I wrote the following post for Emergent Village.
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Is the emerging church dying or maturing?
Last year I wrote a year end summary called The State of Emergence. In many ways it was an attempt to create some meaningful understanding of this thing we participate in called Emergence, which is manifested in the idea of an “emerging church.” Something is happening within our conversations that is disrupting all of our preconceived notions about the Kingdom of God. As much as we want the conversation to be over, the reality is we’re still exploring exactly what is happening. It continues to unfold.
But over the last year, and much like the year before, we encountered significant voices who were walking away from the conversation. The underlying question seems to be, “Has the conversation truly died?” As much as some want to say, “yes”, I would suggest that the answer is a resounding, “no”.
Before we rush into the evidence of maturity, it is important to reflect on why some think the conversation is dying. We cannot ignore the well documented history of the U.S. version of the emerging church. What started out as a Leadership Network’s idea to reach the Gen X audience, morphed into a conversation that attempted to address the post-modern shift in culture. Those original gatherings provided the initial sense of movement. That sense of thrill was documented in Danielle Shroyer’s recent post, “What do you do when a revolution isn’t sexy anymore?“ Danielle said:
“I stumbled into this conversation as an eighteen year old college freshman in Waco, Texas. A few short years later, I felt as if I’d accidentally been placed among a fabulous group of people who happened to be sitting on top of a revolutionary volcano. It was thrilling, and sexy, and I quite literally believed that we were going to change the world. I can recall that feeling like it was yesterday.”
But like any movement, things changed…
Read the rest at Emergent Village.
