There are some new books and links posted on each page now. I’ll be updating them as they become available. I’d like to also have a section with articles from the ooze, next wave, and other news stories about the emerging church.

Most of them are hanging out in my del.icio.us account.

The latest book that I have been reading about ministry in the postmodern/emerging context is Organic Church by Neil Cole. I’ll be reviewing it as soon as I wrap it up.  So far it has been incredible.

In case you haven’t heard of Leslie Newbigin, Ryan Bolger has a nice little summary of Newbigin’s significance for the emerging church today and the missional church movement in particular.

I have listed a number of Newbigin’s books below on my suggested reading lists, including The Gospel in a Pluralist Society and The Open Secret. Though his works can be a bit dense, they are well worth the investment of time.

From the Worldwide Faith News archives . . .

Here’s some good reading on the emerging church its use of blogs via TSK and Christian Pundits:

The Emergent Church is defined by Yearbook Editor, the Rev. Dr.
Eileen W. Lindner, as a "conversation" (some would say movement)
birthed in 20th century Protestantism and "characterized by a robust,
energetic and growing online and hardcopy literature" that attempts to
shape responses to contemporary culture.

Common attributes of the EC, Lindner believes, are an emulation of
the person and ministry of Jesus, a fondness for anecdotes and stories
as means of discovering truth, a focus on mission, and a stress on the
centrality of worship, even in experimental forms.

Scores of EC proponents are using blogs to advance these ideas and
stimulate dialogue. Lindner says it is not possible to generalize them
into a predictable demographic class, but she offers examples of
prominent EC bloggers: John O’Keefe, founder of www.ginkworld.net, "an
emerging/postmodern site exploring what it means to be a follower of
Jesus in today’s world;" Spencer Burke, former pastor, founder of http://theooze.com
Web site, "dedicated to the emerging Church culture;" Mark Driscoll,
founder of Mars Hill Church (www.marshillchurch.org) in Seattle; Mark
Pearson, founder of www.cityside.org.nz in Aukland, New Zealand; and
Karen Ward, founder and pastor of the Church of the Apostles,
www.apostlechurch.org, in Seattle.

Read the whole article.

Emerging/Missional church leader Alan Roxburgh has published an article dealing with the movement of society and hence the church away from structure. (via) Here’s a little snippet:

"The shift over the last 20 years has been from structure to anti-structure.

Put it in different terms, there has been a rapidly growing conviction
that the individual does not need the structures and institutions of
modernity to legitimize one’s self. The reasons for this are complex,
but sources of the shift are the emergence of the technological and the
information age. These dual movements of late modernity have required
an increasingly educated population in which growing numbers recognize
they don’t need to be committed to structures and institutions in order
to thrive. "

Read the whole article.

Andrew Rowell, a youth min. prof at my alma mater (TU), has posted a carefully thought out critique of Gibbs and Bolger’s Emerging Churches book. No one has yet leveled a critique of the book. Most everyone, such as myself, has merely drooled over it and sung it’s accolades. And for good reason. The Emerging Church has been misunderstood enough and given a bad rap. We were itching for someone to profile us in a positive light.

But I think that Andrew hits on a weakness of the book In an attempt to bring the Emerging Church into sharper focus, they miss out on some major contributors to the conversation. Here is a clip from his post:

"I think they are wrong to dismiss the possibility that Gen-X churches
are missional. (Popularized by Darrell Guder’s The Missional Church,
this term simply means a fresh application of the techniques of
missiology to Western culture. There is no reason only church plants or
house churches can do this. In fact, the book is written by Guder who
is a PCUSA person with the intention to shake up the mainline churches
especially). They are also naïve to assume that “emerging churches” can
possibly remove themselves from the influence of modernity. Emerging
churches will still likely use modern inventions such as printed
Bibles, automobiles, public transit, computers, phones, etc.

Because
of their definition, it seemed to me that the description by Gibbs and
Bolger of “emerging churches” sounds a lot like “house churches” to me.
"

I think I can understand where Gibbs and Bolger are coming from. They are sick and tired of hearing people say, "So if I want to do the emerging thing, I just need to read scripture slow, add candles, pray a creed, and serve coffee afterwards."  They want to make sure that you know it’s not another program, not a fad, not a niche marketing effort, not just about epistemology, and not, not, not, not about candles.

