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Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures
 
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Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures (Paperback)

by Eddie Gibbs (Author), Ryan Bolger (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: SPCK Publishing (1 Jan 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0281057915
  • ISBN-13: 978-0281057917
  • Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 219,339 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

This is a major study of changing church patterns in the West. In many parts of Europe and North America, the decline of the major traditional denominations continues unabated. But it seems that people these days are not less religious: rather their religious beliefs are rooted in personal experience rather than in community identity and loyalty to historic institutions. For the first time, religion is being chosen rather than received and this change has contributed to the growth in frontier fellowships, commonly known as the 'emerging church'. This book is intended to offer a multinational, Spirit-inspired testimony to the insights of these 'new, fragile, vulnerable' groups and churches. Filled with the latest research on what's happening on both sides of the Atlantic, it also features fascinating interview testimonies from forty-nine emerging church leaders on the cutting edge of ministry, including: Jonny Baker (Grace, London), Phil Bail (New Generation Ministries, Bristol), Kester Brewin (Vaux, London), Mal Caliadine (Tribal Generation, Sheffield), Steve Collins (Grace, London), Simon Hall (Revive, Leeds), Paul Roberts (Third Sunday Service, Resonance, Bristol), Pete Rollins (Ikon, Belfast), Dan Slatter (Warehouse, Chichester), Andy Thornton (Late, Late Service, Host and Vaux, London), Dave Tomlinson (Holy Joes, London), Sue Wallace (Visions, York).


About the Author

EDDIE GIBBS (BD, London University; DMin, Fuller Theological Seminary) is British by birth and formerly served as a missionary in South America. The author of several books, including the critically acclaimed ChurchNext (IVP (UK), 2000), he is the Donald A McGavran Professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary. RYAN BOLGER (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is assistant professor of church in contemporary culture at the School of intercultural Studies and the academic director of the Master of Arts in Global Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary.

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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific introduction to the subject, 26 Jan 2006
I'm amazed this one hasn't had a slew of reviews - perhaps people are busily digesting its content!

This is the best introduction to the subject of the emerging church around, and - believe me - I've read a few. Eddie Gibbs has been around long enough to know what he's talking about and together with Ryan Bolger have produced a book that is both weighty and readable. Based on personal interviews with around fifty emerging church leaders from around the globe (mainly from the USA and UK to be fair) it is liberally sprinkled with helpful quotes and anecdotes from the 'coal face' of the emerging church movement.

So what you get are not only well thought through theology from Gibbs and Bolger, but really great life-experience from the likes of Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Jonny Baker and loads of other familiar names from emerging church websites and blogs - with a special mention to my mate Anna, one of few women to be interviewed (a surprising oversight)

Passionate about Jesus and the Kingdom, visionary about community and leadership, and open minded about structures and worship forms - this is a book that deserves to be read by a wide audience within the Church.

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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Emerging Church Sympathetically and Authentically Portrayed, 10 Jul 2006
By Richard M. Seel (Norfolk UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
An excellent book. Gibbs and Bolger very firmly identify emerging churches with postmodern church and then offer nine areas which they have in common. The book is based on a five-year project in which they interviewed 50 emerging church leaders in UK & US. A feature of the book is the mini-autobiographies of those leaders, which gives added depth to the work.

Gibbs & Bolger identify three core practices: identifying with the life of Jesus; transforming secular space; and commitment to community as a way of life. These lead to six other shared areas: welcoming the stranger; serving with generosity; participating as producers; creating as created beings; leading as a body; and taking part in spiritual activities. The book is enlivened throughout by frequent quotes from the practitioners.

The treatment is sympathetic and perceptive and offers excellent theological reflection, noting, for instance, a shift from a 'gospel of salvation' to a 'gospel of the kingdom' in emerging churches - fuelled in part by N. T. (Tom) Wright's work, particularly in "Jesus and the Victory of God".

If you want to 'get' emerging church, read both this and Doug Pagitt's "Reimagining Spiritual Formation" and you'll have a pretty good sense of it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Insightful but unselfcritical, 14 April 2009
By Jonathan Mason "JEMblog" (Norwich, England) - See all my reviews
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This book is touted (by Brian MacLaren, no less) as the best guide to emerging churches around.

