Emergent Worship, No Worms!

A friend of mine tells me good stories. Parables, really. And, to borrow his line, I like parables right up to the point I realize the are talking about me.

So one of his stories goes like this:


A little boy decides to set up an apple stand and sell apples. (Yeah, I know, apples. With a ton of lemonade stands already in existence, I guess he thought it was an untapped market.)


So the little boy, with the help of his parents, built a stand, acquired apples, and put up a big sign which read,

"Applz"

He soon discovered it was a great idea and business really took off. People came from miles around for his apples.

A neighbor kid thought to himself, "Who is he? I can do that and do it better!"

But how could he do it better? How could he get folks to come to his start-up apple stand?

The idea came to him in a blink of an eye.

The next day he set up his own apple stand, just down the street a bit from the other stand. He had his stand. He had his apples. And he had his clearly marked sign which read,

"Applz, No Wormz!"

Do we think of or present emergent worship as worship without worms?

Sometimes when we try and define what we are, we run the risk of being negative to what we are attempting to distinguish ourselves from.

Any thoughts?