Asian American Emergents skypecast – Sunday 11/26

Our monthly episode of the Asian American Emergents skypecast is just around the corner, this coming Sunday 11/26 at 9:00pm Eastern (GMT-0500) / 6:00pm Pacific. No particular topic or special guest yet, but we’d like to keep the monthly rhythm and momentum rolling along, even through the holiday season. I’ll run the recorder just in case an insightful or provocative conversation spontaneously combusts. This will be episode # 5 for those of you keeping score at home.

By the way, a skypecast is like a conference call, but people have to dial in via Skype using the above link. And barring any technical glitches, we can have up to 100 participants join in; this is already fast becoming a global and international conversation.

[update 11/26] I chatted with Yuling Lee for most of the hour, and then Peter Ong joined in towards the end. We will probably close this skypecast and resurrect it without the emergent label to make it friendlier for the masses; and besides, we didn’t do all that much emergent conversation stuff anyways.
[update] pomomusings made a raw MP3 audio recording of a panel discussion that revisits the question, “What is Emergent?”, again, this time with Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle, and Pete Rollins, at AAR/SBL. At 23:30, the panel is asked why the emergent conversation seems to be so white. Listen in to hear how they answer that hot potato, though in the subtext, you can almost hear them wanting to mention this skypecast…

Side note: some provocative sound bites I overheard during my afternoon at AAR/SBL ::

• “There are some big differences between the academic assumptions for doing church and the entrepreneurial assumptions for doing church.” Yes, indeed, it’s the growing divergence between the seminary vs. business models, and the emergent model too. But, the emergent thing is more of a conversation and exploration and a hope, than a model or system. [ht: willzhead]
• “In Asia, there are people who are a Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Shinto, all at the same time. How can that be?” “Oh, the notion of mutual exclusivity is a Western concept. Sure you can be more than one.” Hmmmm.. ecumenical and interfaith dialogues of the west can’t hold a stick to that, eh?
• “What’s going to happen to the ethnic Asian church if all the 2nd generation Asians go start multiethnic churches?” That’s a known concern and fear of some academicians and immigrants, but I’m anticipating that less than 50% of 2nd+ generation Asian Americans would want to be multiethnic/multiracial in forming their faith communities.