friends or purpose?

An email from Emergent Village showed up in my Inbox this morning. No, it is not a retail outlet. It is a ... well, it’s hard to describe. It’s a loose confederation of Christians, across denominational lines, trying to figure out where Christianity intersects with postmodernism. (Yes, that is sufficiently pompous and vague, so: www.emergentvillage.com) Usually, I just skim these emails. And, in the event that I click and find myself at YouTube and the video is over 2:30, I don’t watch it. I use early Beatles’ songs as my yardstick: if you can’t say it in two minutes and thirty seconds, then you’re nowhere, man. Well, I watched the video below. Twice. All 4:38s of it. There are any number of wonderful quotes. “Those who know history aren’t afraid of change ...” (I think that was Diana Butler Bass) “... we are more often than not people of doubt who have moments of faith than we are people of faith who have doubts.” (Not sure who that was, but I am definitely stealing that line.) But the line that stopped me dead in my tracks: “We need to make a philosophical shift from the idea that church is a place to make friends over to an idea that church is a place to find a sense of purpose.” This must be a season of hope, because I just felt a twinge of it.