1.4 History

1.3 History

Another helpful tool in discovering the agenda of this conversation is to look at the movements’ history.
The best summarization of their history comes from Gibbs and Bolger. They see the roots of the movement with the Gen-X churches in the U.S. that began in 1986 in California. Gen-X churches’ meetings were characterized by loud worship, directed towards God and the believer, narrative preaching and later candles and the arts. ‘The bulk of church practice remained the same as their conservative Baptist, seeker, new paradigm, purpose driven predecessors; only the surface technique changed.’[1] In the nineties, a new version came on the scene, the Gen-X church that was financially supported by a megachurch. The equivalent in the U.K. would be the youth congregations such as Soul Survivor, Eternity and NGM (New Generation Ministries). A big shift was seen in 1997: “At Gen-X 2.0 … the second annual conference on Gen-X put on by the Young Leaders Network (YLN), conversations grew around the topic of postmodernity. Although the conference touted the Gen-X theme, the buzz was about moving beyond generational ministry techniques.”[2] From YLN morphed the Terra Nova Theological Project, which later became Emergent.[3] Gibbs and Bolger go on to describe the ‘aha-erlebnis’ of a number of Emerging leaders and writers (the likes of Todd Hunter, Dan Kimball, Karen Ward and Brad Cecil). They all depict a point in time on which they realized that the generational problem wasn’t the actual issue. Rather, it was the shift from modern to postmodern culture. And ‘[t]aking postmodernity seriously requires that all church practices come into question.’[4]
A conversation started about whether or not it was possible for a postmodern Christian to consider himself evangelical. Dave Tomlinson was probably the first church leader to discuss this in his book The Post-Evangelical.[5] This book is well known for the questions it dared to ask evangelical churches, but also for the lack of answers it proposed. As a result Emerging leaders in general have distanced themselves from evangelical Christianity to a certain extent, they ‘may find congruence with the term evangelical in the broad historical sense, but the label does not define these leaders as it has for evangelical leaders in the past.’[6] Postevangelical is a term that some think is unhelpful because it tends to fall into the trap of defining itself against something, which gives a lot of power to the old.
In 1998, Brian McLaren published his first book, Reinventing Your Church[7], which was a major contribution to the discussion about church in postmodern culture.
At present, the Emerging Church is the conversation between church leaders all over the world who realize that they need new forms of church that relate to that emerging culture.

Carson, one of the Emerging Churches’ critics, rightly states that ‘[i]t is difficult to gain a full appreciation of the distinctives of the movement without listening attentively to the life-stories of its leaders.’[8] And a quick survey of some of these life-stories tells us that many of the spokesmen come from a conservative, traditional background sometimes with a fundamentalist streak. And this brings us to one of the primary characteristics of the movement: protest.

[1] Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches, p.30
[2] Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches, p.32
[3] Note that Emergent US, or Emergent UK for that matter, are the more organized expressions of the Emerging Church conversation (e.g. they have a website, http://www.emergentvillage.com/, can be supported and organize events and gatherings), however they don’t represent the worldwide phenomenon of the Emerging Church. ‘[A]void using “emerging” and “emergent” interchangeably: in spite of plenty of folks making it clear that “emergent” is an association of persons and gatherings with the Emergent-US or Emergent-UK, and “emerging” being a much wider phenomenon, many continue to use these terms interchangeably. Distinguish the two if you can.’ Scott McKnight (http://www.jesuscreed.org/?p=604)
[4] Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches, p.34
[5] D. Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical (London: Triangle, 1995)
[6] Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches, p.36
[7] B.D. McLaren, Reinventing Your Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998)
[8] D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2005) p.14