lifeasmission

Scot McKnight – What is the Emerging Church?

November 7, 2006

I have people ask me pretty frequently to explain to them what the Emerging Church is and what it is all about. A few others are into the discussion enough to confuse the Emerging Church movement and the group known as Emergent.The other day I came across a paper delivered by Scot McKnight at Westminster Theological Seminary entitled, “What is the Emerging Church?” The paper was originally hosted on Mark Traphagen’s site, Sacred Journey, but I am hosting it as well.

Except for the book, “Emerging Churches,” by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, 2 of my professors at Fuller, which investigates actual emerging churches, their practices and hallmarks, this is the best treatment of the movement that I have read. Scot also spends some time helping people understand the difference between “Emerging” and “Emergent,” which is much needed.
If you care about the church in Western culture at all, I really want to encourage you to read this paper (30 double-spaced pages). But, if you just can’t manage, I will provide some highlights.

- Let the emerging folk define themselves, not others who think they get it (like D.A Carson)

- There is no such thing as “The Emerging Church” (this would be in effect another denomination and thereby discredit the very essence of emerging)

- It is a theological movement, but theological by virtue of ecclesiology and missiology as opposed to doctrinal statements

- The emerging movement is protestant (a protest) movement, it is not the same old stuff in new and improved packaging

- 4 rivers flow into the lake of the emerging movement

1. Postmodernism – as a denial of our ability to have purely objective truth or that this is what is most important for the Christian faith. Scot discusses the differences in ministering to, with, or as postmoderns
2. Praxis – involving worship, orthopraxy (right living), social justice, and being missional; also, admitting the way praxis shapes theology and theology shapes praxis
3. Post-evangelical – post-Bible study piety (certainly not post-Bible or post-Bible study), post-systematic theology, post-in/out way of thinking
4. Political – with no alignment to any one political party, but vitally concerned with any and all political issues, not separating those things typically considered sacred and secular

All four of these rivers are in contrast to typical evangelicalism which…

1. fears and shuns postmodernity as trendy at best or comletely relativistic at worst
2. tends to define worship as that which happens in a palce on Sunday morning, emphasizes believing the right things as what really matters, understands justice as secondary to and not intertwined with salvation, reconciliation, and restoration, and because of their theology, typically exists as attractional, wanting people to come and hear, rather than missional, wanting God’s people to go, tell, and live
3. is evanglical and exists in the realms described above
4. typically allies itself with the republican party and their ideologies

- the emerging church movement, increasingly finding expression in local churches arcoss denominational and confessional lines, is an ecclesiologial movement as opposed to a theological confession or an epistemological movement

Hopefully that summary helps, but again I strongly commend the paper to you. You can also try and listen to the audio of the presentation here. It is not the best quality, but you can do it. I found the audio here in wma format and converted it to mp3 to make it more universally available. If you want audio of better quality, you can purchase it here. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posted in: emergent, emerging, evangelical