My paper on the emerging church is now online. It is in a journal along with some other issues. You can download the journal here and read my article inside. (I am not publishing it here so that that NOBTS web site gets a few hits.)

The journal flows from the influence of two major streams in the church today. Others have reported it elsewhere and I will repeat it here: there is great energy in the Reformed and in the emerging church movements-- much more than we find in some of the other movements vying for attention.

The first section deals with Calvinism. And, in the spirit of keeping my focus on the topic at hand, I am working hard to resist any comment on the contents thereof.

I wrote a paper on the emerging church. My paper is not a "Baptist" paper like some of the others in the journal. By that I mean I am not writing about Baptist denominational distinctives or from a Baptist denominational perspective as my presentation is more broadly evangelical. That is partly because I presented it first at the Evangelical Free Church Midwinter Ministerial, an annual denomination wide theology symposium of sorts that asked me to come in and keynote for a long (8 hour!) day. I shared a very truncated version at a conference on the emerging church at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. In both cases, I made revisions after each presentation and the presentations and paper have been a work in progress.

I welcome you to take a look at the paper and correct me where I am wrong, update or clarify my history, and just discuss in general. I am going to watch the thread for a bit and see what I can learn.

Three people "respond" to me in the journal: one says I was too hard, the other too soft, and the third just right. (Just kidding.) The other papers all share their own ideas-- they are not simply responses to my thoughts. They are worth a read. One is written by the President of a College (Free Will Baptist Bible College). He has a good grasp of the issues. The second is by Jack Allen, who may have been off his medication when he wrote it. And the third is by Page Brooks, a professor at NOBTS, who told me that he mostly agreed with me because he read all my books while a student. (I immediately commented to him that I was ONLY 42. Grin.)

Andrew Jones (tallskinny kiwi) was gracious enough to take a read and help me out with some suggestions. As part of the research, we had help (on the history part) from Dave Travis, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Andrew Jones, and Brian McLaren. If you have any more ideas on the history, I would be particularly interested as I will publish that part in a book (linked here). I focused on the U.S. expressions here, but have about 6 pages I edited out (due to space) that dealt with more international expressions.

With that being said, my evaluation is my evaluation. And, for that matter, historical errors are my own as well. I have tried to be fair and that means I will please few. But, such is life. I am a critic of some things in the Emerging Church, but I work hard to be an honest one. (When you have been lied about yourself by key religious leaders, I think you try to be more sensitive to others.) But, at the end of the day, I think an increasing number of voices who identify themselves as evangelical and emerging are expressing concerns similar to those here-- my paper is neither brilliant or filled with new insights.

This paper was done before I did some additional interviews with some leaders of the Emerging Church. I will put those here on the blog so you can hear from them directly over the next few weeks. Don't just listen to people talk about people--listen to the people about whom they are talking.

As I mentioned at the conferences, if you want to know more about the emerging church, the books I recommend (read in order) are:

1. The New Christians by Jones
2. Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger
3. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by Carson
4. Why We Are Not Emergent by DeYoung and Kluck

I suggest you read them in order because you should hear from a movement before you critique a movement. The books I list are not necessarily the best, but I think they are helpful because they are influential and help you to understand the ideas of proponents and critics of the movement.

I have started into Phyllis Tickle's new book so that may bump the order around a bit. However, I am having doubts about her premise that "emergence" is a 500 year shift of Christian faith. I will delve into that later, but I simply do not see the movement as nearly that influential. This week many have said that emerging is going away-- well, I doubt that. However, I do not think it is the new Protestant Reformation either.

Once you get over your fixation with printed paper, read the Emergent Village blog, Tall Skinny Kiwi (Andrew Jones), and Jesus Creed (Scott McKnight) to better understand the emerging church and its beliefs.

It's also worth noting that in the midst of all this emerging/emergent talk, there is in-house discussion about the validity of the continued use of the terms themselves. Without theological unity among those who adopt the term "emerging," and in light of the ongoing confusion between Emergent and emerging, many are dropping or distancing themselves from these words. Dan Kimball is holding onto what "emerging" meant years ago when he wrote his book, The Emerging Church, but believes the term is used so broadly that defining it today is difficult. Bob Hyatt is just about done with the term, Andrew Jones is dumping it, and Doug Pagitt is using a new term (in addition to the others).

The emerging and Emergent church is an important ecclesiological issue worth working through. Check out the links and my paper, and as always...