Emerging Snail...

For some reason snails seem to like the company of our guinea pig.

A clean out of the hutch always seems to reveal submerged beneath the straw, sawdust old apples and poop, the local snail gang just hanging out. One must have got bored last night and decided to leave the party.

Quite a brave thing given that its chosen route was the northern face of our fence. It could have chosen a less demanding and less visible route of emergence. You have to hand it to it, it could have been content with the way of life that was comfortable, but no, it saw the need to emerge and emerge it did.

Look carefully and you'll be able to chart his journey of emergence. The sad thing for me has I followed its precarious route was that for all it semerging it didn't get anywhere! Just an abrupt halt when he either got bored and went back the exact way it came! Or it fell off or a bird ate it! Who knows, but you have to hand it to the snail for a good effort.

At the sake of sounding repetitive - I am drawn to the emerging church debate, its creativity, its drive, its ambiance, its space, its alternative worship (perhaps that why I tagged it with technorati - although I certainly don't deserve to be in the top 50 blogs on the em. church). But - with some notable and encouraging exceptions - I have rarely engaged or seen emerging church expressions that have emerged to any degree where they are maintaining a marked transformational presence in areas where the fragmented community needs the 'real emerging' church to stand up. While it all remains a little designer it reminds me of my emerging snail!

The emerging church may never know where it may end up - that isn't an issue, but I suspect the journey will come to an abrupt halt if it forgets where it has come from. If it forgets what it is called to be and do. If it forgets that mission is far bigger than a useful self descriptive label or a handy technorati tag to keep in with the boys!

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