Review of The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball

I wrote this review for TheOOZE but it is still in the que to be posted so I thought I would post it here.

The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations

Dan Kimball (who has the best hair this side of Bill Hybels) has come out with an excellent book called, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations. The book is targeted towards those who are looking at postmodernity from a modern, contemporary church viewpoint and he uses the language, metaphors, and sources that they would understand (Rick Warren, Brian McLaren and others provide commentary throughout the book).

The condition of the book probably reveals my true opinions of the book. My copy of The Emerging Church is dog-eared, written in, coffee stained, and lent out twice. More copies were purchased for my leadership team at Lakeland Church and the sections on worship were important in some of the ideas that lead to the creation of the Worship Freehouse. Even though the book wasn't written for me I found enough good thoughts to read it through a couple of times and make sure other leaders I serve with read it as well. If you are in a traditional or contemporary church and are asking some questions about postmodernity and the church, you will want to make sure you read this book.

Selected insights...

• Going back to a raw form of vintage Christianity, which unapologetically focuses on kingdom living by disciples of Jesus. A post-seeker sensitive worship gathering promotes, rather than hides, full displays of spirituality (extended worship, religious symbols, liturgy, extended prayer times, extensive use of Scripture and readers, etc.) so that people can experience and be transformed by the message of Jesus. The approach is done, however, with renewed life and is still "sensitive", clear instruction and regular explanation are given to help seekers understand theological terms and spiritual exercises. - 26
• In today's world, emerging generations have no anchor or truth to hold onto. So as they hear for the very first time, the hope for the future is incredibly optimistic. - 29
• We need to look into our past in order to understand how we got where we are today. Then we can begin to discern where the emerging church may be headed into the future. - 43
• …in recent years, teens and young adults have grown up in a world of postmodern, post-Christian values and perspectives. They simply have no Judeo-Christian roots to return to. - 58
• I recently talked with a father in our church who described his twenty-year old son as being postmodern. I hesitated to contradict him, but I believed he was missing the point. I know his son very well, and although to some degree he may be influenced by postmodernity, he is modern. He was raised in a Christian home where he was taught Judeo-Christian principles and ethics, and he views the world accordingly. He thinks and learns systematically and is drawn to using logic and reason to prove and understand his faith. It is how one views the world, what one values and thinks about life, that makes one postmodern, not because one falls into a certain age group. - 61-62
• Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself-its world view; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world. And the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents were born. We are currently living through just a transition - Peter Drucker - 65
• You can't accurately say that we are a Christian nation anymore, especially when examining the increasing spiritual among younger people…If we break out of our Christian circles, stop the busyness of our church, and take a look at what is happening in our towns and communities, we may be surprised. - 67-68
• If the unchurched population of the United States is so extensive that, if it was a nation, it would be the fifth more populated nation on the planet after China, the former Soviet Union, India and Brazil. Thus, our unchurched population is the largest mission field in the English-speaking world and the fifth largest globally. - 69
• Today celebrities serve as our culture's prophets and religious philosophers. What a famous actor does or believes much weight with those who look to them for fashion trends, hairstyles, and even religious influence. - 86
• Nowhere in the New Testament does it say they "went to church"…We can't go to church because we are the church. - 91
• The excellent book The Missional Church, edited by Darrell Guder, makes the case that since the time of the Reformation, the church unintentionally redefined itself. The Reformers, in their effort to raise the authority of the Bible and ensure sound doctrine, defined the marks of a true church: a place where the gospel is rightly preached, the sacraments are rightly administered, and church disciple is exercised. However, over time these marks narrowed the definition of the church itself as a "place where" instead of a "people who are" reality. - 93
• Calling a church service a "time of worship" does not always make it so.-George Barna - 111
• If you are part of a staff that evaluates worship services, what do you base your evaluations on? Do you immediately discuss the music, the video, or the length of the message? Or do you ask, "Did people encounter God here? What Jesus lifted up in honor? What have we trained people to think when they leave? Do they say 'I enjoyed that,' or 'That was a good message,' or are they thinking, 'I encountered God today,' and, 'I became more of a disciple of Jesus today'?" The emerging church must value worship over the quality of the program or of the "good and service" delivered. - 115
