Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures

by Eddie Gibbs; Ryan Bolger

Publisher:

Baker

, 2005

Overview

Across the religious landscape, profound changes are creating new spiritual maps and reconfiguring churchgoing constituencies. These changes are taking place in the United Kingdom and the United States as a growing number of frontier churches successfully take root. Whereas many traditional denominations are losing young people, these emerging churches are successfully recapturing nonpracticing Christians and the never-churched.

Emerging Churches provides the first comprehensive examination of the emerging church phenomenon in the West. It considers emerging patterns in leadership, worship, mission, spiritual practices, and cultural engagement.

This book was born out of extensive observation and field research in the United States and the United Kingdom. It includes interview testimonies from forty-nine emerging church leaders on the cutting edge of ministry, including Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Dave Tomlinson, Karen Ward, Dieter Zander, and Spencer Burke. Because of its research-oriented approach and important subject matter, this book will appeal to both professional and academic audiences with an interest in understanding changing church paradigms in the West.

Key Features

• Incorporates much of the original interview material
• Seeks to listen to the concerns of emerging church leaders and to appreciate their insights
• Intends to indicate the missional significance of the faith journeys of emerging church leaders

Contents

• A Brief Look at Culture
• What Is the Emerging Church?
• Identifying with Jesus
• Transforming Secular Space
• Living as Community
• Welcoming the Stranger
• Serving with Generosity
• Participating as Producers
• Creating as Created Beings
• Leading as a Body
• Merging Ancient and Contemporary Spiritualites

Praise for Emerging Churches

"If you still question the emergence of a new non-megachurch tradition among the evangelical younger sorts, you need to read Emerging Churches. Not only do Gibbs and Bolger write careful firsthand accounts of new ministries, but they also clearly delineate nine missiological convictions and set forth a vision for the application of the gospel to a postmodern culture."

--Robert Webber, Myers Professor of Ministry, Northern Seminary

"Gibbs and Bolger have produced a very welcome and comprehensive piece of research into U.K. and U.S. emerging churches. The book captures the spirit of the emerging church movement wonderfully well from the underside. I love the way it gives voice to leaders from within the movement and helpfully draws out and gives shape to the practices of emerging churches. It is a refreshingly sympathetic and positive critique from two researchers who have clearly been inspired and filled with hope as they have sensed the Spirit at work, beckoning the church into the future."

--Jonny Baker, national advisor on youth and emerging church, Church Mission Society (U.K.)

"If you want to be truly conversant with emerging churches, this is the book to read. It's locally specific and globally aware--as are emerging churches themselves. It respectfully presents the voices of a wide variety of reflective practitioners--not just one person or a few authors, not just Americans, and not just males. It doesn't reduce the ethos of emerging churches to one concept but insightfully identifies nine practices they share. It recognizes the essential theological emphases of emerging churches, and it is based on actual conversations with over fifty people. It encourages readers from more traditional churches to listen and to seek to understand before passing judgment. It provides not only the best available overview of the emerging church phenomenon but also an example of charitable and reflective--rather than suspicious and reactive--scholarly analysis."

--Brian McLaren, author, speaker, activist, and public theologian

Product Details

• Title: Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures
• Authors: Eddie Gibbs, Ryan Bolger
• Publisher: Baker
• Print Publication Date: 2005
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Pages: 346
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Church growth; Church renewal; Communities › Religious aspects--Christianity
• ISBNs: 9781441200488, 1441200487
• Resource ID: LLS:A221E9D4D4650BD51DC7C54D89E21411
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-02-08T01:10:12Z