About Indianapolis Emergent Cohort

About Us

The Indianapolis Emergent Cohort Meetup group provides a forum to discuss how to be a Christian in a postmodern world. We invite conversation from anyone who is interested in doing church in new/ancient/different/rediscovered ways that are meaningful and life-changing for folks who may not buy into the modern American church status quo.

While part of our purpose is discuss issues that confront the emerging church, that is not all we are. Our bigger purpose is to provide a rich forum where anyone can explore or deepen their faith outside a conventional church setting by getting together with others who are "independent Christian thinkers".

Our hope for this group is that we can support those who are trying to practice being "a new kind of Christian" in their current churches, in new churches that they're starting, and in ways that might be independent of the established church. Since folks with different/new (to us, at least) ways of thinking about church sometimes have a hard time finding folks who share their thinking, this group is a great place to connect with others who have ideas of what the emerging/postmodern church might look like.

In addition, if you are involved in some kind of emerging church activities, we would love to hear about it. Especially since most of us haven't had the chance to see it in practice. We highly encourage you to post your experiences/resources to our message boards.

In short--this is a place to share ideas about what the church and Christianity can be.

The members of our group are pretty sincere about their walks with God. We've got a good mix of folks from mainline denominations, non-denom churches, home churches, some "seekers", and even a few "leavers" (folks who have left the institutional church but haven't given up on Christianity, aka "post-congregational Christians"). And of course, we have a few characters who defy all categorizations.

We are women and men, teens and elders, pastors and heathens, shy and bold, talkers and listeners, artists, musicians, writers, moms and dads, shift workers, computer geeks, activists, flawed and fragile, sensitive and sincere, helping each other along the way.

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When We Meet

For 2006, our regular meetups will occur on International Indie Allies meetup day, which is the second Tuesday of each month.

In addition to our regular meetups, we have Movie Nights where we discuss spiritual themes in recently-released movies. If you are interested in initiating another event, such as a book club or additional discussion/social meetups, just let the organizers know and they'll help you get it set up.

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Indianapolis-Area Emerging Church Resources

• Indianapolis-area emerging-type churches
  
• Our members' blogs and websites
  
• Books we're reading
  
• Emerging church websites
  

If you're a member of the Cohort, please visit these pages and add your recommended links!

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About the Indianapolis Emergent Cohort

The Indianapolis Emergent Cohort began as an Indie Allies Meetup (subtitled "Independent Christian Thinkers"). Indie Allies meetups were started by Spencer Burke of TheOoze.com as a way to bring people together around the topics of postmodernity and the Christian faith. We're wrestling with questions like "What is the Gospel?" and "What does it mean to be the Church in emerging culture?"

Recently, we have teamed up with the folks at Emergent Village to become an Emergent cohort, to help facilitate the emergent conversation in central Indiana and to provide resources to local participants in the conversation.