Emerging Movement: Learning From Gibbs and Bolger

*** Scot McKnight points to Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger as the best place to begin if one wants to understand the emerging movement. I see immediately why McKnight prizes this volume so highly. Gibbs and Bolger commit themselves to primary source research and inductive reasoning to support their conclusions. They admit that they are sympathetic to their subject matter and, indeed, the volume reads like an apology for the movement. But, the content is heavily laced with direct quotes from 49 current leaders of emerging communities from Britain and the U.S. and one launcher of a website (theooze.com). An appendix allows these 50 significant persons to tell their “stories,” their pilgrimages into the emerging movement. Clearly Gibbs and Bolger have provided an indispensable resource for the comprehension of the emerging movement.

The first cold water to hit my face was the contention that Mars Hill Church, pastored by Mark Driscoll, does not meet the criteria for authentic emerging communities (Gibbs/Bolger identify 3 core patterns and 6 optional patterns). Gibbs and Bolger identify Mars Hill as a Gen-X church, aimed at a cultural and demographic slice of a given community. Gen-X churches such as Mars Hill, say GB, like their “conservative Baptist, seeker, new-paradigm, purpose-driven predecessors; only the surface techniques changed(p. 30)”-- they remain essentially modern. I have been navigating the taxonomy terrain according to Ed Stetzer's identification of 3 streams within the movement according to which Mars Hill qualifies. But now I am accepting Bolger and Gibb's criteria so as to comprehend their fine work and see where it leads. Certain questions come to mind:

If Mars Hill in Seattle, Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC, and The Journey in St. Louis are being found relevant by hundreds and thousands of urban twenty-somethings today; that’s Generation Y and younger, nicht wahr? What does this say about the BG-defined emerging assessment of what is and will likely be found relevant by coming generations and what is not and will not be?

Like Rudolf Bultmann and especially Paul Tillich, once you set yourself up as the prophetic perceivers of current and future felt-relevance, then the numbers matter, right? Bultmann said the bodily resurrection was irrelevant to increasing numbers of his contemporaries and Tillich said, among other things, that the word "God" should be displaced by "the Ground of our Being." Folks mainly responded by finding comfort in the hope of the resurection, finding the word "God" meaningful and watching the denominations that found Bultmann and Tillich particularly meaningful shrink.

So, what is wrong with these Gen-Y’s who, we are told (unlike the Gen-Xers) are thoroughly postmodern? Why can’t they see that Mars Hill, Redeemer, and The Journey are irrelevant to them?! Frustrating. The point here is not to question whether Mars Hill is emerging or not (we are granting GB's exclusion of them) but whether failing to be emerging according to GB's criteria tells us anything about how relevant a community might be found by young postmodern urban dwellers. Perhaps at a deeper level, Mars Hill's exclusion raises doubts about the accuracy of GB's understanding of what is modern, what is postmodern and thus what is being or will be found meaningful. GB's description of the phenomenon they call "emerging" may be accurate without telling us much about what will be found most relevant by coming generations.

Jacob’s Well in Kansas City Missouri is pastored by Tim Keel who serves on the board of the Emergent website, which should put his emerging credentials beyond question. But does Jacob’s Well meet the Gibbs/Bolger criteria? Jacob's Well looks real generational to me. Has Jacob’s Well become, perhaps unwittingly, both a modern generational community by GBs criteria and surprisingly felt-relevant (hundreds attend ) by doing so?