Next-Wave Ezine > church & culture

A Retrospective on the Emerging Church in North America Pt. 2
By Interviews by Stephen Shields

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[Continued]

Some are saying that we should not use the term "emerging church" any longer because as it's come to represent such a broad diversity of interests, the term now precipitates confusion. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Jordon Cooper

I should really leave this to Dan Kimball as he care more about it than I do (in that he has actually written stuff on it) but I tend to think that we should. Groups like Resonate and Emergent Village do bring together a wide variety of interests and so the name "emerging church" is both a big term but also an appropriate term as well. That being said, the term we all most remove from our lexicons is any job titles that use the word "emerging". If it was up to me, all Pastors of Emerging Ministries would be voted off the island. Sometime you have to draw a line in the sand :-)

Brian McLaren

-- Speaking very practically, some people shouldn't use it, because if they do, their funders will drop them - and they're doing good work for the kingdom of God with the money they receive. Some people are afraid of being associated with people more "liberal" than they are, or more "conservative" than they are, so the term may be more or less useful to them depending on who they want to separate themselves from and why. I tend to want to be associated with as many people as I can, and there's a lot about both "liberals" and "conservatives" I like, so these issues aren't big problems for me. I guess of the two words "emerging" and "church," I like them both separately more than together. I want to identify with the church in all its forms - traditional, contemporary, ancient, avante-garde, etc. And I want to identify with any good thing that is emerging. But I don't want to identify with "emerging church" if that means a sector or brand or division of church that considers itself cool and others less so. I like what my friend Pam Wilhelms said a couple years ago: "This is about the church that is emerging," meaning that the church in all its forms is always emerging, and some of us are called to participate in that green edge of growth, while others of us are called to maintain some of the older structures. It's all good, and we all need each other.

Scot McKnight

I like the diversity of "emerging" but the problem is that the term has been so abused by its critics that embracing the term leads to endless discussions of just how one is part of that emerging conversation. I've basically given up on using the term except in audiences where I think it is understood.

Tony Jones

Well, as I noted in the last question, I think that labels are very often troubling and unhelpful. Maybe "emergent church" and "emerging church" have now crossed that threshold. I'm probably not the one to judge that, since it's in the subtitle of my book. In other words, I'm not particularly objective (but, IMHO, neither are those who want to do away with the term -- they often want to dump the term because it didn't end up standing for what they wanted it to stand for). All I can state definitively is that when we started using the terms "emergent" and "emergent village" about ourselves, we were simply raising a flag that people could gather under and rally around. We never assumed that the term itself was very important.

Dan Kimball

I get to travel a lot and talk to a lot of people and also get a lot of emails asking what is the emerging church as they are understandably confused. Mainly because some of the hyper-critics began painting very broad stereotypes of what “the emerging church” is or isn’t. The problem with broad-brushing the emerging church today, is like I said earlier, that over time within “the emerging church” there developed several streams which are quite diverse. There are significantly different approaches to philosophy of ministry, theology, and Scripture within what is now known as the emerging church. So for someone not understanding the diversity, the confusion came when one emerging church leader said or wrote something and the assumption was then everyone in “the emerging church” also believed or practiced the same thing. So I don’t use the term too much anymore because of the confusion and also that it means so many things, depending on who you ask.

I am not wedded to any term and I don't think most people are. I, like most others, are wedded to the gospel and to Jesus' command of making new disciples - not a term to describe it. Terms come and go. So it doesn’t mean much to me, whether the term ‘emerging church’ is used or not. But what does matter to me was what drew me into the whole emerging church world in the beginning is that Jesus is Savior, and people are sinners in need of a Savior and experiencing ‘life to the full’ knowing Jesus and then being used by God to help others. Yes, the Kingdom is here on earth and we have a mission on earth now and justice issues to focus on. But the Bible also does teach that there is eternity after we die and people will either be with God or separate from Him. I don’t think we should forget that or put that to the side-burner in the missional conversation. I understand that we have reacted strongly to how much focus was on a reductionist gospel of only talking about it in terms of life after death. I hope we learned our lesson to not do that again. But I also hope that we don’t forget that people need a Savior. People need a Shepherd. Jesus did die for them as part of the gospel story. And for me, that urgency of mission and evangelism will continue whether it is called the emerging church or something else.

Andrew Jones

No, its always been quite broad.

Its the narrowness of the term that has caused some us to recommend that new movements and networks think twice about adopting the label. The words "emergent church" and "emerging church" have been used quite broadly for the last 40 years to describe the character of the new infant churches that are arising out of mission and evangelism. The problem happened when the the words were applied narrowly to only a few networks, or even exclusively to one - Emergent Village. When one critic wrongly suggested that the emerging church was a ten year old American phenomenon that was now impacting other countries, there was a sense around the world that it was only a matter of time before we would have to dump the term. Thankfully, writers like Phyllis Tickle pointed out that other countries were further ahead than USA by ten to twenty years but it may be too late.

Now if critics were to go out and meet some key EC leaders face to face, it may turn things around and the word may come back into play again. I hope it does. It seems silly that a term used globally for so long would need to be put out to pasture simply because of a few misfires from only one or two countries.

What do you see as the future of the emerging church conversation?

