What is the Emergent Church?

March 26, 2005 Posted by Roger OvertoncloseAuthor: Roger Overton Name: Roger Overton
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About: Roger Overton is currently pursuing a Masters degree at Talbot School of Theology. He has addressed various churches, schools and youth camps throughout the United States. Roger was co-editor of The New Media Frontier (Crossway, 2008) and God and Governing (Wipf & Stock, 2009). Roger can be emailed at rogeroverton@hotmail.com.See Authors Posts (569)

Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason recently blogged on the claims of certain people within the Emergent Church that Emergent is not a movement but a conversation…

“It seems that Emergent has moved way beyond the conversation stage. They have their own books, their own websites, their own conferences, and their own churches. They no longer offer mere sentiments, observations, or opinions. Emergent is working toward a particular objective: to reform the Church. Now, there is nothing wrong with this objective in and of itself. We would certainly want to think carefully about the reforms being proposed by Emergent, but that is a topic for another day. My inquiry here has to do with Emergent’s insistence on being called a conversation rather than a movement.”

What exactly is a movement? Brett quotes from Webster that “a movement as “a series of organized activities working toward an objective” or as “an organized effort to promote or attain an end.”

Steve McCoy apparently doesn’t like this definition. “Just because there's a loose knit web of people who have a lot in common because they are talking about some specific reformational ideas to help us reach emerging generations doesn't mean there is a movement. “ He also states, “We may have a movement if we see a fleet of churches who are organized and working together to reach objectives and goals.  Uh, where are they?  Where's the denominational headquarters?  Where's the emergent pope or recognized president?  Where's the website that all emergents go to for directions because we all belong to a movement?”

If the Emergent Church needs a headquarters, pope, or president to be considered a movement, then there are many movements throughout history that we can no longer call movements. I.E.- The “Civil Rights” movement didn’t have any of these things, so it was really no more than a conversation. A movement, by the most common usage of the word doesn’t need any of those. Rather, as the Webster definition states it is “an organized effort to promote or attain an end.” By this definition the Emergent Church is most certainly a movement.

The question then is to what end is the Emergent Church moving? While there is a great wealth of diversity within the movement are there common threads that tie it together? Most simply, it is a movement to deconstruct the way church has been done. The underlying motivation for this deconstruction is that the church of the twentieth century is no longer relevant to meet the needs or address the issues facing the world today.

Steve Harbinger laments, “But this is a negative definition. It specifies a need for change, but gives no positive content to what sorts of changes are needed. The result is that I, along with many others, find ourselves frustrated at our inability to see any coherent shape in the motley crew who all share some sense of dissatisfaction, but seemingly have nothing else in common.” He goes on to liken Emergent to a large group of family members who are related to one another, though, each have their own characteristics. “My bet is that if we get the emergent family together in one room, we'll find that the majority of them, but by no means all, have the same nose: they come from a conservative evangelical background.”

Actually, reading the biographies of Emergent leaders such as McLaren and Burke points to a fundamentalist background (which many apply to the whole Protestant church). Conservative Evangelicalism was a reaction against fundamentalism, but is universally considered a movement (not a conversation). The Emergent Church is a reaction against both, basically depending upon the background of the person you talk to. I think there have been some positive ideas put forward (i.e.- how things should be done instead of just how they shouldn’t), but that’s for another post.

Related posts:

1. “Is the Emergent Church a Threat to the Gospel?” or “Why I’m Concerned”
2. ETS 2006- Brett Kunkle: Essential Concerns Regarding the Emerging Church
3. Defining the Emerging/Emergent-Church/Movement/Conversation
4. ETS 2008 – William Henard “Sinners in the Hands of the Emergent Church”
5. Where is Emergent Going?
6. The Corporate Church- An Emerging Church Update

Posted in Emerging / Emergent Church, Main Page, Roger's Posts, Theology