What is the emerging church?

The name is actually too good.  It is too fitting, which is why many get confused by it or why many have trouble understanding it.  But it is quite simple.

Emerging—emergence is the generative birth of something fragile and new from the complex sources that created it.  Look here for more info.

Church—ekklesia (Greek) referring to the people gathered.

The word we need to focus on is not “emerging” but “church”.  Church isn’t a building or an institution.  It is a people, gathering to worship GOD.  The emerging church is not simply a conversation or a movement, but a people, living a new life born from a complex past that was fractured, violent, and hierarchical.  It is living into a new idea of church based on the ancient understanding of church.

What is new is old.

What is ancient is future.

We are gathered.

What is emerging is how we live as church.