The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations. By Dan Kimball
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003, 266 pp., $14.99 softcover.
The latest buzzword in theological circles is emergent. The emerging church movement encompasses a broad spectrum, typically seeking to connect with a postmodern world and reach it with the gospel of Jesus Christ, attempting to rediscover participatory worship while moving away from performance-driven and more passive worship styles, and a desire to separate from the modern consumer culture and experience community, shedding cultural baggage while clinging to essentials of true Biblical Christianity. There's a strong emphasis on vintage faith as the movement seeks a connection with the early centuries of Christianity.
There is much in the emergent church movement to get excited about, and a few areas where caution is needed. I have been reading emergent books in an effort to better understand the movement, and have found Dan Kimball's The Emerging Church to be the best book thus far in terms of theological soundness. The book has graphics and sidebars that make it look more like a workbook than a serious effort, but that's probably just the required emergent "look." I reviewed The Post-Evangelical negatively and have concerns about Brian McLaren's popular A New Kind of Christian. Kimball's book is more to my liking, although I do have questions about it as well. Most of my concerns are related to the outside comments. For example, Mark Oestreicher of Youth Specialties claims "Hey! This whole postmodern thing—it's me!"[1]
One wonders just how far he's willing to go—does the typical postmodern rejection of meta-narratives and absolute truth trouble him? Apparently not. That concerns me.
Kimball realizes that "the whole postmodern thing" is not all good:
Postmodern thought may hit some dead ends as the emptiness of some of what it stands for is revealed.[2]
I would have liked to see Kimball specify just what dead ends he anticipated. Later, he contrasts the focus of the emerging church with aspects of modern services:
It isn't about clever apologetics or careful exegetical and expository preaching or great worship bands. It is about believers in Jesus falling to their knees in worship, truly taking their faith seriously, and even repenting publicly in prayer. It is about the Spirit of God as an evident participant in our midst as the Holy Scriptures are read. This is what people in this emerging culture are drawn to. We no longer have to apologize for what we do.[3]
The preceding paragraph is typical of Kimball's writing—part of it makes me agree wholeheartedly, and part of it makes me wonder just what he means. Apologetics are vital, but I agree that merely "clever apologetics" won't impact lives without the personal relationship connection. I assume he's not encouraging careless preaching, so while being cautious not to be dismissive of "careful exegetical and expository preaching," I'll agree that even that is not enough if believers are failing to become actively involved in worship and repentance. However, we won't know what it means to be "believers in Jesus" without careful preaching—this is where the danger lies. My Mormon friends are believers in Jesus, but they mean something very different; gathering to light candles, write in journals, pray, and experience worship that incorporates various art forms will not suffice to distinguish our Jesus from the Mormon version. We require propositional[4] truth to demarcate Biblical theology.
Kimball wisely raises a significant caution for leaders in the emerging church:
The danger, of course, is focusing so much on experience that we teach people to respond only by feelings and emotions. The goal is not to manipulate people's emotions through experiences or preaching or use of multisensory experiences. We need discernment. I believe the more the emerging church uses multisensory worship and teaching, the stronger and deeper our use of Scripture needs to be.[5]
Amen! Those eager to embrace the cutting edge should heed Kimball's advice. As alluded to earlier, the sidebar comments cause me greater concern. Sally Morgenthaler seemingly denigrates propositional communication:
As Western culture moves beyond abstract, propositional forms of communication to multisensory and affective forms, we have the opportunity to dig back into the past and reveal God's character, works, and story through the arts.[6]
Doesn't Sally realize that she's using a propositional form of communication to make her point? She hasn't moved beyond that form to anything multisensory or emotional—perhaps propositions are not that easy to leave behind without sacrificing coherence.
I strongly agree with Kimball's warning to guard the content of what we sing:
Too often while sitting in a church service, I'm asked to sing lyrics that are not theologically sound, that are me-focused rather than God-focused, or that are so metaphorical that the true meaning has been lost. We need to be careful how self-focused our lyrics are so that nonbelievers don't get the wrong message about our faith.[7]
Kimball's advice is worthwhile for any style of church, but especially for contemporary services that have discarded hymns in favor of praise choruses that are far too often guilty of focusing on the worshipper rather than on God, the only appropriate object of worship.
Kimball separates himself from many in the emergent church movement when he writes:
...we must lovingly and intelligently offer reasons why we believe the Bible is trustworthy and point out what makes it different from other religious books...How refreshing it is to emerging generations, floating in relativism, to hear that they can intellectually trust and believe in God's inspired Scriptures.[8]
Evidently this injunction originates from someone more interested in reaching postmoderns than in becoming one of them. Would that all of Kimball's contributers shared this mindset. I think Kimball remains too accepting of fellow emergent leaders who drift much farther into postmodernism, but anyone interested in this subject should read The Emerging Church and share its helpful insights with friends fascinated by "vintage faith."
Additional Resources
Read Ochuk's review of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian.
