What is the Emerging Church?

Brian,
Thanks for this. Many will want to listen or read these.

Pete,
I've heard more than one compare the Emerging and Vineyard movements. For my take, the Emerging Movement is more like the Jesus Movement of the 60s, but there are definite similarlities with Vineyard at some levels. A major, major difference has to do with Pagitt, Jones, and Seay and the need to minister to youth in a new generation as the impetus for its origins.

Christine,
I'm not a historian of the Vineyard at all, but this is news to me: I'm one of those who when you say "Vineyard" I say "John Wimber."

Whom I once spent an evening with.

John,
Brian and Doug have recently said some things along this line, and they tire (as do I) of defining "it." I think the more who say similar things the better it will get.

Now for me one of the major issues is that Emerging refuses to set out a doctrinal statement as its definition -- which is a wonderful commitment. Over time, and you see this in Pagitt's book, the movement will be articulated by the way it lives. That, I think, is its genius.

Marko,
In this definition-driven life of ours it is necessary.

But no Hawaii shirts at this time of the year for me.

Wolf Paul,

Thanks for this. For the sake of the readers of this blog, could you explain your first three sentences a little more? Thanks.

Scot asked me to clarify my comment #11 above. I apologize for the brevity of it but I wrote it with a stylus on my ipaq while sitting in the bathtub which is very conducive to reading and thinking, but not to verbose writing :-)

In his post, Scot had quoted Wikipedia on the EM as follows:

During recent centuries, Western Christianity was influenced significantly by Modernism in the sense that it sought to take the individual narratives of the Bible and from them extract a set of underlying truths or meta-narratives. Using methods borrowed from scientific reductionism it was hoped that a grand truth and worldview would be attained. In practice, the modernist approach led to additional schism within the Church.

The Wikipedia article then goes on to contrast a post-modern approach with this.

My question was as follows: If this characterization is true -- i.e. that the modern approach tries to extract 'meta-narratives', i.e. generally applicable truths and doctrines, from the individual biblical narratives, and that this has historically led to division rather than unity in the church, then the question is this: when did this questionable modern approach start? Generally, modernity is counted from around 1400 AD, but the church, considering itself led by the Holy Spirit, began to formulate generally valid truths and doctrines much earlier (like over a thousand years earlier), and I would be extremely hesitant to throw all of that out. This includes such things as the Nicean Creed, the doctrine of the Trinity, etc.

I agree that there were phases when the Church, or segments of the Church, went overboard in their attempts to 'extract meta-narratives' from Scripture (examples which come to mind are the Scholastics debating the number of angels which can dance on the point of a pin at the same time, but also more recently fundamentalist protestants trying to pin down the mode of the inspiration of Scripture, or some others declaring a specific translation into English the canonical and inspired Word of God), these things are relatively easy to identify and thus avoid.

I would have a major problem if we emphasized relationship and praxis to the extent that we no longer admit to any sort of propositional (doctrinal, moral, etc.) content to the "faith once delivered to the saints". I believe we see a good example of what this would lead to in the current crisis in the Episcopal Church and some other member churches of the Anglican Communion.

Mind you, I am not saying that this is happening in the EM -- I don't yet know enough about it -- but there are some critics of the movement who are at least implying that this is the direction it seems to be moving. I would be more than happy to hear this charge debunked.

What would you or the emergent movement at large say to claims that in the attempt to move away from the limiting "narrow traditionalism" (for lack of a better phrase), there is actually a failure to face tough, truth-related questions? What is it about the human psyche that wants and doesn't want definition and boundaries, how much of this should we leave up to God, and how does the emergent movement respond to this? (This question is largely taken from my readings in D.A. Carson's book "Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church.")
I am a senior at a private christian college, and am becoming extremely excited as my "research project" on the emergent movement is becoming more of a "jumping in."

Hey Scot, I was wondering whether or not you knew how the term "emerging church" came to be? Who penned it or coined it first? And why did they choose to describe the "conversation/movement/dialogue" as such (a colleague of mine suggested Stanley Grenz as the creative mind behind the term - I am not sure)? What picture or image was their original description attempting to paint and draw? Thank you for any thoughts. Peace.