Chapter 6 of Gibbs’ and Bolger’s book, Emerging Church: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, is entitled, ‘Welcoming the Stranger’.
This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series: Emerging Churches (Gibbs & Bolger)
Chapter 5 of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Gibbs and Bolger) is entitled ‘Living as Community’.
On one occasion, after spending hours with her at the Living Room, the church’s cafe, a guest asked Karen Ward, When is your church service?”
“You just had it,” replied Ward.
…Looking back to the outset of modernity…humans were on their own, and they needed to protect what was theirs. Personal property rights ensued and created the modern individual.
Chapter 4 of Gibbs’ and Bolger’s Emerging Churches: creating Christian community in postmodern culture is entitled, ‘Transforming secular space’. Here are some extracts.
…A consequence of the creation of a secular realm was modernity’s penchant to break everything up into little parts for classification, organisation, and systematisation. Thus, in the modern period, many dualisms were introduced to church life that had not been problematic before: the natural verses the supernatural; public facts versus private values; the body versus the mind and spirit; faith versus reason; power versus love; and the list goes on.
Chapter 3 of Emerging Churches: creating Christian community in postmodern cultures, by Gibbs & Bolger, is entitled, ‘Identifying with Jesus’.
Here are some extracts.
I read the Gospels over and over. Nothing I was doing on Sunday was what I thought Jesus would be doing if he were here. (Joe Boyd)
It is strange how the church for so long missed the kingdom emphasis in the witness of the authors of the Gospels. …
Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Culture (SPCK) by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger is regarded by many as the most authoritative book presently available on the beliefs and practices of the emerging church. It is based on interviews with 50 leaders in the US and the UK.
I thought that it would be interesting to provide some extracts from the book, in order let emerging church leaders, together with the two authors of the book, speak for themselves.…
I’ve just finished reading Emerging Churches – Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. It is touted (by Brian MacLaren, no less) as the best guide to emerging churches around.
It’s an engagingly-written book, based on interviews with 50 EC leaders in US and UK. Although it therefore incorporates a range of opinions and experiences, the whole thing is given a measure of coherence by the thoughtful commentary of the two researchers/authors.
Gibbs & Bolger summarise the characteristics of emerging churches in their conclusion (pp235ff):-
…Emerging churches are not young adult services, Gen-X churches, churches-within-a-church, seeker churches, purpose-driven or new paradigm churches, fundamentalist churches, or even evangelical churches.