• Talk about changing the way we do things here in the suburbs of America and you may find resistance, usually from older pastors and leaders who have grown attached to the a certain way of doing things. If we were talking about the need for unique approaches to worship in the context of cross-cultural missions, there would be no argument. Remember how Hudson Taylor's method and approach to ministry in China weren't understood by his British superiors? In fact, they were rather upset with him for changing the way there were used to doing things. But because he understood the new culture and worldview, he made the changed that worked for those people. I encourage you to take a look around your worship center next Sunday. If you don't see row upon row of the fresh young faces of people who weren't raised in your church, you probably need to consider making changes to your approach. - 120
• As churches lost touch with the culture and didn't connect with younger generations, the seeker-sensitive movement was born. This time, however, it is the seeker-movement that loses touch as it grows more and more disconnected with the heart of emerging generations. - 103
• God's prophets did outlandish things to communicate his truth with more than words. Isaiah walked around town naked for three years; Ezekiel lay on his side for weeks on end, building miniature villages out of mud. Jeremiah carried around rotten fruit. Even if people refused the prophets instructions, they certainly wouldn't forget what they had heard, seen, smelled. Teaching as well as worship can be multisensory, as God as clearly demonstrated. - 138
• At our vintage-faith worship service, we try to avoid doing anything that suggests that the band or the speakers are there to perform or that hints that they are "above" those who attend. We try to bring the band and the speaker as close to the people as possible… Why? Because bands increasingly value being with the people instead of being far above them. To take this a step further, who says we even need to see the worship band? Shouldn't the focus of worship be on God, not on the leader and the musicians? Have we modelled ourselves after rock concerts in this respect without realizing it? - 137-138
• No matter where you gather, if you are creative and value beauty, you can transform any meeting place into a sacred sanctuary or ancient faith. - 140
• …we cannot shortchange the reason we are gathering in worship; we also need to get serious about God. We are seeking his presence, and we had better not take that lightly. We do need to encounter God, to take communion, to sit in the quiet, to hear his voice. - 145
• When I first entered into the evangelical world, I discovered that virtually every pastor I met was into sports. Since most of their sermon illustrations were sports related, I somehow felt a bit lonely and very uncoordinated at church-like a misfit. In staff meetings, as they rattled of names of sports celebrities and teams I had never heard of, I would politely not and smile of as my mind drifted off to think about the latest Brian Setzer CD… I usually felt that I was in a different world in that respect, and I never heard the arts discussed unless someone was thinking of using a Willow Creek drama to illustrate a sermon point. That was about as artsy as the talk would get. It seemed as though churches all across America had volleyball nights and softball leagues but gave little attention to artists. - 147
• The major difference between the challenges Paul faced in preaching and those we face today is that Paul's Greek audience was interested in listening to him. Christians were new on the scene, and the Greeks welcomed fresh ideas as fodder for discussion. Most post-Christians on the other hand have a vague sense of what Christianity is and represents, and they want no part of it. - 176-177
• "I didn't come to this place to be lectured at by a Tony Robbins clone. I thought I was going to meet God here." These rather blunt words came from a girl in her twenties whom I had found pacing the hallway of a contemporary church building during the worship service. She was obviously not happy, so I had approached to ask if she was okay. It turns out that she had come to the worship service at the invitation of a friend but hadn't realized that "church" was going to be a long talk that reminded her of the self-help motivator Tony Robbins. After about twenty or thirty minutes, she was both bored and disillusioned. I asked here was she had been hoping for. "To pray" she told me. "To hear some encouraging music. To quiet my heart and connect with God". - 185
• Evangelicals have been criticized-many times rightly so-for being dogmatic and closed minded. For too long we have been doing all the talking, without any dialogue. We are now serving new generations that have serious trust issues, and trust is not earned by talking just one-way. - 193

Even though the book was not written for me, I appreciated it tremendously. If one can judge a book by the amount of people I have asked to read all or parts of it, then this book has been one of the more useful ones I have read in 2003 and I assume I will be returning to it in the future.