The Emergent Voice

Last night on the West Wing, Matthew Santos, a democratic presidential candidate, was being advised to use a presidential voice in his commercials and in his debates. He needed to speak the right words with the right tone with the right timing and on and on. His advisor had studied the presidential voice and just knew that it was the voice that made the president.

When Santos was being edged out of a debate by some nasty politics, he had money to run one TV ad. He consulted with one of his campaign people asking if he knoew what the presidential voice was, the guy humlby said that the president makes the voice, not the other way around.

Boom! Santos was energized and did the TV spot live, unheard of in modern day politics. His voice, authentic and genuine, spoke without guile, from the heart, straight to the people.

That is emergence. It is not finding the voice that sounds emergent and copying it. No, the emergent voice is the most honest and genuine voice you have, spoken from the image of God in you. People are more likely to believe your words are real when you, the source of the words, are real. Postmoderns have a highly sophisticated and constantly operating B.S. detector.