if you say something is cutting edge then it automatically tells everyone else that what they're doing is blunt... not a good message!
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