Speaking of Christianity Today and emerging church, Scot McKnight has written another superb article on the emerging church scene in North America and UK. Well . . . mainly North America. Its called “Five Streams of the Emerging Church: Key elements of the most controversial and misunderstood movement in the church today.” Its one of those articles that is worth linking, pointing, printing, distributing, etc. No doubt it will be well read over the weekend.
Here are the 5:
Prophetic
Postmodern
Praxis-oriented
Post-evangelical
Political
Also: The emergence of emergent on CT
More on Scot at Tallskinnykiwi:
Emerging Movement: Future or Fad?
Emerging Church Blogger of the Year
Scot McKnight at Westminster
What is the Emerging Church?
Technorati Tags: emergent, emerging church
It’s a great article (imo). It was very helpful to me personally to be able to read a fair write-up of the emerging/emergent church. (Not least because Scot actually explained the difference between those two things)
I particularly liked this part:
Some emerging Christians see churches with pulpits in the center of a hall-like room with hard, wooden pews lined up in neat rows, and they wonder if there is another way to express—theologically, aesthetically, and anthropologically—what we do when we gather. They ask these sorts of questions: Is the sermon the most important thing on Sunday morning? If we sat in a circle would we foster a different theology and praxis? If we lit incense, would we practice our prayers differently? If we put the preacher on the same level as the congregation, would we create a clearer sense of the priesthood of all believers? If we acted out what we believe, would we encounter more emphatically the Incarnation?
so we are “counterparts”……
Hi Andrew!
I wrote an article in response to McArthurs attack on the EC at my blog. I would love to get your thoughts on it!
One thing I found a little bit disconcerting is his reference of you promoting churches without worship services. I would argue you would want to add extra elements to the worship service such as VJing, drama or alter the entire space/notion of worship. But other than that I waited on you to post something decent so I could refer to tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com 🙂
It will be great to catch up with you in Wilderswil and in Germany with [removed for security reasons by tsk] in May!
hi gabi
a lot of monastic style churches have daily times of worship and prayer and no longer have a weekly worship service. And many house churches meet many times during the week informally and therefore also do not have a weekly worship service. and many emerging churches meet in clubs and coffee shops for various reasons but a full blown worship service is not one of them.
so i think scot’s words are fine.
will you be in germany in may?? cool! see you there. and switzerland.
Oops, that’s a bit humiliating to admit but in my vocabulary worship service has been equated with the worship part of the service. Wonder why I’m not that much involved in theological discussions 😀 Maybe I should learn christianese first… or not 🙂 And of course in lights of that I cannot but fully agree! See you!