by Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger
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Product Description
The "emerging church" movement is perhaps the most significant church trend of our day. The emerging church offers and encourages a new way of doing and being the church. While it largely resonates with an eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old audience--the first fully postmodern generation--it is also gaining popularity with older Christians and encompasses a broad array of traditional and contemporary churches. Emerging Churches explores this movement and provides insight into its success. Filled with the latest research and interesting, anecdotal testimonies from those on the cutting edge of ministry, this book provides pastors, church leaders, and interested readers with an insightful glimpse into the thriving churches of today--and tomorrow.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Overall an excellent book, with some minor quibbles, 2008-08-28
It is first important to distinguish between the quality of this book and the quality of the position that it discusses and describes. Reading this book was somewhat bizarre for me, as I would completely agree with one statement, then completely disagree with the next one. This happened regularly.
Still, while it is clear that the authors are supportive of the emerging church movement, the book is not a series of polemical arguments about why the emerging church is superior to the "modern church". Rather, the book is more descriptive in its approach, as Gibbs and Bolger interviewed dozens of emerging church leaders. The text of the book is essentially a summary of their comments, and contains many complete quotations from interviews. Gibbs and Bolger have done an excellent job in finding the commonalities among the emerging churches and presenting them. The emerging church, after all, is a movement with many facets, but this book is about as good a description of emerging churches as can be.
However close, the book is not completely perfect. My primary problem is that some sections of some chapters seem overly vague in their description of what the emerging church believes and does in certain areas. I realize that the emerging church can be difficult to generalize about. However, sometimes a description would be vague, then the elaboration would be equally vague, and I was left unsure how to respond.
All in all, while I ended up disagreeing with most of the views, practices and presuppositions of the emerging church, Emerging Churches itself is an excellent summary of what the emerging church is all about, in its beliefs, emphases, and action. It is always better to understand before evaluating, and this book is an excellent tool to that end.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 Finally some thoughtful analysis, 2007-05-31
Finding a good book to recommend on the emerging church can be more than a little challenging. Those written from inside the movement can be shockingly self congratulatory ("Generous Orthodoxy" anyone?) and external works can be shockingly overstated and curmudgeonly (yes, I'm afraid this not only applies to Carson, but he is the prototype). This text is a refreshing truce. Gibbs and Bolger (Fuller profs) have set out on a fruitful quest to systematize (or at least describe) the un-systematic...the distinctives of the movement that calls itself emerging (or something else but for which the label still fits).
They interviewed a few dozen of the leading emerging pastors or leaders and made a legitimate effort to distill the speech into 9 centrally held values in the words of the movement's innovators. While never ignoring the diversity of the voices they somehow manage to get to believable core values and communicate them in a way that would make sense to those outside the movement. The authors are, without a doubt, sympathetic to most things emerging, but are not shrill apologists. Their cautious, steady and informed analysis gives this text a gravity that most others lack. I very much recommend it.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A Needed Emergent Addition, 2007-03-25
As someone who has tried to keep up with the happenings of the Emerging Church and its growing library over the last several years, I found Gibbs and Bolger's book to be a needed addition to the burgeoning bibliography of Emergent reading.
The strength in the book lies when Gibbs and Bolger attempt to show what the Emergent Church does as opposed to what its doctrines are. There are plenty of books each trying to claim a doctrinal place for Emergent, but few that show us what an Emergent church actually looks like. Gibbs and Bolger do this very well.
Some reviews below this one give good overviews of the book. There are only two flaws which kept the book from five stars in my book. First, I feel that Gibbs and Bolger are a little too quick to wrap the Emergent church into the evangelical wings of Christianity. This may be the church's eventual place, but for now, I feel it is a little too early for any group to lay claim to what Emergent is doing. Secondly, and this is really a critique of ALL Emergent church books, everybody in the book is just too white and male. While they do a great job of balancing views from Europe and America, there is still a lack of voices from women or from those who aren't out of the Caucasian evangelical communities of the past fifty years.
However, on the whole, this book does a great job of what not many other Emergent church books are doing...finding a framework for definitions of what Emergent is instead of what people want it to be.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
so far, the best of a dozen, 2007-02-22
I'm on a quest to understand the shape of the emerging church, & this book booted me forward a few spaces. Here's how:
The authors spent some serious effort researching emerging churches in the UK & the US, and I trust their observations. So when they say, "these 3 things characterize virtually all emerging faith communities", I believe them. (They also note 6 other common characteristics / values / involvements of EC's.)
The 1st person bios of several dozen emerging church leaders - comprising the 2nd part of the book - were pure gold. These stories did more to give me a sense of the ethos of emerging churches than anything I've read (or observed) so far.
The authors had to, of course, narrow down their definition of an "emerging church" in order to do their research. But in my view, this skewed the characterization of the typical EC community toward the urban, artsy, techy scene.
So much of what emerging churches are trying to do resonates with what I've been thinking, & feeling - even as a 40 something - for years. But I must also note that reading the bios (actually, the text too) helped me get a handle on my concerns as well - the main one being the way culture is honored over most everything else; sometimes, it seems that being true to one's subculture, being "real", is considered more noble & worthwhile (certainly more groovy) than forsaking all to follow Jesus.
I'm grateful to the authors, & reccommend this book highly.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent intro to emerging church topic!!!, 2007-01-09
This book is the result of a five year research project by the two authors whereby they attempt to describe/define emerging churches. The authors identify nine characteristics, or core practices as (1) identifying with Jesus (2) transforming secular space (3) living as community (4) welcoming the stranger (5) serving with generosity (6) participating as producers (7) creating as created beings (8) leading as a body and (9) merging ancient and contemporary spiritualities.
List strengths of book.
The authors illustrate the nine core practices by allowing practitioners, those that are doing the work, to give examples of how the practices are being lived out. Another strength is the book shows that the emerging movement is very diverse and is not centered on one person or organization. Lastly, the book concludes with over 100 pages of personal stories and examples of emerging leaders and the work they are doing.
List weaknesses of book.
First, the book may come off to some as being overly sympathetic to the emerging movement. Second, the research is limited to churches in the UK and the United States, while the emerging movement is a phenomenon that is much more far reaching.
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