New international "emerging" community forming

Just a few months after I posted a blog post about how I thought the Emerging church movement had wilted, I found a new shoot coming out of the stump.

Image: Life Wins by Leonard John Matthews @ Flickr

Dan Kimball (of Vintage Faith in Santa Cruz and author of numerous books on the early emerging church movement) recently did a teleseminar on Eric Bryant’s (of Mosaic in L.A.) blog.  One of the major items discussed in that teleseminar was a grassroots movement within the emerging church movement that is as yet without a name.  You can visit their website, however, at theoriginsproject.org .

Many of the ideas found within this new emerging group are very reminiscent of the old rhetoric of the emerging church, however there are some notable differences:

+ Refreshingly, this newer movement seems to have a much higher view of Scripture. The question has shifted from “how relevant is the Scripture to the culture? (and if it’s not, what do we do to Scripture?)” to “how can we make Scripture’s truth relevant to culture without watering down or splicing the Bible?”

+ This newer movement is unapologetic about evangelism. One of the criticisms of the older strain of the emerging church movement was that while it was theoretically a reaction against the “attractional” (come and see us) approach to doing evangelism and focused more on a “missional” (can we come and see you?) approach, it still ended up just being an attractional movement with the “attractive” elements changing.  The newer movement seems to be discussing proactively the failures in being “missional” and getting out into society rather than inviting society into a church that looked like (or actually was) a functioning coffee shop.

+ This newer movement is much more reformative than revolutionary. The old emerging model was revolutionary.  It sought to rise up against the “powers that be” (the mega-church movement) and topple it with a differing manifesto.  This newer movement is much more at ease with considering older evangelical (in the broadest sense) ideas on ecclesiology and missions.  This is apparent in the mere fact that this new movement considers the Lausaunne Covenant of 1974 it’s basic doctrinal statement and isn’t trying to create a new one.  Instead, it’s using theological statements that most conservative Christians would generally agree to in order to develop better “preferred practices”.

There are still some cautionary items in the newer group that make it hard to determine whether this will be a flash in the pan, a burgeoning heresy, or the solidification of more theologically conservative elements of the emerging church movement:

+  They have yet to declare a full separation from the Emergent Village denomination (really, that’s what they have basically become). Still, their doctrinal statements would leave out many of the more theologically liberal elements of that denomination.

+ They are still figuring out many of the finer contours of the group. Membership in this group currently seems to be limited to the “rock stars” like Erwin McManus, Todd Batterson, Dan Kimball, et al, and the “fan club,” (people like me who are watching from afar to see what develops.

However this turns out, I’m happy.  I have some new material to read and I think that this may be a much more Lutheran-friendly version of the emerging church ideologies that I appreciated in the “beta version” of the emerging church.  We will have to see.