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I’ve read some stuff on emerging churches, and by no means am I complete expert on it. However, I’ve read enough to be fluent on what it is and where it might be going.

One issue that comes up for our context is evangelism and emerging churches.

Scott McKnight, one of my former professors at seminary, and now a college teacher offers this warning.

This emerging ambivalence [in emerging churches] about who is in and who is out creates a serious problem for evangelism. The emerging movement is not known for it, but I wish it were. Unless you proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, there is no good news at all—and if there is no Good News, then there is no Christianity, emerging or evangelical.Personally, I’m an evangelist. Not so much the tract-toting, door-knocking kind, but the Jesus-talking and Jesus-teaching kind. I spend time praying in my office before class and pondering about how to teach in order to bring home the message of the gospel.

So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.

read the entire article here: Five Streams of the Emerging Church. I recommend the whole article because I think it fairly portrays the Emerging Church.

A reaction:

A blog writer that I found today offers this reaction:
There are a couple shifts in EC theology that cause them to arrive at different methods of evangelism.

First, What is the Gospel? Most in the EC have shifted focus from the Epistles to the Gospels to understand the nature of the gospel (Emerging Churches, 48). Hence, the gospel is “simply put, Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was arriving” (EC, 53).

Second, this shift of focus from cross to kingdom does not eliminate evangelism, but it does help reduce the modern, individualistic, consumeristic gospel that is packaged and sold as “Jesus died for your sins so you can go to heaven.”

The EC maintains the truth of Christ’s passion and redemption and retains the belief in the uniqueness of Christ and his sacrifice, however the emphasis has shifted. Repentance still means changing ones direction and reorienting oneself toward God, but the recognition of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God by Jesus takes central focus. What results is that evangelism is word AND deed.

The author cites this book: Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures

What do I think?
The Emerging church has a good focus on “belonging” before belief.

The danger that McKnight points out is that if the focus is on belonging, than helping people come to belief in Christ may be neglected. To call people to repentance is a call to change belief in many things: who is Lord of my life, what authority will rule my life. The call to repentance by definition requires an either/or decision that will cause some people not to want to belong. Some groups may choose to neglect the call to repentance simply because of the potential harm to the sense of belonging. Some groups may so focus on belonging that they neglect calling for a committment to Christ — everything is acceptable because belonging is more important than belief.

On the other hand, the emerging church allows people the time and space to discover what they believe in a safe context of community. Most traditional / mainline types require belief (here meaning full agreement to a set of propositions) before belonging. “You are not one of us if you have not made a decision, said a prayer, and / or get baptized. Until you do, you cannot serve in our midst, play an instrument, or even work in the tape ministry or homeless shelter with us.”

The strength of the emerging church is allowing people to belong first while discovering their faith in Christ.

I do believe that evangelism happens in emerging churches. The form is very different than what prior generations may have become accustomed to. It is word and deed. However, in some places, evangelism may not happen because its just a neglected priorty.

Let me ask you this:?
Put the Emerging churches aside. Do you do evangelism at all either in your daily walk or in your church?

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