In physics, it is a new property that results from an increase of parts in a system. In neuroscience, it is the state of consciousness produced by complex networks of neurons and biochemical processes. In philosophy, it is the evolution from existing phenomena to something that is “unlike anything that existed before in cosmic history.” In sociology, it is a global order that occurs as the result of diverse, dynamic, and complex social systems. In my online dictionary, it is to “rise from immersion,” “to come into existence.” It is emergence.

Is this something you need to know? A Presbyterian church in Colorado that boasts a traditional and a contemporary worship service is creating an “emergent worship service.” A Methodist congregation in Tennessee describes itself as an “emergent church.” Several Lutheran websites explain and explore the emergence of a reconfigured church, and Threenails is an emerging “experimental Episcopal church planting movement in the Pittsburgh area.”

Spend a few minutes online and you will discover copious chatter about emergent churches in England (often related to alt.worship and the house church movement), New Zealand, Australia, Korea, and Africa. As the emerging church’s most prolific writer and spokesperson, Brian McLaren’s horrendous schedule for 2005 reveals the wide spread interest in this subject in a variety of denominations and around the world.

Rewind to the 1970s

As far back as 1970, Larry Richards was calling for A New Face for the Church and in 1975 Howard Snyder pointed out The Problem with Wineskins. The student revolution of the 1960s marked the beginning of change in western society, and prescient believers were already discovering that the church would have to alter some of its structures in order to recast biblical community in the new world, still forming. The recommended changes of the ‘60s, however, had more to do with tweaking existing structures rather than calling the entire structure, right down to its foundation, into question.

In the last decade of the 20th century, a small group of Christian leaders were drawn together by their mutual conviction that evangelicalism had produced a subculture that was no longer the best possible representation of Christianity. The world that had given birth to North American evangelical institutions (established basically through the 1940s to the 1960s) had disappeared by 1990. These believers realized that pushing the same methodologies (perhaps even the idea of methodology) and striving to salvage the old worldview would increasingly alienate popular culture and future generations of Christian youth.

The group that met together to discuss these issues was fortunately blessed with astute and theologically informed thinkers like Brian McLaren and Tony Jones; ecclesiastical innovators like Todd Hunter, Chris Seay, and Brad Cecil; advocates of worship renewal like Sally Morgenthaler; and world-Christians like Andrew Jones. Scholars who had been discerning the times—Len Sweet, Stanley Grenz, N. T. Wright, Robert Webber, and Dallas Willard, to name a few—forged a biblical vocabulary that enabled the early team to converse intelligently on issues that were their passion. All of them shared two basic beliefs: western culture had radically changed since the 1950s, and the church desperately needed renovation to respond to cultural changes.

The more the original crew talked among themselves, the more their numbers grew. In the early 1990s, Leadership Network provided the initial platform for them to generate more discussions and host conferences. Later they adopted the name The TerraNova Project, and when Leadership Network withdrew its support, they became Emergent, which Brian McLaren insists is a conversation rather than a movement. In 2003, they teamed up with Youth Specialties to host an Emergent Conference in San Diego in conjunction with the National Pastor’s Conference. They were hoping for 300 conferees, but with little advertising (other than word of mouth and blog sites, which characterize this postmodern conversation), they had over 1,100 participants. They struck a nerve, uncovering a huge and undetected community of young believers engaged in alternative ministries. In 2004, the Emergent Conference was divided between San Diego and Nashville.

The actual emergent phenomenon is much larger than Emergent and its conferences. All over the world there are spiritual communities that are experimenting with a variety of biblical configurations of church. Some of them describe themselves as emergent, but many of them have never even heard the word used in this context. They know, however, that Christian faith has less to do with doctrinal formulations than with integrity and relationship with God, others, and society.

Labeling Emergent

On her blog site, Maggi Dawn—congenial critic of the emerging church and Chaplain at Robinson College, Cambridge University—blogged a conversation she had with an Anglican vicar who asked her, “What’s emerging church, Maggi?” (maggidawn.blogspot.com, 11/01/2004). After she filled him in on the current conversation, he asked, “Isn’t that just church?” Then he described a congregation of his that in every way reflects emergent insights and sensibilities. What he may not understand is that his church is responsive to real life and popular culture in a way that many churches are not. Emergent is nothing more than a label that has been applied to communities of Christians who realize that churches entrenched in religious subcultures are in need of substantial reformation.

