Before I begin, I need to give a whole bunch of caveats. First, this is not only ridiculously basic, but inappropriately basic. The subject is too big to cast in just a few sentences. Second, you should probably just go out and buy Phyllis Tickle’s book of the same name and read it yourself. Third, I have not actually finished the book, but will do so this week. This introduction is to the subject and based on a set of lectures and the conference from this past weekend. Fourth, I am writing this post with my congregation in mind, rather than my regular readership. You are warned!

We are currently living in an age of Christianity that many have begin calling an age of emergence. Here are my primary words on the subject and then some of my writings about emergence.

• Every 500 years or so, the world (not just the Christian world) goes through a great upheaval. The last one was the Great Reformation that coincided with the Enlightenment. We are in another, called the Great Emergence.
• The era seems to have begun on September 11, 2001.
• In each upheaval, half of our time is spent figuring out what is going on and the other half is spent living into it. We are in the heated former moment, in which we are rejecting what no longer works and discovering what will.
• In each upheaval, there is a grand restructuring of all of Christianity, that takes about a century. This is our phase. Last time, Protestantism was born. This time, Emergence is being born.
• Like Protestantism, Emergence isn’t itself a denomination, but a collection of unaffiliated expressions of a common/similar faith. Therefore, there are many different ways of expressing Emergence. From the emerging church to neo-monasticism to the artist collectives like Ikon, Emergence Christianity is being expressed in a variety of places, including existing churches, such as the Episcopal Church.
• Emergence Christianity is a new strain of religious expression, and therefore is not just a means of appealing to young people or an excuse to play contemporary music, though these might be reasonable parts of that expression. Emergence brings with it different sets of expectations and ideas about scripture, theology, tradition, worship, etc. that are entirely compatible with the existing institutions. However, the existing church has operated with different priorities.
• North American Christians are the last ones to this party. The rest of the world has been dealing with Emergence for much longer.
• And way more than this.

As I wrote on Friday night during the conference, something has changed. We used to call this stuff “emerging church”, which caused people to think of it as a particular church or way of doing church. Then we began to describe this as the “emerging conversation” because it was more about the dialogue and figuring out of what was happening. Now, we are beginning to speak of the subject as “Emergence Christianity” because the focus has shifted a bit from practice and dialogue and toward the understanding of the Emergence as a movement.

The direct impact on our churches locally is as significant as we want it to be. But we are increasingly being forced to deal with a way of being Christian that increasingly matches the sensibilities of the people and existing ways that are increasingly mismatching with people; even people that have spent the last 60+ years in our church.

Related articles

• Feeling the Movement (drewdowns.net)