So they sharpen their definition, focus on mission, and present a remixed version of church. That is well and good, but I think Andrew helpfully points out that a large part of the emerging conversation is still happening in established, traditional churches. In these churches there are people wrestling with the emerging church stuff, but their expression of it is still programmatic in nature. They may have some missional practices in place, but it’s still different from the "home spun" emergenging church described by Gibbs and Bolger.

And interestingly enough, we hit the old dilemna of ecclesiology. Is the church made up of organized (tax deductible) churches with buildings  or people? We hesitate to include those in traditional churches because they bring along programmatic and ecclesial baggage that we can’t imagine seeing in the emerging church. They add a different look to the group. They enforce stereotypes that we want to eradicate.

But if the church and/or emerging church is just a name for people regardless of institutions or ecclesial preference, we can widen the characterization a bit. Maybe we need to talk more about emerging people or the emerging tribe, and less about the emerging church. We have possibly once again fallen into the trap of characterizing the church in terms of congregations and not in terms of the children of God.

Yikes, my head is spinning. Time to stop. Any thoughts on this one???

technorati tags: gibbs, bolger, ecclesiology, emerging 

Power and salvation are two cards that have been in the deck of the church for a long time. The church can assert its influence in the world and demand certain kinds of behavior because it has the key to salvation. It has the ability to set the parameters for salvation and can withhold it from those who differ.

In one sense the church has been entrusted with the Gospel and must carry it forward, but in another sense it can abuse this position. The church has a mission to carry God’s message of  blessing to his creation, but can easily become lost in condemning and excluding. And though the church should not just welcome everyone without the radical call of commitment and allegiance that makes up the Gospel, there is a sense in which the church should not become hostile to the world.

The church can too easily become antagonistic to those on the outside. In addition, the church can become antagonistic to those within its fold and threaten them with expulsion. Those who set the theological agenda can remove those disagree and can also keep out those who would threaten the way things have been.

In welcoming the other, it is important to seek ways to open up the theological conversation to minorities, women, and other countries who are entering the global theological conversation.  In bringing the Gospel to those on the outside of God’s Kingdom, it is not our place to set obstacles as much as to welcome. Welcoming the other in without losing the integrity of the Gospel message is THE challenge that faces the church in the 21st century.

I’m tired of people trying to define the emerging church. We
are currently glutted with definitions and explanations.

I think that Andrew Jones has compiled the ultimate list of emerging definitions at "emergant", but you can also find a ton of links and reference material at his blog.  Wikipedia also has an extensive entry on the emerging church with enough links to fill up a few days of browsing. Every time a blog tries to say something that defines the emerging church, we reinvent the wheel, repeat what we’ve heard others say, or just make up stuff that sounds good at the time.  Gibbs and Bolger have put together definitive work on Emerging Churches and Dan Kimball’s Emerging Church book is as good a place as any to start.

There’s another reason why the time of definitions has passed. We have been moving out of a culture that lived by nouns. Everything had to be defined precisely. But the emerging church is part of a different time that is defined far more by action and verbs, if you will. In a time of transition it was necessary to rely heavily on nouns when speaking of the emerging church. Now it is time to wean ourselves off nouns and move on to verbs (I am relying heavily on some material taught by Joe Meyers on noun-centric vs. ver-centric language).

If you believe
that the emerging church is what it says it is, then you need to understand a
little something of how language is used in the emerging church and in emerging culture. Language is
dynamic, evolving, and moving with the times. Words are helpful, but they do
not define this network. Verbs are perhaps the most important words. Go, send,
speak, serve, be, love, read: these are the action words that define the
emerging church.

We needed a time to get a handle on this emerging church
thing, but now we are beyond that. We have the definitions to refer to, but if
you want to get to know the emerging church, find people who are in it. Don’t
read what somebody said 1, 2, or 5 years ago that supposedly defined it. If you understand language in the
same way as the emerging church, you’ll understand why this is so.

And this is perhaps why Gibbs and Bolger’s book Emerging Churches is so helpful. It does not outline a particular theology or look or even present a certain formulaic definition for the emerging church. They list characteristics, actions: emerging churches do this and emerging churches act like this. It’s a good start at moving the conversation in the direction it must move in order to continue: action.