Post-Stetzer Emergence

As the emerging church emerges, people are doing their best to get a handle on the thing. Ed Stetzer is one of them. Stetzer has created three categories for emegent-types. Below is my poorly done summary of his categories:

Relevants: Same old church thing with a new church package.

Restructuralists: New church structure for the same church old thing - house church.

Revisionists: Re-thinging the thing.

Stetzer is getting a little nervous about the "Re-thingers."

I like Stetzer. His book on church planting in the postmodern age is informative and helpful in ways, for new church planters. So, I am a Stetzer fan. At the same time, Stetzer makes an errror in his analysis/descritption of the emerging church.

It seems Stetzer, as well as other critics, cannot resist the temptation to view the emerging church through the lens of denominationalism. They are trying so hard to make the emerging church an established denomination and then critique it that way. Read their stuff and ask if they are talking about the emerging denomination or not. They are and that is the problem with their assessments and conclusions.

Look at how Stetzer has already created three branches of the emerging chruch denomination. Look at how critics complain that the leaders of emergent do not have on coheresnt doctrine. Yes, complain about denominations not having that, but not the emerging church. To make that complaint it to completely miss what is happeing here.

The emerging church is happening inside and outside of denominations. It is happening in house churches, in coffee shops, in conversations, and in the hearts of people who don't give a rip about church at all. Thus, emergence is going to appear different in different places. It has to. That is the nature and beauty of postmodernism. Sameness is not a requirement. In fact, too much sameness is cause for skepticism.

The emreging church is not an organization, it is a phenomenon that is spontaneously occuring in many unrelated places. Emergent Village, the organization/gathering/group/friendship, is merely a way of organizing to make any kind of sense of it, to find out where this phenomenon is occurring, and a way to perhaps offer some guidance to this thing that they, and no one else, can or should control. Look to the Tall Skinny Kiwi for more on understanding emergence the phenomenon.

So, if you view the emerging church as simply one more crack at protestantism, the critics have got their critiques and categoires pretty much spot on. However, if the emrging church is a phenomenon, a movement of the kingdom of God which is not under the rule, control, authority, colonization, influence of organizations, denominations, or people in general, then the critics are going to have to accept the fact that what we are dealing with is something new and too young to properly critique - certainly with old categories of criticism.