Rudy Carrasco points out an article at Charisma, “30 Emerging Voices” which profiles 30 leaders in the emerging church. The list does not include Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Andrew Jones, or any of the entire list of people you might come up with when asked to name some leaders in the emerging church. Odds are you may not know any of the 30 people on this list.
This is, in fact, one of the things I like about the emerging church… while there are known spokespersons in the movement that are representative, by and large the real leaders are not necessarily that well-known. They’re mostly in the trenches “doin’ the stuff” as John Wimber used to say… rather than doing the book and lecture circuit and waiting for the next royalty cheque to cash in while they negotiate airtime on the networks. What a great way to reinvent Christianity.
he uses the word “emerging” rather loosely… Or perhaps more correctly :) I don’t think this is a list of emerging church leaders- just up-and-comers who may have some impact on church/christendom…
This is about as far away from the missional/organic/emerging church impulse as you can get:
I agree with Bob.
I’ll go further though and say that the word “emerging” has now been co-opted and become watered down to the point of almost being useless. It is now merely the descriptor of the latest trend, and not the post-modern, paradigm shifter that many in blogdom have used it as for a few years now. That’s my opinion anyway. I atually saw this coming awhile back (I mean doesn’t this type of trendy co-option always happen in Evangelicalism? You can count on it in fact.) and ceased using the term. Not that that makes me anything at all…just a comment.
I remain convinced that the rubber is meeting the road wherever serious practitioners are found, usually far from ANY press, and not in abundance of talk (no offense to anyone intended–I too am a “talker”) about it. The people I know that are most doing the stuff are found in all kinds of unlikely places and they really couldn’t care less whether they are “emerging” or not, or care what you label them, or care whether they are or ever will be “cutting edge” in their lives. They most likely aren’t “up and comers”, but folks who are quietly and seriously trying to live out the Gospel in our times in ways both innovative and ancient.
Nuff said from me.
Peace
Okay, sorry to send you guys down a rabbit-trail. Sometimes when I read online material I skim a bit, so I read
and figured we were on the same page. When I look at the preamble again, I see that Charisma’s “selections were culled from nominations submitted by leaders in charismatic and Pentecostal churches throughout the United States.” So basically they describe what new emerging leaders are, and then take nominations from the old guard, which is a bit off-kilter if you ask me.
There are some interesting stories in the list, but in the telling — and I can’t believe I missed this the first time through — there’s a recurring mention of sums of money or congregation numbers… the smallest number given is 250, the rest are over 1,000. I guess some of these leaders may well be emerging, but they don’t represent what we think of as the Emerging Church… in that respect, the list demonstrates that the forms of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity we’ve known aren’t dead yet.
I stand by my observation of what I like about EC-types, which Arlen echos better than I said it. “Up-and-coming” (whatever it means) would probably be an oxymoron in the EC we know and love.
Well,
These people may not be ’emerging’ as that word fits into your catagory, paradigm, or ‘post-modern’ language, however, they are emerging into ‘something’ from ‘somewhere’. More than likely, they are just now beginning to gain respect from ‘someone’ and therefore are now getting ‘somewhere’ from ‘no where’.
To me, this is ‘Emergent’, the acknowledgement of a fresh perspective, an alternate viewpoint and a new younger voice.
Although ‘Emergent’ (‘Emerging’) is not limited to that.
I have been to meetings where some of these people have ministered, and been seriously impacted by their fresh voice!
God Bless them!
I am a little surprised at the list, but I guess I really shouldn’t be. It all comes down to definition and interpretation. ;)
I guess for me, I am thrilled that people are doing STUFF for the kingdom…