About The Emergents - Part Two

(Click here for the first installment in this series.)

Instead of drawing sharp lines between emergent and non-emergent churches, which creates an unhelpful “us vs. them” mentality, perhaps we should think of it as a spectrum. The old way of doing church is on one end, and the new way is on the other. All Christians fall somewhere on the spectrum.


Here’s the key to understanding the spectrum, and where the emergents sometimes misunderstand the situation: The Holy Spirit is moving and shaping the new reality from all ends of the spectrum – not just from the emergent end. The new reality, which is the product of the 500-year shift that we are all going through, exists above the spectrum and emerges from both ends of the spectrum. Which means that the new reality will not be the result of everything changing, but of some things changing, and some things staying the same.

This new reality will be organic in the way it involves. We can’t neatly divide the church into those who are working for change and those who are working against it. It is not a matter of one group or one ideology triumphing over another. The new reality is the result of the struggle between the desire for something new, and the desire to hold onto what is good – a struggle that exists on some level in every church, in every faction and ideology, and in every individual believer. Which is why all need to put ourselves somewhere on that spectrum and understand that God is working a new thing in and through us no matter where we might stand.

So it’s not a matter of deciding “who’s in or who’s out,” or “who gets it and who doesn’t”. It’s a matter of affirming that God’s grace is creating a new reality in all churches and in all Christians, in ways that are wonderful and mysterious. My biggest concern with much of the emergent theory I have read is that it has an unspoken attitude of “we get it, and they don’t,” or “we’re the future of the church, and they’re not.” We need not divide ourselves in such a dramatic way.