Spirit God changing the faces of faith

The conference of Christianity 21 has ended and now I return to my community with an experience that others will not fully understand. Twenty-one speakers, each speaking for 21 minutes on topics ranging from the meaning of confession to embracing pluralism, from religious struggles with evangelical passion to an openness to diversity, from easy answers to complex arguments of the history and future of "church", organized religion or how God's Spirit continues to do a new thing in the midst of the church's history that range from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from the ancient to the new, and everything in between.

What can be said? I am loyal to "denominationalism" especially the United Church of Christ. I have not had negative experiences with churches and denominations that many of the speakers identified as their reasons for finding their way into this Holy Spirit experiment we now call "emergence". Could it be that I am fortunate? Privileged? Naive or lucky? Or could it be that the Christians that shaped my faith allowed me to discover my own path? Perhaps it is all of these things and a healthy dose of God's spirit working in my life and the life of those who touched me in ways that shaped my loyalty, my faith, and my unyielding identity as a child of God.

Although some may have had a more traumatic faith journey than I, and although some may be more skeptical and more cynical of religion and/or organized Christian faith than I am. I will leave this weekend with an affirmation and a deeper understanding that God will achieve God's end no matter what and that is the eternal quest of God -- to use whatever human structures, human beings, or creative energy God can use to continue to close the mythological schism between God and God's beloved creation. As Dorthy Bulter Bass said, "The God who is, is the God who exists beyond all time and the God of history will be the God of our present and our future" and in the "in-between" time, Spirit God will never cease to change the face of faith. Maybe this is the hope for tomorrow's generation of believers. And so the cycle of faith continues, God does not rest and today's experience will become tomorrow's history and so for now, I'll rest in this peace, but tomorrow I'll babble on.