Emergent - Kokomo Urban Outreach

Emerging

Church

The emerging church or emergent church is a diverse movement within Protestant Christianity that arose in the late 20th century as a reaction to the influence of modernism in Western Christianity. The movement is usually called a "conversation" by its proponents to emphasize its diffuse nature with contributions from many people and no explicitly defined leadership or direction. While practices and even core doctrine vary, most emergents can be recognized by the following values:

Missional living - Christians go out into the world to serve God rather than isolate themselves within communities of like-minded individuals.
Narrative theology - Teaching focuses on narrative presentations of faith and the Bible rather than systematic theology or biblical reductionism.
Christ-likeness - While not neglecting the study of scripture or the love of the church, Christians focus their lives on the worship and emulation of the person of Jesus Christ.
Authenticity - People in the postmodern culture seek real and authentic experiences in preference over scripted or superficial experiences. Emerging churches strive to be relevant to today's culture and daily life, whether it be through worship or service opportunities. The core Christian message is unchanged but emerging churches attempt, as the church has throughout the centuries, to find ways to reach God's people where they are to hear God's message of unconditional love.

Emergent Christians are predominantly found in Western Europe, North America, and the South Pacific. Some attend local independent churches that specifically identify themselves as being "emergent", while many others contribute to the conversation from within existing mainline denominations.

While there is no single co-ordinated organization behind the Emerging Church globally and no guarantee that the Emerging Church will mature into a coherent movement at all, the term is becoming increasingly common among leaders of Emerging Church groups and Emerging Church thinkers. Many of these leaders and thinkers have written books, articles and/or blogs on the subject using a shared terminology.

Emerging Church groups are typically observed to emphasize the following elements:

Highly creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection. This can involve everything from the use of contemporary music and films to liturgy, as well as more ancient customs, with a goal of making the church more attractive to the unchurched.
A minimalist and decentralized organizational structure.
A flexible approach to theology wherein individual differences in belief and morality are accepted within reason.
A holistic view of the role of the church in society. This can mean anything from greater emphasis on fellowship in the structure of the group to a higher degree of emphasis on social action, community building or Christian outreach.
A desire to reanalyze the Bible within varying contexts with the goal of revealing a multiplicity of valid perspectives rather than a single valid interpretation.
A continual re-examination of theology.
A high value placed on creating communities built out of the creativity of those who are a part of each local body.
A belief in the journey of faith, both as individual and community.

The Emerging Church movement shares with the house church movement the willingness to challenge the structure and organization that have become traditional for the Church over many centuries. Many emerging churches are in fact also house churches.

The Emerging Church is not confined to one denomination or gathering. Emerging churches can range in denominational affiliation from the Anglican/Episcopal Church to the Southern Baptist Church; still others are best described as non-affiliated intentional communities or house churches.

The following sites list just a few of the emerging church websites found around the world:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia