Emerging Church

The Emerging Church (also called " Emerging Conversation" and "Emerging Churches" ) is a distributed, highly heterogeneous movement of various Christians who wish to respond to their environment and in their tradition to the challenges of postmodernism. The Emerging Church ( " emerging church " ) transmits the latest findings in biology, neuroscience, economics and philosophy to the situation of the community.

• 5.1 Blogs
• 5.2 Church as a network
• 5.3 Cultural Relevance
• 5.4 Social Commitment
• 5.5 inclusivism
• 5.6 liturgical innovations

• 9.1 criticism

Name

The English past participles emerging means something like " be in the making " and is used in English in different contexts. It is intended to indicate that the movement is in flux, wants to constantly develop and described himself as unfinished and fragile. Therefore, a certain shyness about to be strongly determined and defined. There was some discussion as to whether you want to call yourself a church or movement, since one could misunderstand this as the homogeneity of their own denomination. Therefore, many prefer the term "Emerging Conversation" as that term is inclusive ( the threshold to participate in a conversation, is lower than the threshold, a movement or church to join ).

Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs titled her book that should represent this movement, with "Emerging Churches" to represent plurality.

Also, the term "emerging " to be understood as based on the theory of emergence, inter alia, describes the behavior of social systems with a flat hierarchy.

To be differentiated from organizations such as the Emerging Church Emergent Village (USA) or Emergent Germany (D), which mostly consist of various heads of Emerging Churches, but not claim to represent the entire movement.

Various streams

At the Emerging Conversation take a variety of people from different backgrounds in part: Church founder, educated laymen, artists, media professionals and academics. One can therefore make different currents of the Emerging Church:

• A strong theological direction that mainly consists of Postevangelikalen and post- charismatics, but also increasingly from Catholics, (post - ) Liberals and Orthodox Christians. One example is Scot McKnight.

• Innovative evangelicals who want to alter without major theological changes in services so that they are attractive to postmodern influenced people. These include Dan Kimball, whose book " Emerging Church " has been translated into German.

• Commuters between theory and practice: try using sociological theories community as a network of relationships to understand and shape. In addition, they often create extremely innovative and creative liturgies. An example is originally from the UK alternative worship movement that has arisen quite independently of the American emerging church movement.

There are people who consider themselves the emerging church movement as not belonging and still share most of their values ​​.

Confrontation with the postmodern

According to Marc Driscoll the history of the Emerging Church ( in America) began within the so-called Leadership Networks in the 90s. This was a progressive evangelical group, which initially dealt with it, as the Christian belief of "Generation X" could be brought home. But soon noticed, however, that it was much more important, generational changes that have taken place in society. So they came upon different theories of postmodernism: the questioning of the Western world view, which in the wake of the Enlightenment and rationalism - the leader was René Descartes - and was a purely rational argument and the general reason emphasized. Postmodern thinkers tried the paradigms of modernity to question, for example, by deconstruction. When dealing with postmodern thinkers few Christians realized that their own traditions are often more influenced by modernist presuppositions than they had previously thought. But these be today at the Annunciation and the living out of the Gospel in the way and would have to be equally questioned and replaced.

Theological trends

In the emerging church movement there, including with regard to theology, not homogeneity. Many basically try their tradition to remain theologically faithful, but to put some new accents. However, some theological tendencies are yet to determine, even if they are not shared equally by all:

Incarnation

Very centrally is the incarnation - the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. This is taken as a starting point to show that one also has to incarnate the Gospel in different cultures. This is in contrast to the view to bring the gospel to other cultures, since the former represents a major interaction between culture and gospel. This view, which emphasizes that one must live in this world and not flee from it, is also a counterweight to the strong subculture formation in the free-church Christianity.

Kingdom of God

A strong focus is also the kingdom of God. In an attempt to emphasize the Jewish roots of the Christian faith stronger, one tries to put a special emphasis on the kingdom of God. Related to this is the term " missional ", which is to delineate " missionary" of. It is the attempt to find a holistic mission concept, the social and cultural commitment with includes. Much of this is, that mission is no activity of the Church, but an act of God in society that can support the church, but also hamper. In Evangelicals often means a turning away from a prämilleniaristischen eschatology (expectation of Christ's return before the onset of the biblical "Thousand Year Reich "), which is felt to be cynical, to models that are seen as hopeful.

