A couple of days ago I did a search on "interests" of bloggers, to see who was interested in missiology, and I found that a lot of those who listed "missiology" as an interest also listed "emerging church".
I wondered whether this was some new missiological buzz word, as "contextual" was in the 1970s, and "holistic" was in the 1990s, but thought no more of it until I started to see it all over the place.
I then thought that perhaps it was not just a buzz word, but some kind of specific movement, like "radical orthodoxy" or "the Toronto blessing", "the gospel and our culture" with its own gurus and schools of thought. A new theological bandwagon, in other words.
So I did a search on "emerging church" and found this blog.
A Blog for the Emerging Church
Reading the first couple of entries left me not much the wiser, so I'm still left wondering why so many people are referring to the "emerging church".
6 comments:
Thanks for visiting my blog and commenting on my post dealing with the Emerging Church. While it was not an exhaustive treatment of the subject (I do not feel I have enough knowledge myself of the subject) the links in the article will lead to more information. I also recommend the book by D.A. Carson, "Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church".
The Emergent Church movement is an ecclesial reform movement within white USEvangelicalism, which itself reflects a widespread desire among many to turn away from the cultural captivity of so much of white USEvangelicalism.
You might consider Doug Pagitt's blog or look up Brian McClaren, who is one of the main writers of the movement, or check up on the thoughts of the late Stanley Grenz. You also might find interesting the blog, generousorthodoxy.
cheers,
dlw
Thanks very much for the comments and suggestions for links, which I'll look at.
You might like to consider joining the Christianity and society discussion forum, which deals with this and similar topics. It would be good to have some people there who know what it is about, and can enlighten others there.
I saw this question a while back but only just came across a good explanation. It's by no means a US-only phenomenon; the emerging church is pretty big in the UK too. See http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2005/01/what_is_emergen.html
I sort of had difficulty in clicking on that, but I'll try to find it.
In the meantime Philip Thomas has posted something in the Christianity and society forum, so I'll see what he has to say.
The way I see the young people (20 somethings) in the Church in America is this. There are two main divisions. There are those who are still following the InterVarsity Christianity of the 80s, but attempting to make it more relevant to today's world. That's the Emergent crowd. And then there is another group which is rebelling against that freeform idea and moving back towards the more doctrinal, scripted, liturgical churches, hence the popularity of the Orthodox Church and the conservative Presbyterian Church in America. My gut feeeling is that the branch moving towards more traditional forms of Christianity is less vocal, but more numerous, though that's probably because that's the crowd I'm part of. Still, the popularity of Tim Keller's Redeemer Presbyterian, and the popularity of John Piper, who is a mostly Calvinist Baptist seems to indicate the strength of the more conservative crowd.
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