Feb. 28, 2007

By Michael McCormack

NEW ORLEANS -- What is the Emerging Church?

Scot McKnight, professor at North Park University in Chicago and author of the book The Jesus Creed and the blogsite www.jesuscreed.org, spoke on the Emerging Church movement at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS) Tuesday, Feb. 13.

McKnight, both a critic and an apologist of the Emerging Church, offered a valuable perspective on the difficult-to-define movement. Instead of a rigid definition, McKnight offered four common characteristics of emerging churches. These commonalities, or harmonies, were gleaned from Bob Whitesel’s book Inside the Organic Church, McKnight said. The first common characteristic involved the movement’s theology.

“By and large, almost uniformly, these churches are entirely orthodox in their theology,” McKnight said of Whitesel’s findings.

Another commonality is a concern for authenticity, both within the church and with those not in the church.

“The third [harmony] is that their gospel is both social and spiritual,” he said. “They want to have a balance between the spiritual salvation and a holistic salvation.”

Then, a natural outgrowth of the concern for authenticity and a gospel with both social and spiritual implications is a clear focus on “missional church growth.”

For McKnight, Whitesel’s point on the orthodoxy of the Emerging Church was a relief, given the common concern that the Emerging Church has forgotten its theological roots. According to McKnight, emerging churches, for the most part, hold to an evangelical-based theology that is “sprouting new wings.”

Ed Stetzer, a lead church planter for the North American Mission Board, recently commented on the orthodoxy of the Emerging Church on the NOBTS Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry’s blog. Stetzer places Emerging Church leaders into three categories – relevants, reconstructionists and revisionists.

While the first two groups remain true to Scripture and strive to make the church relevant to today’s culture, revisionists, Stetzer said, depart from an evangelical understanding of “what the Bible is, what it teaches and how we should live it in our churches.”

Stetzer encouraged leaders of more traditional churches to engage and dialogue with Emerging Church leaders, whatever their position.

“We need to speak clearly when the clear teaching of Scripture is disregarded or misunderstood. We need to speak honestly about the need for discernment and maturity in such contexts,” he said. “But most importantly, we need to rejoice when we find a biblically-faithful church in emerging culture, just as we would a biblically-faithful traditional church or a biblically-faithful Purpose-Driven church.”

McKnight also stressed the importance of dialogue between Christians who are a part of the Emerging Church Movement and those who are not.

“Maybe there’s something here we can all learn from,” he said. “I believe Whitesel’s book can help churches see what they can learn from the Emerging Movement.”

McKnight also suggested five qualities of emerging churches or “five streams flowing into ‘Lake Emerging’.” Some leaders major in one quality, while other leaders demonstrate them all. Given the four harmonies listed above, none of the common qualities he offered is surprising.

First, he said that Emerging Church leaders are often provocative or prophetic in their language.

“This movement likes to be provocative. When Brian McClaren says some things, I just think he’s funny,” McKnight said. “Other people take him seriously. I don’t. He’s just trying to stir the pot.”

Another quality of emerging churches is that they are postmodern. McKnight said that some emerging churches minister to postmoderns, while others minister with postmoderns. The danger comes, he said, when churches minister as postmoderns.

“When it embraces postmodernity, it is doing nothing more than it is criticizing other people who embrace modernity,” McKnight said. “Instead of making a cultural critique, it becomes embedded in the culture and can no longer offer the cultural critique Jesus offers.”

A third major stream of the Emerging Church is that it is praxis-oriented. The Emerging Church’s concern with the application of its beliefs is seen in worship style, McKnight said.

Oftentimes, candles, incense, painting, drawing and journaling coincide with the pastor’s sermon. People with different interests or talents respond simultaneously to the message preached.

Their focus on praxis does not only affect worship, though. It also drives participants in the Emerging Church movement to be missional. And it is that emphasis on theology-in-action that draws a fine line between more traditional churches and emerging churches. Whereas most traditional churches teach that belief leads to action, emerging churches see their praxis giving rise to their theology.

McKnight said a fourth stream of the Emerging Church movement is that it is post-evangelical.

“A lot of people don’t know exactly what this term means,” he said, “but they know that they’ve been there and done that and they don’t want to be there any longer. Most of them are still evangelical, but they’re seeking a new way to do church.”

A common manifestation of this post-evangelical standpoint is its nervousness about systematic theology. McKnight said it’s not that people in the Emerging Church do not read theology but that they do not believe that God revealed His truth by means of a system. There is a tension between the narrative of Scripture and the effort to systematize its teachings, McKnight said. Systematic theologies may be true, but they prefer to take the Bible in its entirety and apply it to everyday life.

Lastly, McKnight said the Emerging Church tends to be political.

“They are mostly democrats,” he said. “They like to say they’re independent, and I tell them ‘Y’all are just a bunch of democrats.’”

McKnight warned that, in this stream of the Emerging Church movement, he fears that eventually there will be no spiritual salvation but only a social salvation.

“I don’t agree with that. I believe in evangelism,” he said. “So I am calling them at times to be more balanced. It’s fine to be social but not to the exclusion of evangelism.”

In all, McKnight gave three presentations while at New Orleans Seminary. The others focused on understanding the atonement and understanding conversion. However, in each case the importance of community, commitment and authenticity within the Christian church was a major theme.  

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