What Are We Talking About? At the heart of the Emergent Church movement-or as some of its leaders prefer to call it, the "conversation"-lies the conviction that changes in the culture signal that a new church is "emerging." Christian leaders must therefore adapt to this emerging church. Those who fail to do so are blind […]
Stanley Grenz died of a brain aneurysm in March 2005. He was one of the principal theologians on hand at the February 2005 Emergent Church convention in San Diego. Modern Reformation had an opportunity to discuss some of his thoughts about this new movement just weeks before his death. MR: What is Emergent Church all […]
Church Re-imagined reads like a collection of journals. While the bulk of the material is by Doug Pagitt, the journal entries by some of the members of Solomon's Porch, the missional Christian community in Minneapolis where Pagitt pastors, give the reader a broader perspective than the personal view of the pastor. Each chapter focuses on […]
Travel writer Pico Iyer confesses that he likes airports a lot. Part mall, part border-crossing, they buzz with the ambient noise of postmodern consciousness, representing an "everywhere" that is really no actual place at all. Those of us who can't remember when we were not always on the go, repeatedly uprooted growing up, living in […]
Martin Marty's forward to Richard Foster's book raises an interesting challenge to modern-day Christians. How do we present a moored spirituality, rooted in truth to New Agers who create their own self-centered spirituality grounded completely in their own personal experiences? The book never really answers the question. Rather, Foster's anecdotal collection of Christian spirituality runs […]
Leslie Newbigin's book, a well-thought-out and well-intentioned attempt to relate the gospel to the postmodernist movement, brings to bear the hopes and frustrations of Newbigin fostered by three experiences and motivations: his work in missions in India, his leadership role in evangelism with the theologically deteriorating World Council of Churches in the 1950s, and his […]
It started out a cold and snowy day in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I was heading to the airport, where I was to fly to a significantly warmer San Diego in order to attend an Emergent Church convention. Once there, my job was to secure an interview with Brian McLaren, attend various seminars, and talk to attendees-all […]
There is a tendency to overestimate the impact of phenomena in the short run and underestimate it in the long run" (Roy Imara of the Institute for the Future [IFTF]). This is the balancing act that Christians are called to in regard to the cultural tidal wave that Leonard Sweet describes in this unfortunately named […]
Over the last few decades, Duke ethicist Stanley Hauerwas has been a thorn in the side of his colleagues both in the church and academy, mainline and evangelical, who would endeavor to make the Christian faith a friend rather than an enemy of American civil religion. Allies will not be disappointed with A Better Hope, […]
Leonard Sweet has a beef with modernistic western Christianity. Alerting us to the damage as he sees it, Sweet is instead calling us to embrace an alternative way of looking at faith and to accept an invitation to "get lost in the Godlife relationship." Sweet seeks to lead us "out of the question": out of […]
Michael Horton:Hello and welcome to a special discussion on the Emergent Church movement. In this discussion, we're not analyzing the movement and offering critique and solutions. We're going to be discussing our own churches and some of the challenges that the Emergent folks have offered to us and maybe also some things that are already […]
The postmodern shift taking place in today's intellectual and spiritual world has presented evangelicals with a formidable challenge. However we describe postmodernism's characteristics, we must be honest in recognizing that something really is happening. The prevailing worldview of Western society is changing, and evangelicals face an inescapable imperative to think seriously about how the church […]
Editor's Note: Brian McLaren, senior pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Baltimore, Maryland, is a leading voice of the Emergent movement. He was recently featured in TIME magazine, was a guest on Larry King Live, and is a frequent contributor to evangelical publications. Our conversation with McLaren occurred this past February when he was […]
