What comes to mind is the distinction between “being” and “becoming.”
While I’m not all that familiar with the Emerg*** spirituality movement, If I had to venture a guess, I would say that “emergent” implies that the emerging from the so-called Modern/Pre-Modern Church is complete, since that particular tense of the verb means that the action in the past is completed. “Emerging” has a more active feel, and grammatically, this verb tense is not completed action. On could say that it’s kind of like the difference between saying that you are Reformed and Reforming. The former has completed the process and the latter is still going at it. This is my grammatically informed speculation.

Hey, Anna. Wess’ Emerging Church Typology is really, really helpful with understanding the differences. Now, many who claim the “Emergent” expression will probably hesitate/resist being funneled into any one of Wess’ four categories, but I think that such acts of resistance actually scream “Deconstructionist Model” even more loudly. That’s not a slam on the deconstructionists, just my personal and humble philosophical observation.

I’m quite uncomfortable with the deconstructionist model, as it seem more akin to something like Unitarian Universalism. In fact, a quick check of Unitarian blogs will show a sharp increase of Unitarians who are claiming to either be a part of the emerging church movement, or are actually calling themselves a n emergent church. I think that blurs the distinction between the two groups way too much. And this is not a slam on either group; I’m all for interfaith chatting, but not if it includes a complete blur of identity and unique distinctives. I hope that makes sense!

I resonate with the other categories of Emerging as listed in Wess typology, especially NO. 3 and 4.

All that to say, the Emerging Church movement is by no means a monolithic expression. There is deep diversity represented and the overall conversation – including those who claim the Deconstructionist Model – is a very, very good thing.

There is a lot of confusion about these two terms these days. Unfortunately many people are throwing them around interchangeably and using them willy-nilly.

Emergent should really only be used when referring to Emergent Village as a shortened version of it’s name. Emerging is a more generic word can be used of a person or group who may be exploring and/or deconstructing their faith.

To me, the word Emergent refers to a fairly specific group of people that is defined by a membership (even though that is fairly nebulously defined) in Emergent Village. While the word emerging can and does refer to a much larger group of people within which the group of Emergent Village people reside. Does that make sense?

However … and here’s the thing that generally makes a lot of people in more fundamentalist circles heads spin … it’s all on a spectrum. The lines are not sharply defined … and it’s really quite muddy and murky. All of what I said above looks nicely and clearly defined here. But when you get out into the world, everyone, including me, will say, “That’s all true, but … ” and add some caveat or other. Which will also be true. Because nothing in the real world is ever as clear and wonderful as we like to think it is on paper.

Thanks, that’s all really helpful. More comments are welcome.

Sonja, would you mind giving a quick summary of what the Emergent Village is? I’m still learning about all of this.

My response to your question is “oh for goodness sakes”. Now I’ll go crawl back under my rock.

Great video that explains more from someone who was a part and then got out of the movement, but still ascribes to some of their original intent. Explains it well, I think.

http://www.marshillchurch.org/sermonseries/religionsaves/week_08.aspx

The Emergent church is very dangerous, in my opinion. It’s very Postmodern. I’d rather hold to what the church traditionally teaches.

I, myself, am theologically reformed.

I just realized I didn’t really answer the question. Sorry.

Well … here is their self-description from their website:

Emergent Village is a growing, generative friendship among missional Christians seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

They also describe the group as a “Node in the Web of the Emerging Church.”

You can check them out for yourself here: http://www.emergentvillage.com/

Despite what thespia says there is nothing to be afraid of … they are not dangerous in thought or deed. Most emerging folks that I know are quite devoted to the pillars of the faith as espoused in the ancient creeds (such as the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed). Most of us tend to be more willing to lend a listening ear to the gray areas and find a lot of beauty in that.

Sonja,
Who decides what doctrines are grey areas?

oh I saw that this was going to go downhill fast *sigh*

Driscoll is not a good person to listen to if you want to find out what emerging is…for the record. And he wasn’t really all that “in” for very long.

you can search my blog for lots of my experiences

Jacob, I tend to rely on Jesus for gray areas … fr’ instance I take his commands pretty seriously.

“Hear o Israel the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You will love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength.

The second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.”

As far as I’m concerned … just doing those two things is enough for each day. Everything else is a gray area. You might also refer to the Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed for what the important things are and therefore what are gray areas. It would be difficult to improve upon that.

You may see it differently than I do and that’s your business. I’m not going to argue with you or engage with you (or anyone else) beyond this about it, because my general experience is that most people who ask questions such as yours are generally closed off to my answer.

On the other hand, the postmodern era is here to stay. We are steeped in it here in the West. As Christians, we have several choices we can make. We can cover our ears and our eyes and shout, “La, la, la, la, la … I can’t hear you.” and pretend it doesn’t exist … create our own little church bubbles and carry on in our own little church traditions from some earlier, more quaint time that we perceive to have been more holy. We can try to seduce people back to that time with us. This is an actual choice that we can make and many people do choose to make it. I don’t choose this for many reasons … mostly because there is no one period of history that has God’s special stamp of approval as being holier than any other. Every time in history is steeped in sin and has problems, evil, etc. that must be redeemed by Jesus Christ.

As I see it, another choice we have is to understand this postmodern era we find ourselves in. Understand the new philosophies (or old) which are permeating the times. Understand what is now making people tick. When we understand those things, we can better form churches who will meet these new people and greet them in the name of Jesus and the gospel will be able to redeem a new generation. We were not meant to hide our light under a basket, but to be a city on a hill. The city must change as generations come and go. It is only God who remains unchanged.

Sonja,
Thanks for responding. I’m not looking to pick a fight either.
I will say that one of the things that makes me uncomfortable is that it seems like we are letting the culture change the church, rather than changing the culture via the church. Just because the culture might reject meta-narratives doesn’t mean that the Church should. Indeed, the story of Christ and Christianity is itself a meta-narrative. Yes, we should strive to understand the times so that we can make the most of them, but Christians should be leading and counteracting the culture, not following or reacting to it.
I take issue to your statement “postmodernism is here to stay.” Yes, it’s here, but it’s not here to stay. Eventually we will be post-post-moderns….

I myself don’t really know the difference between “emergent” and “emerging” churches, but I listened recently to a really great sermon by Mark Driscoll on emerging churches. You can listen to it here if you want – http://www.marshillchurch.org/sermonseries/religionsaves/week_08.aspx

it’s here to stay for your lifetime

emily – again I will say, Driscoll has a bone to pick and is not the best person to listen to to get the whole story

I would highly suggest finding a cohort in your area and attending and actually talking to real live emerging folks face to face. it’s easy to talk smack online, it’s much more difficult face to face…and it’s much more genuine and honest to be face to face.

Hey Mak, I will counter that the Emergent church in its fullness will only be here a generation. I lived through the heydays of the Charismatic movement in its fullness and it declined within a generation. While I would agree that there were a number of affects on the church (more bad than good IMHO) things have moved on. So it will be with the Emergent, one generation and then our spiritual ADD will kick in and our progeny will grasp at something “new” again.

Tryin’ not to talk smack, just the experience of human behavior and history; every generation thinks it has some massive historical event taking place in its time.

The hard part of these discussions always is as you point out, that trying to carry on a conversation about these matters requires a different tone when face to face. Not so easy to be dogmatic.