One of the reasons I like Christians with a leaning towards the Emerging/Emergent view is that they actually look at what I do as missions. In a traditional Christian view, there are Christians who don't consider service/humanitarian work to be mission unless it is evangelical or proselytic. So if you did medical missions, construction missions, educational missions, etc. it wasn't considered missions work. For some reason it didn't make sense to me. This was especially so because I was moved and prompted to do such work by the very relationship with Christ and God that I had. It was because of Him, not in spite of him, that I had a love of people.
I remember when I was raising money to take student abroad to do service work, my church didn't support me at all; they gave me no money. I was completely shocked that both the next church for whom I was working (playing piano) called West University Baptist Church/Crosspoints and an emergent-style church called Eclessia (both in Houston, TX) gave me money WITHOUT initiation on my part. I didn't ask. I loved this. And people naturally understood the heart and the call and the cry and the burden. They connected. I didn't have to explain. It is part of the redemptive work my friend was talking about when he said I could do wonders as a science advisor for the government.
I guess he's right.
I recently watched a presentation (emergent) of the gospel on a blog-friend's site. It's here if you would like to take a look at it. It's very interesting. It's a two-part video. Each one is a few minutes.
http://groansfromwithin.blogspot.com/2008/11/true-story-evangelistic-presentation.html
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