Emerging Church

The emerging church or emergent church is a diverse movement within Christianity that arose in the late 20th century as a reaction to the influence of modernism in Western Christianity. The movement is usually called a "conversation" by its proponents to "emphasize its diffuse nature with contributions from many people and no explicitly defined leadership or direction." The emerging church seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct Christianity as its mainly Western members live in a postmodern culture. While practices and even core doctrine vary, most emergents can be recognized by the following values:

Authenticity : People in the postmodern culture seek real and authentic experiences in preference over scripted or superficial experiences. Emerging churches strive to be relevant to today's culture and daily life, whether it be through worship or service opportunities. The core Christian message is unchanged but emerging churches attempt, as the church has throughout the centuries, to find ways to reach people where they are to hear God's message of unconditional love.
Missional living : Christians go out into the world to serve God rather than isolate themselves within communities of like-minded individuals.
Narrative theology : Teaching focuses on narrative presentations of faith and the Bible rather than systematic theology or biblical reductionism.
Christ-likeness : While not neglecting the study of Scripture or the love of the church, Christians focus their lives on the worship and emulation of the person of Jesus Christ.

Emergent Christians are predominantly found in Western Europe, North America, and the South Pacific. Some attend local independent churches that specifically identify themselves as being "emergent", while many others contribute to the conversation from within existing mainline denominations.

Structure and commonality

While there is no co-ordinated organization behind the Emerging Church and no guarantee that the Emerging Church will mature into a coherent movement at all, the term is becoming increasingly common among leaders of Emerging Church groups and Emerging Church thinkers. Many of these leaders and thinkers have written books, articles and/or blogs on the subject using a shared terminology.

Emerging Church groups are typically observed to emphasize the following elements:

Highly creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection. This can involve everything from the use of contemporary music and films to liturgy, as well as more ancient customs, with a goal of making the church more appealing to the unchurched, and those within the church.
A minimalist and decentralized organizational structure.
A flexible approach to theology wherein individual differences in belief and morality are accepted within reason.
A holistic view of the role of the church in society. This can mean anything from greater emphasis on fellowship in the structure of the group to a higher degree of emphasis on social action, community building or Christian outreach.
A desire to reanalyze the Bible within varying contexts with the goal of revealing a multiplicity of valid perspectives rather than a single valid interpretation.
A continual re-examination of theology.
A high value placed on creating communities built out of the creativity of those who are a part of each local body.
A belief in the journey of faith, both as individual and community.

The Emerging Church movement shares with the house church movement the willingness to challenge the structure and organization that have become traditional for the Church over many centuries. Many emerging churches are in fact also house churches.

Ecclesiology / view of church structure

Reflecting its decentralized and local nature, the emerging church does not maintain a mutually agreed-on ecclesiology, or set of beliefs defining the specific role and nature of the church. Eschewing the absolutization of doctrine, the emerging church instead seeks primarily to continue the mission of Christ, while deeply respecting the different expressions that the body of Christ may bring to that mission.

Comparison to other movements

It is useful to compare the Emerging Church with other Christian movements which emphasize foundational Christianity and inner experience.

The Taizé Community in France also offers a neo-traditional experience of Christianity in which traditional symbols such as candles and crosses have intensified importance. Taizé, however, places relatively less emphasis on Scripture and a greater emphasis on meditation and the experiences derived from the monastic life. The Emerging Church, in turn, places a greater value on multimedia-based creative expression (and would consider religious orders an anachronism, if they considered them at all). An important difference is that the Emerging Church seeks to be relevant and accessible within the larger society, while the Taizé Community offers an alternative to the surrounding culture.

The Religious Society of Friends, although not born out of the conflicts of modernism, has nonetheless influenced the Emerging Church through thinkers such as Dallas Willard. The Quakers also reject church hierarchy while valuing the sacred as a personal experience. However the Quakers have developed a formal theology of the Inner Light, whereas the Emerging Church does not wish to establish novel theologies of any kind.

All three of these groups are ecumenical in their outlook, value tradition and inward trans-rational experience, and seek to revitalize the faith. The Emerging Church stands out by its close association with post-modernism and by its emphasis on accessibility, as well as its ideal of interacting with the surrounding culture rather than escaping it.

Criticism

The Emerging Church has been criticized by many within the Evangelical movement.

Here are some links to articles, essays, and audio/multimedia resources:

Absolutely Not! Exposing the postmodern errors of the emerging church by Phil Johnson, from the 2006 Shepherds' Conference at Grace Community Church
Out of Church Christians: Beyond the walls, authority and ritual of contemporary Christianity, beyond Emerging.
Will the Emerging Church Fully Emerge?
"Leslie Newbigin's The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society and the Emergent Church" an essay by Dennis McCallum.
The Emerging Church
Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by D.A. Carson
A review of "Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church" by Charles Martin at Evangelical Ministries of Sylvania

Christianity | Protestantism | Postmodernism

Emerging Church

Pioneers in the Emerging Church movement

The emerging church movement is highly decentralized so in no sense does any one person act as a spokesperson for the movement however the following people are often recognized as pioneers and important thinkers:

Mark Driscoll, lead pastor and founder of Mars Hill Church Seattle, a founder of the church planting network Acts 29, author ^*
Jonny Baker, UK alternative worship pioneer and advocate ^*
Spencer Burke, former pastor, founder of The Ooze website, "dedicated to the emerging Church culture" and which has "developed a community that captures the ethos of the emerging church movement"
Kyle Cheatham, founder and Pastor of Terranova in Georgetown, Texas]
Alan Jamieson, Author of 'Churchless Faith'.
Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Churchin Santa Cruz, CA and author of the book, The Emerging Church
Brian McLaren, founder of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C.
John O'Keefe, lead pastor at 247connectionand founder of ginkworld.net, "an emerging/postmodern site exploring what it means to be a follower of the Jesus in today's world"
Doug Pagitt, founding pastor of Solomon's Porch ^* in Minneapolis
Mark Pearson, founder of Cityside in Auckland, New Zealand.
Wes Heyden, founder of theemerge.com website, "dedicated to the emerging church in a postmodern world. Defining Christianity in our culture and how we relate to the emerging generation."
Peter Rollins, co-ordinator of Ikon (a Belfast community which is "becoming Church, becoming Christian") and author of the 2006 book How (Not) To Speak Of God.
Leonard Sweet, the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University, and prolific author.
Dallas Willard, Professor of Philosophy at USC
Jay Bakker, founder of the Revolution Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
Chris Seay, the founder of University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, and the founder and pastor at Ecclesia in Houston, Texas.
Karen Ward, the founder and pastor of Church of the Apostles in Fremont, Washington.
Troy Bronsink, the founder and pastor of Church as Art in Atlanta, GA.
Erwin McManus, founder and pastor of Mosaic in southern California and author of The Barbarian Way

Emerging Church churches

The Emerging Church is not confined to one denomination or gathering. Emerging churches can range in denominational affiliation from the Anglican/Episcopal Church to the Southern Baptist Church; still others are best described as non-affiliated intentional communities or house churches.

The following sites list just a few of the emerging church websites found around the world:

Emerging Church blogs

Since the Emerging Church is eager to benefit from new technological opportunities, they often use blogs to spread their ideas. Directories of emergent blogs include:

A sampling of emergent blogs can be found at the aggregator Emerging Church Blogs.