Communitarianism

There are some substantial overlap with the communitarianism (consciously or unconsciously ) because, for example, criticizes the fact that Protestant Christianity as a result of the Reformation sets too high a value on the individual and his relationship with God and neglected the aspect of the community. Some Emerging Churches try out new monastery-like models of church.

Narrative theology

Emerging Church emphasizes the narrative aspect of theology. This takes place on two levels: on the one hand on the stylistic, the other on the theological level. On the stylistic level, the story is preferred as a means of communication of an abstract, systematic preaching. Story, the telling of personal experiences, simile similar fictional stories or elaborate, ambiguous texts that are used in worship mean here. On the other hand, many understand the Bible itself as a great story. It is now no more to extract from the story by analyzing systematically abstract dogmas, but it retains the form of the story in and learns to empathize with them. An example of this is Brian McLaren's "The story we find ourselves in "; an apologetic book, which is written in story form.

Ecumenism

As a core value is the willingness for dialogue, learning from other traditions is paramount. However, the approach to the subject is less - as the previous model of ecumenism - "top-down ", that is marked by writing common theological statements rather than "bottom-up ", ie fixed focus more on networking of interested laymen and cooperation.

Practice

Blogs

The Emerging Conversation is mainly characterized in that it is situates in a very large part ( in addition to traditional forms such as conferences, panel discussions, etc. ) on the Internet. Most of the theological and practical debates are taking place on blogs. Thus, the emerging conversation has the character of a global network.

Church as a network

Lower intake of certain sociological theories Church is increasingly understood as a decentralized network. The Institutional and Formal church is to be restricted, hierarchies are to be flattened; so, a stronger participation of all participants will be achieved. This corresponds to the Reformation emphasis on the priesthood of all believers.

Cultural Relevance

Emerging Church can be well understood as an attempt to put the Christian faith with the culture in dialogue. Therefore, it is nearly all Emerging Churches important to know the current culture to live in it and to actively participate in cultural creation.

Social Commitment

From the broader mission concept and the requirement that orthodoxy ( the right faith) with orthopraxy must go together ( the right action ), followed by a strong emphasis on social engagement. On the one hand, this may include classical diaconal activities, on the other hand, advocating for social justice is required. In America, parts of the Emerging Church are positioned against the Christian right, as it is too neglected this aspect.

Inclusivism

Emerging Church also means the attempt to integrate different cultural backgrounds in the church. No longer just the bourgeois middle class will not only support the religion - which would always associated with demarcation and exclusion - but various cultures and subcultures shall be welcome.

Liturgical innovations

The most striking feature of certain Emerging Churches are the liturgical innovations. While it is often stressed that the emerging church really puts less emphasis on the church as a central element, but many Emerging Churches put great energy into the design of new forms of worship. Here also the participatory approach plays a role: many will contribute to the design of the service and consume it not only passively. This can come into play certain objects from the everyday world, creative contributions, use of new media and old forms like incense. The entire service is to communicate a message, rather than to restrict the substantive part of a central sermon.

Criticism

The emerging church movement has been criticized by conservative evangelicals particularly far. Central to this is a book by Donald A. Carson. Here are the views of a conductor of Emergent Village, Brian McLaren, particularly criticized. It was replied that Brian McLaren is not representative of the movement. An overview of various reviews Andrew Jones has put together.

Various criticisms are:

• Relativism: The Emerging Church, as conservative critics, puts too much emphasis on plurality and thus loses the absolute truth of the gospel from the eyes. Particularly lacking the critics in some statements the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ.

• Theology of the cross: Where in the Emerging Conversation voices are not representing a typical Reformed theology of the cross, they will be criticized.

• Secularization: Adapting to the zeitgeist and lack of criticism of society.