What does the emerging church look like? Anything and everything, for there is not one ideal model. In some places, informal meetings for prayer, biblical study, discussion, and mutual ministry in homes supplement or replace “going to church” on Sunday. Other churches gather in inner cities and worship God through the care they provide to people in need. Then there are churches that have reached into ancient history to retrieve spiritual exercises, prayers, rituals, and sacred items that excite the senses. When it comes to worship, technology is optional. The mystery and truth of God’s timeless depth, the Spirit’s power revealed in changed lives, and Christ’s compassion expressed in charitable living are the essence of faith.

Emerging Traits

Leaders and participants in the emerging conversation are reticent to offer definitions or precise descriptions of the new configuration of church. Their hesitation combines sincere humility with a respect for the calling of other believers and a wait-on-God-and-see attitude about the future. Nevertheless, in surfing the web, engaging in the international conversation, and observing a number of different emerging Christian communities, certain features tend to recur.

[NOTE: I would refer anyone interested in a more detailed description of emergent characteristics to Brian McLaren’s books (all of them!) and the article “What is Emergent?” at emergentvillage.com.]

A general dissatisfaction with what has been handed down. I sometimes use the story of Saul trying to burden David with his armor to illustrate the situation of young believers today. Older Christian leaders usually want the next generation to adopt their vision, use their methods, and fight their battles. But the church of the previous generation—even mega churches—do not appeal to the emergent crowd. The old form with its tight organization, heavy-handed authority, slick packaging, formulaic worship, subtle control, and method-driven programs appears exploitive, oppressive, fake, boring or all of the above. Although the church as “organized religion” is unappealing to popular culture, there is a renewed interest in and attraction to Jesus Christ, which is not lost on the emerging church.

An urgency to revisit evangelical slogans and local dogma. Is the “gospel” no more than an insurance policy for the soul, guaranteeing salvation from the flames of hell and a mansion in heaven? Post-liberals are conversing with post-conservatives as both parties interrogate the theological formulations they have swallowed, not as an act of faith, but because of their naive realism. Christians who identify with the emerging church tend to think of faith as the struggle to trust in God rather than a mindless acceptance of a set of beliefs. Creeds, however, do have a relational value in uniting believers from disparate Christian communities.

A commitment to mission. This particular trait cannot be reduced to a “mission statement,” but is a “calling.” Popular culture is not an enemy to be conquered (like Israel’s conquest of Canaan), but the field into which God sends his laborers to gather his harvest. Therefore emerging leaders suppress we/they language, which tends to build barriers rather than bridges. Popular culture is wide open to Christian presence, witness, and influence so long as the believer reflects Christ in their respectful, generous, and kindhearted behavior. Emerging churches encourage members to proclaim Jesus Christ through their daily lives rather than words only.

An aversion to hypocrisy. If the emerging church is comfortable entering and engaging with popular culture, it is also aware of its status as “resident aliens.” Critics of the emergent community sometimes assume that it compromises with, and glibly accepts, everything within popular culture. But emergent Christians are sensitive to injustice, oppression, violence, corruption and every other sin. If emerging Christians are not judgmental, that does not mean they go along with political or social evil. They are concerned to combine cultural relevance with spiritual resistance. They strive to erase any difference between their church life and their everyday life.

An appreciation for local art forms. Emerging churches tend to create their own expressions of worship, and many of them have produced worship CDs, in-house videos, and display in their meeting places paintings and poetry created by their own artists. In this way, they celebrate the unique “personality” of their church.

An electronic neurology. They live in the global village described by Marshall McLuhan, where “we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace.” There is not much to say here, except that if you traipse around the World Wide Web looking for information on the “emergent church,” you will turn up a huge and thriving community of persons who have never met in person (a decent place to begin: , but are fervently engaged in the emergent conversation.

A preference for complementarity over polarity. If there are two sides to every debate, and earlier generations of believers defined themselves by which side of the feud they took up, emerging churches gravitate toward the center. Complementarity suggests that looking exclusively at one property of a thing may obscure another property (e.g., looking at light as a wave may obscure its particle property). Therefore one must remember there is always another side to consider. Emerging churches resist being labeled liberal or conservative, contemporary or traditional, rational or intuitive. Brian McLaren has observed that most moral issues are more complex than black, white, or gray categories and need to be seen in color. He has also said the emerging Christians resist either/or positions when both/and statements more accurately reflect their view. For example, emergent churches may lean toward the past and the future, reverence and intimacy, God as mystery and God as personal, and so on.

