Is the Emerging Church Receding?

A year or so ago, Trevin Wax suggested that the Emerging Church was in the early stages of decline, offering a number of reasons for this opinion.  I summarise:-

1. The Emerging Church does little evangelism.

It’s not the only segment of the Christian Church that fails in this regard.  But it has to be said: The Emerging Church isn’t making many converts.  It is reaching young, disillusions Christians, but not the unchurched.  And part of the problem is its lack of clarity about what the gospel actually is.  If Jesus no longer makes exclusive claims, and hell no longer exists, no wonder that evangelism is no longer a priority.

The Emerging Church in its own words 5

Chapter 6 of Gibbs’ and Bolger’s book, Emerging Church: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, is entitled, ‘Welcoming the Stranger’.

The Emerging Church in its own words 4

Here’s an index to this series of posts.

Chapter 5 of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Gibbs and Bolger) is entitled ‘Living as Community’.

What is Foundationalism?

Emerging church people of a more philosophical bent often speak critically of ‘foundationalism’.

What is that?

Nancey Murphy explains:-

Foundationalism is a theory about knowledge.  More specifically, it is a theory about how claims to know can be justified.  When we seek to justify a belief, we do so by relating it to (basing it on, deriving it from) other beliefs.  If these other beliefs are called into question, then they, too, must be justified.  Foundationalists insist that this chain of justification myst stop somewhere; it must not be circular, nor must it constitute an infinite regress.  Thus, the regress must end in a ‘foundation’ of beliefs that cannot themselves be called into question.

Anglo-American Postmodernity, cited in Gibbs & Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, 69.

The Emerging Church in its own words 3

Here’s an index to this series of posts.

Chapter 4 of Gibbs’ and Bolger’s Emerging Churches: creating Christian community in postmodern culture is entitled, ‘Transforming secular space’.  Here are some extracts.

The Emerging Church in its own words 2

Here’s an index to this series of posts.

Chapter 3 of Emerging Churches: creating Christian community in postmodern cultures, by Gibbs & Bolger, is entitled, ‘Identifying with Jesus’.

Here are some extracts.

The Emerging Church in its own words 1

Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Culture (SPCK) by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger is regarded by many as the most authoritative book presently available on the beliefs and practices of the emerging church.  It is based on interviews with 50 leaders in the US and the UK.

I thought that it would be interesting to provide some extracts from the book, in order let emerging church leaders, together with the two authors of the book, speak for themselves.

Here’s an index to this series of posts.

Here, then, are some extracts from chapter 2 - What is the emerging church?

How the Emerging Church Marginalises the Gospel

[Here's an index to this series of posts]

For emerging church people, Jesus’ message of kingdom tends to be all about what God is doing here and now.  It is about peace, justice, and compassion.  The gospel is an invitation to participate with God in this mission.

In praise of the Emerging Church

D.A. Carson’s Becoming conversant with the emerging church is already a bit dated, since things are moving rapidly in that area.  However, it remains a fair and thorough evaluation (unless you’re a big fan of emerging, in which case it’s obvious to you that Carson just doesn’t ‘get it’).

It’s all modernism’s fault

[Here's an index to this series of posts]

Chapter 7 of Why we’re not emergent (by two guys who should be) explores the ways in which emerging church people have tended to make a bogeyman out of modernism.

Kevin DeYoung summarises the emergent aproach:-

Once upon a time the church was a brighter, fairer place.  And then the Enlightenment happened, and the scourge of modernism – systematic theologies, propositions, foundationalism, certainty, creeds, monological preaching, individualism, inerrancy, logic, indoctrination, deductive reasoning – began to crack down on the church.

The Post-Evangelical – Index of Posts

Here’s an index of my chapter-by-chapter entries on The Post-Evangelical, by Dave Tomlinson:-

Doctrine, anyone?

[Here's an index to this series of posts]

In chapter 5 of Why we’re not emergent (by two guys who should be) Kevin DeYoung discusses the emergent attitude towards doctrine.   Quoting Doug Pagitt, DeYoung notes,

Instead of saying, “Here is truth; take it or leave it,” the emergent crowd calls Christians to declare, “Come and experience the story of God in the life of this community.”