MVTClass.com

This is even harder to define than the term “High Church”.  Both have very subjective connotations to different people, but I have to say I was surprised at how difficult it was to pin down specifics on just what would constitute emerging worship.  Let’s see what some emerging worship oriented websites say:
The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s website has a page on Emerging Worship that says, in part:

“In some contexts Emerging Worship may look like the “way we have always done it,” while in other contexts it may look very “contemporary.” Emerging Worship may be modeled after the prayers of Taize or Iona, the “rave” culture born in the United Kingdom, evangelical urban church plants (urban new church development projects) or the “regular” Sunday service of a particular community.”

You can find the same definition on the Emerging Worship website, by following the link for “What is Emerging Worship?”.  An article by Michael Moynagh on another emerging church website has this to say:

“Emerging church is a mindset (‘we’ll come to you’) rather than a model. It is a direction rather than a destination. It rests on principles rather than a plan. It arises out of a culture rather than being imposed on a culture. It is a mood, scarcely yet a movement.”

I encourage you to follow the links above and read further. If we don’t agree on anything else, I think we’ll have to agree that the definition of Emerging Worship can’t be reduced to a few pages, much less a paragraph!

Wikipedia has an article on the “Emergent Church” which begins:

“The emerging church (also known as the emerging church movement) is a controversial 21st-century Protestant Christian movement whose participants seek to engage postmodern people, especially the unchurched and post-churched. To accomplish this, “emerging Christians” (also known as “emergents”) deconstruct and reconstruct Christian beliefs, standards, and methods to accommodate postmodern culture. This accommodation is found largely in this movement’s embrace of postmodernism’s postfoundational epistemology, and pluralistic approach to religion and spirituality. Proponents of this movement call it a “conversation” to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature as well as its emphasis on interfaith dialog rather than verbal evangelism. The predominantly young participants in this movement prefer narrative presentations drawn from their own experiences and biblical narratives over propositional, Bible exposition. Emergents echo the postmodern rejection of absolutes and metanarratives. They emphasize the subjective over the objective since postmodern epistemology is ultimately destructive of certainty in objective propositions.”

Again, I encourage you to read the entire article, and to visit the websites listed above.  As you would expect, there are also a large number of blogs that discuss emerging worship.

About the only thing I can suggest as a short version of what this term means is . . . it can mean about anything.  The net is cast so wide here it’s difficult to know what the term stands for.  Whether you’re for it or against it depends on how you define it.  It reminds of me of Noah “Soggy” Sweat’s “Whiskey Speech”.

On a more serious note, it seems that an impetus for the emerging church movement is to reach people who aren’t being reached by the more traditional church.  I agree that this is a laudable goal, but for me it raises some questions:

• In trying to reach a secular, unchurched world, where do we draw the line in making the church “relevant” so as to compete with cineplexes and the like?
• Is there a point at which style compromises substance?
• Paul and James had to deal with differences in the early church’s approach to worship (including some differences between their own views):  how do you think they would view emerging worship?

I like this week so far . . . I get to ask the questions — you get to provide the answers.