The Emerging Church

If you have never heard of or are a little fuzzy on the church that is emerging, then click here and get a little taste.

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Welcome back. I want to help the conversation along a bit by making some clarifications.

Emerging Church - When you hear the words "emerging church" or more recently, "the church that is emerging," do not think denomination, organization, parachurch group, new protestant, or anything else structured, intentional, or human-willed. You are going to be tempted to think about it in these terms, but do not turn this stone to bread.

Rather, think about what is happening in the hearts of people who are either already in an organized church, are Christian unchurched, or a pre-christian and interested in the things of God. Think about what would happen in a person's heart if God were speaking to that person to move in the current world in a way that seeks to learn of the deeper mystery of God, seeks to find what motivated Jesus and capture that motivation in as relevant ways today as Jesus did in His day, seeks to shed all things that are simultaneously religious and ungodly, seeks to infuse the world with goodness.

Now image that person, in whatever context, beginning to live her or his life according that Spirit of God moving on that person's heart. That can happen at any time or place. And when God is on the move, then that is what happens. It happens all over, sometimes (usually) in isolated places. It can be lonely for the emerging person who is part of the emerging church because they have little understanding that this is happening everywhere else. They are not motivated by a crowd mentality, but rather the move of God. Only later do these emerging people find each other.

And that leads me to the next term:

Emergent - "Emergent is a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ." (Click here to read more). You see, when this kind of thing is happening spontaneously in many locations, eventually these people will find each other. And when they do, they organize. At the same time they are already embedded within a local context and therefore positioned to make change locally. Some, however, need extraction and salvation from their church or unhealthy network. So, connecting with others and regrouping at this place or that is good.

So, the movement begins within a person (a lot of persons). Only later do those people organize. Emergent is one of many ways which these emergent people are organizing. Following links from one emerging church site to another will reveal the network - most of whom are unaware of all of the others involved.

The emrging church is much larger than anyone knows. This is true because when we measure things like the emerging church, we accumlate numbers of churches, denominations, organizations, publications and so forth. We think that this represents what is really happening in the hearts of people. No. It is only the most extreme epxression of it. That is not how the emerging church can be measured. Measurement would, in fact, be very difficult. Since it does not begin or end with organizations etc, then it cannot and should be measured in that way.

It would take a massive research project to capture the phenomenon of the emerging church. Furthermore, the context of emergence will make it look different in different places and subcultures. American emergence looks much different than African or even European. Baptist emergence is going to look different than Catholic emergence. Only until the crockpot simmers for many hours will each other's flavors saturate the whole.

Finally, what I belive is that what each individual and group is emerging from is not nearly as important as what they are all emerging toward. What we are emerging from is our division. What we are emerging toward is a deep unity some have called Deep Ecclisiology (ht Tall Skinny Kiwi). Where we are all going is much more important than from where we came.