I got a copy of the book "Evangelicals Engaging Emergent" in the mail. It is a book which calls itself on the back "A comprehensive Evangelical assessment of the Emergent/Emerging Church". I flipped through it and saw in the index that my name and our church was mentioned quite a bit in it. So I have been reading and scanning through it. There's some people I really respect who are some of the authors of this book such as the amazing church-observing Ed Stetzer and Darrell Bock from Dallas Seminary who I try to read everything he writes. So I was very intrigued to read it.
The book recalls the history of "the emerging church" and goes back and tells the origins and history. It was interesting reading it as for me the term "the emerging church" seems increasingly distant for me at this point. Due to all the confusion about what the term means (I blogged about it here) I am not really using the term anymore.
However, I did write a book called "The Emerging Church" back in 2002 (it came out in 2003) and it is quoted and discussed in this new book so I was remembering back on that time period. But today, I am not thinking too much in "emerging" categories and terminology like I was back then. However, (and this is an important however) it doesn't mean that I am not still very, very, very passionate about what got me into the whole emerging world (a passion and urgency felt for evangelism and mission).
Recently, due to this same passion I have shifted my personal focus and time into the Origins Project which is a network/community much with the same zeal that I felt back in the early days of what became the USA emerging church in the late 90's. When we were discussing how does what we do change as we are more and more experiencing shifts in our culture to be communicating and proclaiming the gospel and good news of Jesus? These shifts are still very much happening, so it isn't as though the need for mission has changed.
But as I was reading the book, I was reminded of some of the things that were so refreshing and good about the early days of the emerging church. Friendships comes to mind first. Such great times with people who helped me process faith and struggles and "what is church?". In the early years there wasn't all the theological controversy or terminology confusion that developed later. So it was so fun being on Youth Specialties/Zondervan editorial publishing team and going on several retreats with everyone on that team. Discussing new approaches to worship, leadership, and evangelism.
Memories like picking up Mark Driscoll from the airport when no one had ever heard of him yet when he was speaking for the first time at a conference and we talked about Social Distortion (the band) and connected for the first time back then. David Crowder Band leading worship at our young adult ministry two different times and sleeping in our parking lot in their bus. Watching Mark Oestreicher's hair morph and change annually and admiring his creativity with it. Making friends at Zondervan with Johnny and Paul and Stan and others. Friendships. I keep coming back to remembering and thinking about friendships most of all. It was a crazy and fun couple of years. And it's so weird in a way, seeing a book like this one discussing it all in retrospect and in an actual book by these authors.
I know now that through time various theologies and differences have been discussed as categories within the emerging church world have been created like here and here. And that different people in the emerging world now focus on different things, different theologies, different networks. But those early days were quite a fun few years and very life-saving for me in many ways.
Recently, I taught at Wheaton College for 3 days and in the class one of the topics in the class was a retrospective history of the emerging church and where it is at today. As part of that class, I compiled a list of 10 positive things I felt the whole emerging church discussion did for the church at large (I know there is also areas of concern and discussed those as well in the class). I will post what I taught those 10 positive things were in the next blog entry here, but for those interested in this topic, I have a question if you could respond to out of curiosity.
What do you think were the top good things that the emerging church discussion helped the church at-large or you with?
If you have any thoughts of how the emerging church discussion helped you positively, I would love to hear what they are.
I know we can list negative things or go into the theological controversies that we are probably all aware of. Or our disagreements theologically with various streams or highways or whatever we want to call the differences. But what are the good things that you think the emerging church discussion brought to the church?
Perhaps I am feeling reminiscent after reading through that book - and I will post what I feel were the best things that came out of the emerging church discussion. Much which is still going on with me and the church I ma part of, but it is refocused to what I feel the original discussion was about.
