The Emerging Church has been a very interesting (and confusing!) topic for the last few years. Here are two recent articles that have emerged from the blogosphere regarding the Emerging Church. It appears that a definition for the Emerging Church is emerging from the confusion.
Dan Kimball (who wrote the lovely book: "They Like Jesus but Not The Church") shares a diagram he found - it seems to depict different levels of emergence.
Mark Driscoll shares his classification of the emerging churches. Also see this short youtube video from him
For clarification, in case you haven't heard this one yet, "Emergent" is not equal to "Emerging". Emergent is the conversation being had by many different denominations and is facilitated by folks like Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Brian McClaren and others. Emergent tends to be labeled more "controversial", while emerging is a more broad term referring to many churches employing new methods and ideas.
There has been a fair amount of demonizing of the term "emerging church". But I think it's in our best interest, as the body of Christ - rather than name calling - to civilly discuss how and why we disagree.
Do you mean there has been more “demonizing” of the emergent church? In the midwest that seems to be the case....most people get “emerging” as doing church differently to try and reach others.
However, they are against the Emergent Church for fear of losing such staples as absolute truth and other doctrines that are at the core of Christianity...in my opinion.
Thanks for the links....discussion is needed.
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Comment by Phil - Feb 29, 2008 @ 01:48 PM
Thank you for being a referee. I have found myself trying to defend people of heresy that they never spoke. Suddenly, I was the enemy too!
I think we all want to remain relevant. We want to speak to our culture in their own language while at the same time relying 100% upon the authority of Scripture.
Comment by Shamrock - Mar 01, 2008 @ 07:19 PM