In the past couple days, I seem to be stumbling across a lot of links regarding “emergent Christianity”, “emerging churches”, “emerging conversation”, etc.
From what I can tell, it’s somewhat of a worldwide movement involving Christians of all denominations and backgrounds, looking at new ways of “doing church”. It seems to reflect the belief that traditional ways of doing church are not working well in today’s culture, and that we need to find new ways to reach non-believers with the gospel.
I’m really not quite sure what to think, though… I’m suspicious there’s much more to this than I understand, having only seen a few web links and a lot of controversy.
Anyway, here’s a small sampling of links:
Emergent Village
anewkindofchristian.com
emergent-U.S. blog
Anyone have any thoughts?
john- I’m really interested to see you’ve come across emergent. Over the past year I have become very, very interested and conversant with the emerging church movement. I subscribe to a modified concept of the emerging church, called the missional church. I’ve got some great resources that talk about it. Emergent has some great concepts, and some serious deficiencies ( alot like most movemenets/denominations). I would be careful about some of their theology but I am encouraged by their commitment to an incarnational gospel. One of the 5-10 leading emergent churches in the US is in Kansas City. It’s called Jacob’s Well. We should talk sometime about the movement.
btw, watch out for brian mcclaren’s theology. he’s kind of the dew facto leader of the emergent movement and he’s very non-traditional, some would say non-orthodox, in his approach to theology. his site is anewkindofchristian.com he has great thoughts about approaching culture but, again, beware of theological info from him.
The emergent movement is definitely something that I’m interested in learning more about. Right now, I really don’t have enough knowledge about it to form an opinion one way or the other. I guess that if, at its root, it is simply a re-thinking of how we reach the lost… I’m probably all for it. I have little doubt that the methods of outreach that worked years ago aren’t as effective at reaching the lost in today’s culture. It could go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway… if we’re not thinking about how to reach the lost in today’s world, we’re missing the boat completely in regard to fulfilling the great commission. However, if this movement is about reforming accepted Christian theology… well… let’s just say I wouldn’t touch that with the proverbial ten-foot-pole.
Anyway, I’m definitely interested in hearing what you’ve learned about the movement, and about the missional church concept. We’ll have to add that to the list of things we should talk about…
The emergent church movement has been happening for quite a while.
For the most part I think it is a fairly positive movement because the conversation it generates
causes Christians to intelligently question and to think theologically about what sorts of faith
communities and mission responses are most relevant to their contemporary society.
It is, I think, both a reformist and and evangelical movement which aims to reconnect with `grassroots’
and biblical Christianity, whilst also facing the various cultural, religious and political challenges
the church faces today.
I personally see it as very similar to the Jesus People movement of the late 60’s-70’s among the hippies
etc. where many young adults and youth were seeking to reframe mission into something more relateable to
western youth culture. Similar themes such as wanting to be more `authentic'(in 60’s more `real was the
language), connected into creative and fine arts, inclusion of the poor and marginalised, being
incarnational in mission, more contemparary in things like worship, prophetic in terms of speaking out
about social injustice, counter-cultural etc are reflective of this fact. Also many of the key leaders
were converts who had prior links with the Jesus People Movement of the 60’s (eg. Brian McLaren).
One thing I dislike about the emergent movement is that for all the talk I read on websites and in books
about being `inclusive’ toward the poor (and anyone else for that matter), it is particularly noticeable
that during my checking of countless blogs over months, I found few that appeared to be from the poor or
non-theologically educated people and I suspected that they are not being reached by the movement very
well for a movement which targets them as important in mission. Astounding for a movement which counts
leaders like Jim Wallis (Sojourners) as one of its main leaders and who speaks very strongly in books
and blogs about `engaging’ the poor as equals, dignity of the poor etc. As someone who is theologically
trained, I detected whilst reading blogs, that by and large, the writers of blogs were invariably only
those who appeared to have been highly theologically educated. They also seemed to speak the popular
missiological language of contemporary theological students etc. Found it hard myself to get anything
I wrote included in the `conversation’ even though I followed the blog rules and guidelines am well
read about `emergent Christianity’, am non-fundamental, am evangelical and have 15 years background
in pastoral and mission work (with the homeless; Baptist & St Vincent De Paul Society. Am Baptist/
Churches of Christ trained theologically in Australia).
Seemed to me only the `gentry’ of mission could get their articles and blogs included in a somewhat excluding `inclusive conversation’.
So, yes, a worthwhile movement. But also comes with a few problems to do with fulfiling its own
claims to be `inclusive’ of all others who want to be part of the conversation
Hi – I’ve only read a these comments very breifly. But I have to say, we’ve all got a lot to be concerned about. Yes, we live in a dying, Western, Christian culture. The church has failed and is in its dying moments surely. Unless revial comes, things do not bode well. That much is obvious. Asia is another matter altogether.
Yes – we must ‘seek and save the lost’ – this should be more urgent than ever as we see what is happening to our cultures. But why has it become so. How come, in the days of ‘educated’ Westerners, with great brains, technology and learning, are we dumbing the gospel down? How is it that the word ‘sin’, ‘atonement’, ‘sanctification’ are ‘no-no’s’? Are we saying that our modern, sophistiated teenager is too ‘dumb’ to understand what people 200 years ago could?! It is baffling, isn’t it? These are Biblical terms. To know them is to know of Him who saves and to know about His work.
We’ll, we must be agile (able to change approach) – but we need to recognise the root cause of all our troubles today. WE need to go deeper – not treat the symptoms all the time. People are separated from God, condemned to hell, apart from the saviour. What sets them free? Music? A ‘positive’ message? Motivational speaking? It is the gospel! We need to get back to it. Yes, we need to give it the 2007 ‘suit’ – but it must be the old message and content. The failure to recognise this, the great tendency to ‘modifiy’ it has led to the very things we are all concerned about. Preach the gospel – fear no man – it is God’s word, it is God’s work to save. Preach it – and leave the results to Him. They might forsake us, but God will save the lost and we have done our part.