Jordon Cooper

With more and more of us using Twitter, it may be a shorter 160 character long conversation... I think it will continue to evolve as the people themselves evolve. As my vocation has changed from pastoral to working with the homeless and illiterate, I bring that to the table. As Doug Pagitt makes his run for the Minnesota legislature and perhaps beyond, I assume we will see some more reflection on faith and public service. As one of the original members of Faithmaps, we benefited from your perspectives and context as well. I hope that continues as we enter into different phases of serving the Kingdom.

Brian McLaren

-- I think the really interesting and exciting times are ahead of us, as the conversation becomes more ecumenical and global, and as the conversation begins to deal with what I think are the world's most pressing problems - care for the planet, the gap between rich and poor, the need for peacemakers among ethnic groups, nations, ideologies, and religions.

-- I also think there are incredibly new turns the conversation needs to take. For example, we've begun talking in more depth about spiritual formation - but we need to concentrate on spiritual formation of children (big big subject!) and youth. We've begun talking about justice, but we need to help create specific movements that seek justice in practical ways. We've begun talking about evangelism - but we also need to talk about how to love our neighbors of other religions who simply don't want to become Christians ... and how to seek the common good with them.

Scot McKnight

The emerging church conversation will continue with several short-term and lasting impacts: an expansion of the gospel to biblical proportions, a lasting contribution to understanding and implementing a missional vision for local churches, a permission to see the insights of postmodernity and postmodern thinkers, a radical commitment to social justice, as well as some coalescence into old-fashioned mainline and liberal theology ... and, to be frank, some silly heresies.

Tony Jones

I honestly have no idea. I hope a new group of leaders rises up and takes it where they want to, calls it what they want to, etc. I'll stand by, ready to help in any way.

Dan Kimball

For me, I am seeing wonderful things that God is doing in emerging types of churches around the country. I think of John Burke and Gateway Church in Austin. I think of The Journey Church in St. Louis. I think of Imago Dei church in Portland. And Evergreen Community in Portland. Those are just a few of the ones I have been to or I know the leaders. All of these were missional emerging church planters who started these churches with just a very few people but had a missional heart and missional vision. God is doing great things in these churches with new believers/disciples being made. So I have great hope for the future, and these churches are so encouraging to me seeing what is happening there. I hear all the talk about how difficult it is being missional today, but I can point out churches like this whom God is using tremendously even in difficult soil. So it brings me hope for the future.

Something I am really excited about for the future is the new network/community that is being birthed from some of those whom were in the emerging church world. I started having conversations with Scot McKnight about theology as well as our common passion for evangelism. I discovered that Scot and I both evangelical theologically (in the original meaning of the word) and passionate about evangelism. Scot and I had multiple conversations about forming some sort of network and community for those who have this same passion. Over the past couple of years, I also had several meetings and hung out with Erwin McManus. It turned out that we also shared this same exact passion for evangelism. At the same time I also had uncannily similar conversations with my friend Rick McKinley about the same exact thing.
So all of these conversations led to us realizing that we were all feeling the same urgency about getting back to mission and evangelism. Since we all thrive in community and get inspired from other leaders we felt it was better not to be alone, but to formally form a community/network for those with similar passions. So we have just formally birthed The Origins Project which is in the very beginning stages. People can sign up for email updates on the web site http://www.theoriginsproject.org (please excuse the web page, it was done quick!) We are kicking off the network/community at Catalyst West Coast event in April 2009. This will be a network/community that really partners and serves with other networks as we don’t want to be recreating everything. Because theology is very important in mission, we have determined from the beginning to use the Lausanne Covenant as our doctrinal statement so-to-speak. We like the Lausanne Covenant because it was formed from a multi-denominational and global perspective based around mission. So this is a fun adventure to be going on for those who resonate with this and I really look forward to seeing how this will develop. The response so far has been really overwhelming from those who have signed up, and we haven’t even done anything yet. So we are looking forward to how this develops and please pray for us as this moves ahead.

Andrew Jones

I see camoflauge. The conversation will be rehashed within denominational streams and will emerge with its own voice and a unique set of leaders and heroes from within those streams. And they will most probably call it anything but "emerging". Even now it is increasingly difficult to identify what is "emerging" and what is not, with so much integration of emerging-missional practices into traditional churches. In that sense, I expect the emerging church movement will follow the charismatic movement in enjoying an impact that is wide and deep and ubiquitous but no longer visible under its own banner.

Are there any other observations that you'd like to make either about the state of the emerging church today or about its development over the course of the last 10 years?

Brian McLaren

- Just to say thanks for the role you've had, Stephen and Charlie, in encouraging charitable and honest dialogue over these years ... and to say that I look forward to addressing these questions again in ten years! God is good, and the gospel is good news, and whatever negatives may occur, God will be at work to overcome evil with good. Thanks be to God!

Scot McKnight

The emerging movement is a broad-based and mostly evangelical effort to embody the gospel in the 21st Century and I'm encouraged to see it experiment with seeking to live the gospel in a way that speaks to the next generation. I'm grateful for the courage and grace of leaders like Brian McLaren.

Andrew Jones

Its been a really fun ride and I have really considered it a huge privilege to rub shoulders with such incredibly wonderful people! Many have given up the security and the regular pay check from a traditional church staff position in order to explore how to fulfil God's mission in this new emerging culture. What a sacrifice! It wasn't fame or coolness but the call of God and the love of Christ that has constrained them. They have become paupers instead of kings. God bless them and God bless the works of their hands.

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