If you travel in evangelical circles, you’ve likely heard talk of the “emerging church.” But you still might be confused. What exactly is the emerging church? Here’s my best attempt to describe a notoriously hard-to-define phenomenon.
But first I have to muddy the waters. Emerging church proponents resist labels. They think of themselves as participating in a “conversation,” not a “movement.” They prefer stories to propositional truths, mystery to certainty, and dialogue to doctrine. The emerging church is not a denomination. It has no official leaders and no serious level of organization. The only exception is the Emergent Village (from which we get the term emergent), an organization that describes itself as “a growing, generative friendship.” Generally speaking, the emerging church is a loosely knit community of mostly young adults, disillusioned with church as usual, who are striving to live their Christian faith in a postmodern culture.
Those within the movement value authenticity and creativity and emphasize the social dimensions of the gospel. Outsiders often describe the emerging church as a reaction to evangelicalism’s more fundamentalist incarnations. Many of those active in the movement were reared in church traditions that were doctrinally rigid, suspicious of culture, and intolerant of doubt. Unsurprisingly, the emerging church exhibits the opposite tendencies: they are open to culture, theologically flexible, and willing to ask hard questions.
You can see these traits in their writings. Just look at a few titles from Brian McLaren, the emerging church’s most prominent voice: A Generous Orthodoxy, A New Kind of Christian, and The Last Word and the Word after That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity. The emerging church doesn’t owe everything to evangelicalism, however. Many of these tendencies betray the influence of postmodernism.
The style and structure of emerging congregations are also unique. Iron railings, candles, dim lighting, and prayer stations were so ubiquitous early in the movement that today they’ve almost become clichés. Most emerging congregations have a relatively flat leadership style. Pastors are not usually called pastors (if there is a pastor at all), and many groups, such as Tribe in Los Angeles, prefer to meet “in the round” when they gather for worship–a physical representation of their flat leadership structure and egalitarian values.
The emerging church has been criticized for its theological innovations and its more liberal views on hot-button issues (the movement’s most prominent leaders have either accepted, or refused to say where they stand on, homosexuality). It has also suffered divisions from within. Some leaders that identified with the movement early on (such as Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll) have distanced themselves from it. Recently, several key leaders announced that they are dropping the emerging label altogether, causing one commentator to proclaim that the movement is dead.
This is a huge topic, far too large to explore in detail here. If you want to learn more, I recommend reading Emerging Churches (Baker) by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger or Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Zondervan) by D.A. Carson.
Oh, one last thing. The unofficial drink of the emerging church is Guinness, just in case you were wondering.
