Getting Started

Inspired by conversations between just a few people in the Scranton area, we are excited to announce the formation of an Emergent Cohort for the Northeast Pennsylvania area!

What is a Cohort? It is a local/regional learning community concerned with the state of the Church in today's world and is interested in gathering people together from various backgrounds to explore and discuss emerging forms of the Church. From the Emergent website:

• While being a place of connection and support, an Emergent learning community (cohort) is primarily a place of communal exploration, theological and professional reflection, honest connection, and strategic collaboration. These learning communities are geared toward post-critical, constructive conversation, rather than deconstructive rants about the current state of the Church.

Why Emergent? Emergent is a grassroots, national, collective effort to bring into contact people who are interested in exploring, belonging, and communicating with one another while sharing resources, all in an effort to participate in furthering God's Kingdom in our present world. From the Emergent website:

• Emergent is a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
  
  Our dream is to join in the activity of God in the world wherever we are able, so that God’s dreams for our world come true. In the process, the world can be healed and changed, and so can we.
  
  In English, the word “emergent” is normally an adjective meaning coming into view, arising from, occurring unexpectedly, requiring immediate action (hence its relation to “emergency”), characterized by evolutionary emergence, or crossing a boundary (as between water and air). All of these meanings resonate with the spirit and vision of emergent. In other languages, names for regional networks will be chosen with similarly evocative meanings.

Announcements of our first conversation will be made soon. In the meantime, subscribe to our RSS/Atom/XML feed to stay informed of updates. Contact us, leave comments, and let the discussion in the Scranton area begin!

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