Tony Campolo has an article in the Winston-Salem Journal called Growing: Movement is New Form of Evangelism. Thoughts? Before I comment on the article, I’d just like to say that I certainly don’t want to write an article on “what is the Emerging church” – because I think that it is so many different things to so many different people. For some, it’s a way to worship in a new way. For others, it’s a license to be free to question and doubt and feel safe(r). For yet others, it’s the ability to meet with others who are like-minded, get all their bitching out of their systems, and then begin to (re)think/imagine/construct what an “emerging” church might look like: and how that does impact our worship, our ecclesiology and (most) importantly, our theology. At any rate, it’s not a ‘movement’ I’d like to be called upon to define.
A few thoughts then, about the article:
- Campolo says the movement expresses “progressive evangelicalism.” I can definitely see how he gets this idea, as most of those who come to the Emergent Conventions are from non-denominational or the more “Evangelical” churches within mainline denominations. But let’s not forget that there are many mainliners who are very involved in the conversation; mainliners who probably would probably consider themselves “evangelical” – but not Evangelical.
- Continuing on that thread, Campolo says that “[E]mergent churches espouse a decentralized grassroots form of Christianity that rejects the hierarchal systems of denominational churches. Each emergent congregation makes its own decisions by consensus.” Which again, for those who have broken away from denominations, this would be true. But there are still many churches, who are totally online with the values of emergence, which still remain within the traditional structures of a denomination (whether that’s Baptist, PCUSA, Episcopal, UMC, etc.). It seems that someone, not familiar at all with the movement, would then believe that if a church is an “emergent church” – then it has turned its back on the institutionalized church – which would not be the case for all churches.
Anyone else, what do y’all think?