The Emergent Mystique - Christianity Today

Christianity Today weighs in on the "emerging church":


"Gentlemen, start your hair dryers-not since the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s has a Christian phenomenon been so closely entangled with the self-conscious cutting edge of U.S. culture. Frequently urban, disproportionately young, overwhelmingly white, and very new-few have been in existence for more than five years-a growing number of churches are joining the ranks of the 'emerging church.'

Like all labels, this one conceals as much as it reveals. But the phrase 'emerging church' captures several important features of a new generation of churches. They are works in progress, often startlingly improvisational in their approach to everything from worship to leadership to preaching to prayer. Like their own members, they live in the half-future tense of the young, oriented toward their promise rather than their past. But if their own focus is on what they are 'emerging' toward, perhaps most surprising are the places they are emerging from."


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