The State of Emergent 2006
By Tony Jones, National Coordinator, Emergent-US |
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I remember a couple of years ago, Brian McLaren warning me and a couple other friends that the heat was going be turned up in coming years. In fact, I seem to recall him predicting that 2005 would be the “Year of Criticism” for Emergent. I, for one, was skeptical. We had no money, no organization, and no best-sellers. Who even knew about Emergent? And, moreover, who cared enough to take the time to criticize us?
 Well, now it seems like everywhere I turn, someone is stating that Emergent is screwing up the church. Either we’re too left, too right, too doctrinal or not doctrinal enough; we commodified and sold-out the wonderfully organic emerging church movement, or we are slippery because we won’t define ourselves. I could go on, but suffice it to say that Brian’s prophecy turned out to be spot-on.
The past year saw increased attention coming our way from national and local media, and it saw the first “third-person” books written on the movement from the breathtakingly bad (D.A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church) to the even-handedly critical (R. Scott Smith’s Truth and the New Kind of Christian) to the openly supportive (Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs’s Emerging Churches). And for those of us who frequent the blogosphere, the online chatter about Emergent and the emerging church is louder than my three preschoolers.
A couple of more notable trends in 2005 are: 1) We witnessed a significant uptick in interest and involvement from traditionally “mainline” Christians, especially those in Methodist and Presbyterian circles. And 2) We have begun to clarify the difference between “Emergent” and the “emerging church.” My favorite metaphor of late is that the emerging church movement is like the Internet, and Emergent is one of the servers.
With a movement and an organization this young, I think it’s particularly difficult to predict what 2006 will bring – not to mention, I lack Brian’s prophetic prowess. Also, I really take seriously the title of “Coordinator” – I have no desire to direct this thing in one direction or another, but truly to serve as a resource. I want to connect people to other people, provide resources like books, websites, and events, and offer friendship to all who are on an emerging journey.
That being said, there are a few things that I can predict with some certainty.
Books: You won’t see many books coming out from Emergent this year. As our partnership with Youth Specialties and Zondervan ended, we spent the latter half of 2005 forging relationships with three new publishers. We’ll spend 2006 developing these relationships, vetting proposals, and editing manuscripts (let me know if you’re working on a book that you’d like to have considered!). All three lines will roll out their first books in 2007.
Events: Another casualty of 2005 was the annual Emergent Convention. We’ll take 2006 off from any big events as we plan a summer festival-type event for 2007, one that we’ll co-host with several other organizations. We will, however, have several smaller events in 2006 that hold much promise: the theological conversation with Miroslav Volf in February has had unprecedented interest, the women’s ReGathering in April, The Gathering in Glorieta, New Mexico continues to grow every Fall, and we’re hoping to pull off a summer leadership institute in Minneapolis. We’re also happily promoting the work of our friends, including Zondervan’s National Pastors Convention, Allelon’s Summer Institute, TheOoze’s Soularize in the Bahamas, and several more.
Website: We have been skating by on the volunteer efforts of Will Samson for too long now! He has been a faithful and patient webmaster. 2006 will see him transition to working on a communications plan for us and coordinating our blogging efforts. Meanwhile, we will overhaul the emergentvillage website, thanks to a generous grant from Abingdon publishers. We’ll have lots of new capabilities and resources on the site, which we hope to roll out late in the summer.
Cohorts: We don’t know exactly, but it seems that there are between thirty and fifty Emergent cohorts that meet around the country on a monthly basis. These are a fairly “open source” endeavor, as one does not need permission to start one. We do, however, hope to provide more support and resources to cohorts in 2006, including online resources and connection points.
Otherwise, we plan to move on in the future as we have in the past. We’ll meet with people and groups who want to meet with us, we’ll write and read and converse and blog and meet. Most importantly, we’ll spend time with one another and one another’s families. We’ll encourage “reconciled friendship” (a redundancy, I know, but a necessary one). We’ll try to appreciate fellow believers from across the ecclesial spectrum, and even to appreciate and love those who don’t follow Jesus. In fact, we’ll especially try to love them.
I hope that you feel that Emergent is a safe and friendly place for you to hang out in your emerging journey, and I invite you to participate however you want. God’s doing some great things, and I have great hope that Emergent might be a little, tiny part of God’s Kingdom work.
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well said Tony. Great wrap up. I pray every good thing for Emergent in 2006.
Thanks, Tony. I'm excited about the future. Thanks for your continued sacrifices to facilitate Biblical reform.
I would consider myself a new "member" of the emergent community. I am excited to see where 2006 takes us, and am really looking forward to the next wave of books in 2007. Maybe I should write a book about how in my four years of college I began as fundamentalist and ended up as emergent.
be careful to refer to tony's efforts as biblical reform. this is ecclesiastical, philosophical, pragmatic and just plain cool! those finding refuge in the emergent community must maintain intentionality with our words, pleas and prayers. oh by the way, thanks tony and all the others...
I am starting to research the emerging church movement. I just started reading Dan Kimball's book. Why do you consider D.A. Carson's book, breathtakingly bad? If you could email me a responsethat would be great.
Zondervan seems to be going the other way. David Wells wrote a book Above all Earthly Powers, where he gets stuck into everything that to him is neo-orthodox - emerging church, postmodern engagement, New Perspective on Paul, Open Theism, anything not found in the church fathers. He too accuses any engagement as not being doctrinal or creedal! :/
Fight the good fight dudes!
Books . . . I think there needs to be a solid writing on hermeneutics. How are we interpreting the text in the midst of a postmodern world? I think Ben Meyer, NT Wright, and others are cracking into this concept, but I do believe there needs to be some non-scholarly works to explain an "emergent", postmodern, critical realist, or whatever you want to call it hermeneutic to people wanting to read the scriptures with fresh eyes and in their current context. Iowa rocks!
exciting stuff :) we're looking forward to seeing what God does in your/our midst. while we have yet to label ourselves "Emergent", we are consistently drawing from the wealth of ideas, wisdom and information located in the emergent community. I'm 'righteously angry' for you when I read writings like those from carson. but those folks have been around since Jesus and aren't going anywhere anytime soon. best to 'live the message of love'...and be extra intentional about the way you present your beliefs.
Fifty years ago, I “emerged” from among the ranks of evangelical (Baptist) ministers and shortly thereafter merged with the strange people known as religious skeptics and atheists. Fourteen years later, I “emerged” from among the skeptics/atheists and merged with the Charismatics. A year after that, I “emerged” from among the Charismatics and merged with those who admire the theology of the great evangelist and theologian, Charles G. Finney. While not in agreement with ol’ Charlie’s views on everything in his systematic theology, I firmly believe his soteriology has to be the rock of truth upon which the genuine church, the church that eventually emerges from thoroughly apostate churchianity, will find it’s theological and spiritual foundation…from whence all life that is truly alive “emerges.”
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Fight the good fight dudes!