A fondness for the metaphor of spiritual journey. Abraham traveled with God, Jesus took his disciples on road trips, Paul’s worldwide missionary tours are legendary, and the idea of “walking with God” spans the entire Bible. Emerging churches have not arrived, but find themselves in motion with God, restless and pressing onward to lay hold of the calling that has laid hold of them.

A resignation to sacrificial living. Few emerging churches have more than several hundred members and many have less a hundred. There is simply not enough money to purchase property or construct a building. If they had that kind of money, they would not build a campus, but meet needs in their community and the world. Many Christians in the emergent conversation have lived in impoverished and dangerous conditions, crime-ravaged neighborhoods, or remote and primitive parts of the world. They accept the fact that there is a price to pay, a cross to bear, to live as Christ lived in the world.

Worship Leaders and Emergence

Some observers suggest that emergence began with Christian worship and has moved out from there to (re)visions of other aspects of the church’s values, practice, and witness. Even if worship was not the first site of change, worship leaders have little to fear from the emerging church, for one of its concerns is an increased commitment to worship. The emergent conversation regarding worship is less interested in innovating new forms of worship as it is recovering ancient sacraments and rituals. An even greater concern, however, is the recovery of the spirit of worship that engages the whole person in the presence of God.

Participation Required

Worshipers are not allowed to be spectators in emergent worship; participation is required. The recovery of ancient worship is a celebration of Creator and Creation, of Savior and salvation, of Spirit and incarnation that entails movement, sensations, drama and a theological understanding of the meaning of Scripture, symbol, song, and ritual.

If emergent worship is experiential, it is also experimental. No one can predict what God’s Spirit will use next to awaken worshipers to the presence of God. Will it be in the way the bread and wine are presented and served? Will he breathe on one of Bach’s cantatas? Will he meet us in a prayer labyrinth, sweep us into bliss during silence, purify our hearts by confession and absolution, minister grace to our souls through a banner or painting, or bring us to our feet rejoicing with an electric guitar solo? His options are as numerous as the stars in the sky. Our job is to make certain we provide the church with the theological infrastructure to guarantee we are worshiping God in spirit and in truth.

When emergent leaders talk about worship, they often mention mystery. Certainly worship in the modern church was damaged by its compulsion to clarify everything. Today’s spiritual seekers want to be overwhelmed by God, and a God they can understand is not overwhelming. If we want to know that we are successfully approaching mystery in our worship, ask what in it is sacred and, therefore, evokes reverence.

I will leave the subject of emergent worship here, seeing that Dan Kimball, who is better qualified to address this subject, has written a book on it and almost every column Robert Webber adds to Worship Leader enhances our understanding of ancient-future worship. My personal interest in what a church does and experiences in the presence of God spans more than 20 years, so I am pleased to know there are many devout and able minds searching and exploring Christian worship. I should hope that we continuously grow in worship until the day we die.

Do not be surprised if you discover the emergent conversation includes thoughts and feelings that have already occurred to you. Perhaps we forget that when we talk about “the” Reformation, there have been many reformations in the Christian church, and its nature is self-reflexive and committed to correction and renewal. Jesus’ reinterpretation of the commandments resulted in a religious reformation. The revelation of grace given to Paul resulted in the emergence of a racially mixed church. As the church lumbers through history, the Spirit of God will continually speak prophetically regarding things that must remain the same and things that must change. So the church will always be emerging; it’s in our DNA.

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2005 issue of Worship Leader magazine. Reprinted with permission. For more articles like this, please visit their website at www.worshipleader.com. Chuck Smith, Jr., is an author and the pastor of Capo Beach Calvary in Capistrano Beach, Calif.

Worship Leader also presents a brand new FREE publication for churches, to inspire everday participation in devotional art: The Worshiper. The articles, features, columns, departments, stories and profiles found in the Worshiper are intended to assist in the development and growth of worshiping communities. For more information about this great new publication, visit The Worshiper website.