It's an engagingly-written book, based on interviews with 50 EC leaders in US and UK. Although it therefore incorporates a range of opinions and experiences, the whole thing is given a measure of coherence by the thoughtful commentary of the two researchers/authors.

Gibbs & Bolger summarise the characteristics of emerging churches in their conclusion (pp235ff):-

"Emerging churches are not young adult services, Gen-X churches, churches-within-a-church, seeker churches, purpose-driven or new paradign churches, fundamentalist churches, or even evangelical churches. They are a new expression of church. The three core practice are identifying with the life of Jesus, transforming secular space, and commitment to community as a way of life. These practices are expressed in or lead to the other six: welcoming the stranger, serving with generosity, participating as producers, creating as created beings, leading as a body, and taking part in spiritual activities."

"The example, of Jesus, as he engaged his culture with the kingdom, is exemplary for emerging churches. The gospel, as he announced it, was to participate with God in the redemption of the world. It is this gospel that emerging churches embrace."

"Modern culture created a secular realm and chased all spiritual things to the margins of society, first relegating them to church and religion and then to the individual's heart."

"Emerging churches do not submit to the dualisms presented by modernity: sacred versues secular, body versus mind/spirit, male versus female, clergy versus laity, leader versus follower, evangelism versus social action, individual versus community, outsider versus insider, material versus immaterial, belief versus action, theology versus ethics, public versus private."

"Emerging churches destroy the Christendom idea that church is a place, a meeting, or a time. Church is a way of life, a rhythm, a community, a movement."

"Emerging churches build relationships with outsiders; they do not treat them as evangelism objects (as do fundamentalists) or as social objects (as do liberals). Instead, they form relationships with them in which they share the good news at all level."

That, I think, is enough to indicate some of the leading themes of this book. There are some important priorities and concerns here, and emerging church people have done well not merely to draw our attention to them, but to show how they can be lived out. Emergents protest against self-righteousness, triumphalism, and traditionalism, and call us out of our comfort zones in order for us to engage in the real world.

Critics of emergent need to distinguish carefully between the substance and the style of emergent thinking and teaching. In order to challenge conventional evangelical assumptions, attitudes and practices, emergents use a lot of irony and hyperbole. They shouldn't be written off as heretics just because they don't express things the same way as traditional evangelicals.

Similarly, emergents often distance themselves from certain topics that are regarded as key by some mainstream evangelicals (such as abortion, homosexuality, and hell). Again this might be seen as a protest against the evangelical habit of making a short list of issues that can be used as `test cases' to see if a person is orthodox or not.

But I have some real concerns about this book and the movement/conversation it describes:-

1. There is a lack of biblical reflection and rationale. Certain aspects of the life and teaching of Jesus are privileged over other aspects; those aspects that are highlighted are not placed within the overall narrative of the death and resurrection of our Lord, as is the case in the Gospels.

2. There is, accordingly, an extremely thin account given of the saving work of Christ and of the content of the Good News.

3. There is a lack of self-criticism. The authors say (p29), `this is a fragile movement that can be marginalised by denominational leaders and killed with criticism by theological power brokers.' I can understand Gibbs & Bolger's willingness to let the movements' spokespersons speak for themselves. But then, if you won't engage in self-criticism and don't like it when others criticise you, how will you learn what your mistakes are and learn from them?

4. At the same time, there is an over-critical attitude towards evangelicalism. Many emergent leaders seem to come originally from the most conservative of evangelical backgrounds (e.g. Dave Tomlinson and Brian McLaren) and have a regrettable habit of tarring everyone with the same brush or (to change the metaphor) biting the hand that feeds them.

4. There is something of a sell-out to postmodernity. If emerging churches were seeking to minister to and in postmodern cultures, they should be applauded, but there is a clear sense in this book that many of them are seeking to minister from a postmodern worldview, and that's a very different thing.

5. I'm not a huge student of postmodernity, but I wonder if it is quite so pervasive as emerging church people make it out to be. It seems that it is highly pervasive in the arts, and it is therefore not surprising that emerging church leaders represented in this book seem to have a strong preference for the arts. There is a corresponding antipathy towards rationality, objective truth, apologetics, and so on. It leaves me wondering what the emerging church has to say to those who are science-minded.
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