Many
think that the Emerging Church movement was started by a bunch
of young people who wanted a hip atmosphere at church ... not
so at all.
According
to an article in the recent edition of Criswell
Theological Review,written by Mark
Driscoll of Mars Hill, it was the Leadership Network that
initiated the Emerging Church movement. Driscoll states:
In
the mid-1990s I was a young church planter trying to establish
a church in the city of Seattle when I got a call to speak at
my first conference. It was hosted by Leadership Network and focused
on the subject of Generation X. ... Out of that conference a small
team was formed to continue conversing about postmodernism ...
By this time Leadership Network hired Doug
Pagitt to lead the team and organize the events. He began
growing the team and it soon included Brian
McLaren. Pagitt, McLaren, and others such as Chris Seay, Tony
Jones, Dan
Kimball, and Andrew Jones stayed together and continued speaking
and writing together as friends....
McLaren, a very gifted writer, rose to team leader in part because
he had an established family and church, which allowed him to
devote a lot of time to the team. That team eventually morphed
into what is now known as Emergent. (Mark Driscoll, "A Pastoral
Perspective on the Emerging Church")
Incidentally,
in Driscoll's article about the emerging church, he left out the
one element that counts the most - the emerging church's affinity
with contemplative spirituality. As I have often said, remove contemplative
from emerging and all you have left is coffee, couches and candles.
It is more than significant
to understand the implications that Leadership Network actually
launched the Emerging Church. To understand just how pervasive the
connections are, it is necessary to take a look at CCN (Church
Communications Network which is an Innovation Series of Leadership
Network). CCN carries most
of today's top Christian leaders including James Dobson, Nicky
Gumbel (creator of the Alpha course) Richard Foster (a speaker for
the Be Still CCN conference), various Saddleback pastors, including
Rick Warren, Bob Buford (founder of Leadership Network) and the
list goes on and includes several emerging leaders such as McLaren,
Leonard Sweet and Erwin McManus. The point is that while many are
saying they do not agree with the emerging church and what it stands
for, some of these same so called critics have been behind it all
along.
Related
Information:
*Other
partners of Leadership Network include:
Josey
Bass (publishers of Brian McLaren),
Zondervan (partnering with Youth
Specialties and many contemplatives),
Lifeway (from the Southern Baptist Convention)
Emergent
and Jewish Leaders in First Ever Meeting
Mark
Driscoll and Contemplative Spirituality
Bob
Buford talks about Annie Dillard
Read the Criswell Theological
Review - Spring 2006 Edition
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