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Any author attempting to profile the phenomenon of the "emerging church" faces a daunting task.

Churches identifying themselves as emerging are new and diverse. Some have distanced themselves from both the mindset of traditional denominations and contemporary "seeker" models of church, while others identify with ancient traditions. Among the latter, some emerging congregations grow within an existing church, while others are new church plants that retain their denominational affiliation. There are also some significant differences between the United States and U.K., to which we might add Australia and New Zealand. This is all to say that D. A. Carson, professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has had to simplify a complex picture.

Carson characterizes the movement as one of protest against "the conservative, traditional, evangelical churches, sometimes with a fundamentalist streak." For many emergent leaders, the issue is not to protest the old so much as a restlessness to find new ways of "doing church." They seek to relate to a secular—and increasingly post-secular—culture, in which the church is marginalized as traditional Christendom cracks and crumbles.

Carson focuses on Brian McLaren, as well as a small number of other authors such as Dan Kimball, Spencer Burke, and Mike Yaconelli (in the U.S.), and David Tomlinson and Steve Chalke (in the U.K.). This tends to skew the discussion because it highlights those who have come out of house-church fundamentalism or seeker-driven megachurches. Research by Ryan Bolger among more than 50 emergent leaders indicates that N. T. Wright, the eminent New Testament scholar, and Dallas Willard of the University of Southern California are equally influential.

Emerging church leaders identify modernism as a large part of the problem. It has given rise to denominations and permeated evangelicalism to a far greater extent than many are prepared to admit. Cultural fragmentation and polarization require churches to redefine and retool themselves in the current context. Many old modernist notions no longer apply, and they inhibit the ongoing mission of the church. But Carson is correct to critique the blanket condemnation of modernity by many of these writers. As with any culture, there is a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Carson is also on target when he identifies epistemology as the fundamental issue in the move from modernity to postmodernity. On this topic, most of Carson's analysis, concern, and attack focus on Brian McLaren.

McLaren makes an easy target for a philosophical theologian. He is unsystematic and speculative. He operates in the front-line trenches of church ministry rather than in the world of academia. His strength lies in the questions he is prepared to face with honesty and considerable insight, rather than in his responses. Many emerging church leaders find in McLaren someone who shares their questions and concerns. He has a passion to communicate with those who have discarded the church as irrelevant or no longer credible.

In evaluating the emerging church, Carson explores three issues in particular: its reading of contemporary culture; its assertion that changing times demand that fresh questions be asked of Scripture; and its own proposals for the way ahead, which must be assessed for their biblical fidelity.

Carson gives credit to the emerging church for honestly trying to read the culture. They are also thinking through the implications of this reading for our witness, our theology, our churchmanship, even our self-understanding. However, his main concern is that in the course of engaging with culture by means of postmodern analysis, too much has been conceded. In missional terms, McLaren and other writers he cites have allowed postmodern culture to determine the message (naïve contextualization), rather than addressing this culture with their message. Carson faults them for their analysis of culture, and then for the inadequacy of their solutions. In Carson's analysis, these solutions, with their eclectic appeal to tradition, skirt the truth claims of Scripture.

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October 2005, Vol. 49, No. 10