DTS Dialog: Emerging Church

(DTS dialogs recently have focused on the emerging church)

An interesting movement lately is the Emerging Church. My initial reaction was resistance. But then, the "Emerging Church" is merely a way of saying "the church of my emerging generation," so to be totally resistant to it is merely to be resistant to my generation. In "They like Jesus, But not the Church" Dan Kimball, in trying to target 20-somethings, noticed the number one question was not "what denomination are you?" but "what are you doing for the poor?" We like our mini-mall churches, our "blessings of wealth" but we do not realize a rich church does not look like Christ. If the body of Christ does not look like Christ, why would or should anyone be attracted to the church?

If you only knew of the church by way of Jerry Falwell calling the Teletubees gay, or Pat Robertson lusting for judgment of homsexuality in Florida via hurricanes, or James Dobson calling Spounge-Bob gay (interesting pattern here), would you see the Christ with the woman at the well, or the Pharisees ready to stone a similar woman caught in adultry? Would we "marvel" that Christ would dare speak to and love a homosexual?

Some interesting resources for keeping a conservative orthodoxy, but a liberal orthopraxy in the Emerging church (just click the underlined links):

Dallas Theological's audio discussion on the Emerging Church. (starts with part 3, click part 1 on the right)

Relevant Magazine (yeah, I hate the name too, but great magazine)

Dan Kimball's "They Like Jesus, But not the Church"

Mark Driscoll's "Confessions of a Reformissional Rev."

Don Miller's "Blue Like Jazz"
(not explicitly Emerging, but a good intro to narrative thoughts of Christian spirituality, rather than purely systematic)

(repost from Dead Theologians):