Defining the Emerging/Emergent-Church/Movement/Conversation
April 4, 2006 Posted by Roger Overton
Over the past year or so, especially the past few months,
I’ve been interacting with all sorts of people who consider themselves emerging
and many some also Emergent. In my recent conversations here I’ve noted that
there’s an important difference, but I haven’t, until now, taken the time to
spell it out.
Luckily,
I’m not alone in my understanding. In the recent issue of Criswell Theological
Journal on the Emerging Church, Pastor Mark Driscoll describes how Emergent
came about and offers an excellent definition: “the Emerging church is a broad
category that encompasses a wide variety of churches and Christians who are
seeking to be effective missionaries wherever they live. This includes Europeans
and Australians who are having the same conversation as their American
counterparts.” He goes on to outline the three groups that Dr. Ed Stetzer
delineated- Relevants, Reconstructionists, and Revisionists.
Driscoll’s
definition is in line with what I’ve come to understand. Though, while he
“includes Europeans and Australians who are having the same conversations,” I
think the category reaches further. “Emerging” refers to any church or
Christian who takes into consideration the cultural context in which they
minister, regardless of spatial or temporal location. In other words, a church
does not need to be North American and dealing with postmodernism in order to
be “emerging.” The early church was just as emerging as many churches are
today.
While
on one hand the “emerging” category is quite broad, “Emergent” is comparatively
quite narrow. It refers to a specific group of individuals and churches within
the contemporary emerging church that have formed an organization to promote
certain ecclesiastical changes within the North American postmodern context.
This Emergent organization (Driscoll points them out as “Revisionists”) is
primarily led by Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Doug Pagitt.
Since the emerging category includes a wide variety of
theologies and practices, I don’t think it is at all helpful to describe it as
good or bad (unless one believes we should be disengaged from culture). There
are, in fact, many good emerging churches that have not compromised the
gospel in light of postmodern criticisms- such as Kimball’s Vintage Faith
Church, Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church, and the church I currently attend,
Portico. There are also, likely, a number of emerging churches that have
compromised the gospel, but since the spectrum is so broad, whatever criticisms
are launched at them should not be based on them being categorically emerging.
Criticisms of individuals ought not be applied to the entire category.
This isn’t always the case for Emergent. While it’s true
that what McLaren believes isn’t necessarily what Jones or Pagitt believe, the
Emergent organization can be analyzed by its success or failure in promoting
the Christian faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
Many have found it easy to criticize what McLaren teaches
and generalize it to the entire emerging category. The problem is that doing so
condemns missionaries worldwide for something they have nothing to do with
(something Andrew Jones has rightly pointed out). Generalizations are generally
helpful, as long as we use them appropriately. In order to use these categories
correctly, I believe we must recast the criticisms, as well as strengths, of
the emerging church toward the definitions I’ve offered here.
Another point I believe we should draw from this is that
there’s nothing chronologically profound about being “emerging.” It’s a category
churches have ministered in throughout church history, not some sort of amazing
new phenomenon. So while critics need to get their categories straight, many
emerging Christians need to get over their tendency of thinking God is doing
something in emerging churches He’s never done before. Dr. Andrew Jackson aptly
diagnosed this problem as “emergentising.”
Related posts:
- Is the Emerging Conversation Going Nowhere?
- ETS 2006- Brett Kunkle: Essential Concerns Regarding the Emerging Church
- The Corporate Church- An Emerging Church Update
- What is the Emergent Church?
- Modern Reformation #1- The Emerging Church by D.A. Carson
- The End of the Emerging Church
Posted in Emerging / Emergent Church, Main Page, Roger's Posts
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April 4th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Thank you, Roger! Some of my comments on your earlier posts on the emerging church were exactly directed toward this end. I'm grateful that you're now making this all-important distinction.
April 4th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Rog -
Methinks those are good overservations. Especially that there are good and less-good teams beginning to be defined in the EC “movement.”
It is probably symantics, but when you say…
April 4th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Hey Scott,
I feel like missional is just as buzzy. It may have less baggage, but it's used so flippantly by just about everyone that I don't think it really means much. I think Andrew Jackson's post about “emergentizing” applies to a lot of these things- missional, authentic, conversation, community, etc. There's still value to these words, and we should want to engage in being all of these, but they're so hip and used loosely that we may be better off with different terminology. As Dr. Gomes would say, we need to get a mental enema…
April 4th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Yeah I feel that. I just don't know if I would say that Emergent is a timeless concept. Maybe it is.
That remains one of the most disturbing things I've heard from a prof… ever.
SEZ
April 5th, 2006 at 12:37 am
thanks for the write up. It was a good perspective and fair.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:15 am
I dito sez, the proffs here at fuller woud definatel put Emergent under missional, and then include a lot of others with missional, not emergent.
But whatever, good post.
April 22nd, 2006 at 11:22 am
Recently, the Emergent Church movement's pro-homosexual advocates were at Azusa Pacific University seeking to gain approval from mainline Christian universities. Tony Campolo spoke at an APU chapel service openly attempting to make a distinction between homosexuality and homsexual erroticism; the implication being that homosexuality itself is not sin. When I saw the service on line I could no longer remain silent. I am now dealing with these issues at my new blogsite: . My post on “Emerging Buzzzzwords” may be of interest to you.
June 8th, 2006 at 2:07 am
as you are defining definitions. I believe there is a distinction between missions and evangelism. Missions is cross cultural and although a person may feel like an alien in their own country rarely can they be a missionary. why the distinction? I beleive God has blessed the missions effort in a special way that is different than evangelism. For one the missionsary is not blinded by the contempt for the familiar (although they could be blinded by their own culture) . There are different opportunities and responsibilities and difficulties. American believers often make this mistake. It also makes it easier to justify so many Christians congregating in one place instead of truly going into all nations. Yes people do come from other nations to the US but now they are one down and you are one up. We have the advantage as natives. Missionaries do not. It was stated earlier in this article by another author you quoted. The point- we need to get out of the ghetto. The church is still not a community but a place to go. It is still chuch for the churched and radical paradigm shifts will need to happen. It seems people are inching there way out to the frings making sure things look relatively the same and are dressed the same so that thye pastor wont get too mad or other Christians wont think we have “left the church”. Which is a ridiculous notion when church is the people of God and not an organization.
June 18th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
I think that the Emergent movement is a penduluum movement swinging too far to the other side of the spectrum. It is an over energetic response to modernism. I've written about just a small fraction of the issues at http://emissaryx.blogspot.com/. I admittedly broadbrush a bit!