In our post-modern society Emerging Church trying to cope with the reality of the world in a new and modern way. What is Emergent Church? Here is an excerpt from Wikepedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_church

quote:

The emerging church or emergent church is a diverse movement within 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. The emerging church seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct Christianity as its mainly Western members live in a postmodern culture. While practices and even core doctrine vary, most emergents can be recognized by the following values:

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.
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.
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.

Pastor Brian D.Maclaren is in the forefront of this movement. Recently he has released a new book with the title "The secret message of Jesus". Here are some reviews from his book http://www.brianmclaren.net/ar...ge_of_jesus_366.html

Let us hear more from you about Emergent Church and discuss how this emerging Church affects the traditional church.

Good topic, Grace. I have a couple of spiritual directees who are quite enamored with Emergent Church, and I've comes to learn much of it from them. The general impression I have is of a post-modern approch to Christianity, emphasizing personal authenticity and social justice. That's great, of course, but there's a kind of straw-man assumption that traditional, orthodox Christianity discourages or negates those emphases.

Here's an excerpt from one of the reviews of Pastor Maclaren's book (which I've not read -- it's on my list).

quote:

This imaginative and convincing book outlines a path that will appeal to people both inside and outside the church, those who have become disenchanted with dogmatic Christianity yet are not at all enchanted by a materialistic and secular approach to life. McLaren finds himself sympathetic to those who are spiritual but not religious and those who have found Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code fascinating and read the Gnostic Gospels with great interest.

That does provide a glimpse of the general spirit and orientation of the movement, which, after awhile, will surely develop its own implicit dogmas as well.

Nevertheless, books/movies like The Da Vinci Code have obviously helped a lot of people begin to question some of the assumptions they've been taught, and even investigate anew the origins of Christianity and the meaning of Christian faith. That's a good thing.

From another review, this one a quote from Maclaren:

quote:

It's not just a message about what happens to our immaterial souls after we die, but it's the message of God's saving within creation; God's will being done on earth. It's working with God here and now. It means that the person who's a taxi-driver, the person who's a schoolteacher, or a politician or a lawyer or a nurse or an artist or an athlete, or whatever it is that someone does, their work can actually contribute to God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven. To me, it just takes up all of our life and that's what a kingdom is, it's a comprehensive reality.

That could be straight out of several of the documents of Vatican II, so it's not exactly a new message. In fact, that's always been the emphasis in Christianity -- at least in its moral teaching: that the Gospel is to be encountered and lived out in our everyday lives.

One thing I've noticed in "emergent Church" and other post-modern Christian approaches is that the emphasis on "reign of God" and so forth doesn't always connect very well with the traditional teaching that that reign is ushered in through Jesus -- especially through his death and resurrection. When Jesus says "the reign of God is at hand," he is meaning to say that the new order of relationship with God that comes through him is at hand. This doesn't get sufficient emphasis in post-modern approaches, imo, nor does the importance of a living relationship with Christ. That kind of language is associated with tradition, "dogmatic," mythic-level Christianity, and so they tend to shy away from it. But to speak of the "reign of God" being at hand without connecting that to the risen Christ is a huge oversight, imo.