The Emerging Church

Introduction

When one attempts to study the theology of the Emerging Church, it is easy to find onself with a mental question mark in one's mind. In ways, it can feel like attempting to navigate a giant maze, one filled with a myriad of posed questions that never seemed to be answered, numerous seemingly contradictory positions and views, a number of people to remember that do not exactly share the same views and several semantic variations like emerging versus emergent, missions versus missional, lower case evangelical versus capital Evangelical. The fact is that to define a movement such as the Emerging Church is near impossible. It is difficult to pin down a definition of the Emerging Church for several reasons: They are not able to
clearly define themselves. Secondly, they have not made up their mind, what to deconstruct and reconstruct in historical Christianity. Thirdly, they do not know what the final emerging Christian is supposed to look like. Lastly, contemporary churches that do not follow this theology are getting included based on inaccurate assumptions. Therefore, to keep from running down any rabbit trails, a brief overview and analysis of the main topics will be addressed.
The Emerging Church takes its name from the desire of its leaders to leave behind evangelicalism with its roots entangled in modernism and move towards a new modality of Christianity that is relevant and meaningful to today’s postmodern society.
The movement seeks to rethink and reassess the “old” way of doing church that only led to discontent, and transform into a more effective and satisfying way of following Jesus. One of the first books to attempt to define the Emerging Movement says, “emerging churches are missional communities arising from within postmodern culture and consisting of followers of Jesus who are seeking to be faithful in their place and time.” Even though the movement has a number of “streams” of thought and practice, many of these, though not all, find their basis in two key beliefs – that truth can only be ascertained within the framework of one’s context and with the guidance of one’s community and that followers of Jesus should worship Him authentically and holistically. These two beliefs have profound impact on how the Emerging Church conducts itself and how it chooses to practice its faith. These beliefs have led to some practices that are to be applauded and others that should be condemned. Only by examining and evaluating the core doctrines and behavior of the movement, can one discover what the implications of the Emerging Church are for contemporary Evangelicals. While the Emerging Church is accurate in its assessment of evangelical orthodoxy
as ineffective in reaching today’s culture, the movement in some aspects, gone to the extreme, in an attempt to distance themselves. Contemporary evangelicals should listen to and think critically about the Emerging Church movement’s critique of evangelicalism and yet resist the extremism. Contemporary evangelicals must strive to remain in the “center of biblical tension.”