The History of the Emerging Church — Darrin Patrick

I think it is a very significant movement. I think we will look back on this time and see that. And so that's my goal, is just to be helpful. And so what I thought I would do tonight, the first lecture, I'm going to do basically the history of the emerging church in the United States and then talk about the different streams that I see so that you can begin to understand those different ideologies and the things that influence them.

And then we'll get to some Q &A. So if any time during I'm talking, as Dr. Guthrie said, write down your question. We're going to get to them. We're going to make room for that. That's really important.

And a lot of this is just a discussion starter. And so hopefully we'll get there. And I'll be available during the breaks as well if you have something you just want to ask me personally. Let me kind of bring myself into this story, you know a little bit about me, and then how this intersects into the history, because there is quite a few intersections.

From Personal Crisis to Conversion

I was a binge drinking, alcoholic almost, athlete in high school, very sexually promiscuous, just a mess, didn't have a dad growing up. And so I just kind of did my own thing. When I got larger than my mom physically, I just kind of stayed out as late as I wanted and did whatever I wanted.

Didn't go to church as a kid. Didn't really hear the gospel. Didn't understand. I remember asking one of my friends who brought his Bible all the time. He was the little nerdy Christian that always brought his Bible to class.

And I just asked him, I said, I keep seeing this sign behind the goalpost because I watch football on Sundays. That's how I worship. And so I saw this sign behind the goalpost that said, John and then a colon, three, no, John three colon 16.

And I said, what is that? I keep seeing that behind the goal. He said, well, that's, and he showed me in his Bible. Oh, okay. That was my, that's when I was 16 years old. And so long story, but Jesus met me, opened my heart.

I'm absolutely a Calvinist with a capital C because I was not looking for God at all. And, um, he rescued me from my sin and my shame and began to sanctify me. And, um, my life has just absolutely changed so much.

A Call to Ministry and an Early Revival

So that, um, the sum, this was my junior year in high school, the summer before my senior year, I, um, went to church camp, which I'd never done such a thing before, but I went to church camp. And the guy was up there speaking, um, in a room just a little bit bigger than this.

And I don't know what he was talking about, but God was talking to me. And, and that is when I now know, I didn't really know it then, quite honestly, that was my call to ministry. And, um, kind of the practical legs for that was, uh, felt like the Lord told me to go back to my high school and start a Bible study.

And so I did that. And, um, that Bible study grew to about 200 students. It was, um, met on Friday nights. And out of that meet, out of that, that whole movement, um, pastors and missionaries and doctors and lawyers and accountants and construction workers, and all kinds of people came to Christ and are still serving Christ today.

It was literally the only time in my life that I've ever witnessed revival because it hit our town than, than two other towns in the same County in Southern Illinois over about a two year period. I've never seen anything like it.

I've tried to reproduce it. It's not worked since, but it was just literally kind of a touch from God on our County with younger people. And so then, um, I, I, you know, what, what do you do when something like that happens?

Well, you become a youth pastor, right? So I become a youth pastor and I'm way too young, 19 years old and, uh, had no business being a youth pastor. I had a lot of maturing to do, but this pastor took me in and it turns out that this pastor, um, was not so good of a guy.

He was, um, sleeping with three women in the church and I actually kind of overheard a conversation and kind of brought it to the attention. A lot of the people in the church knew about it and they covered it up.

And I remember driving back from that confrontation thinking if this is what ministry is and if these are what pastors are, I'm not so sure I'm interested. I love Jesus, but I'm not so sure I love the church and I don't, I don't think I love pastors.

And so I really wrestled with kind of Chuck and the whole thing, quite honestly. Um, but I couldn't shake it. I couldn't let it go. So I ended up going to a Southwest Baptist university down in Bolivar, Missouri.

Seminary Formation and the Search for a Church

And, um, because largely because they had this biblical languages program, I was really interested in studying Greek and Hebrew and biblical backgrounds, archaeology. So I, that they had this great major.

My friend had gone there. And so I went there and started to study and an interesting thing started happening. I started having all of these kind of guys who really didn't fit in the church, um, kind of pursuing me, athletes and artists, um, guys who were, you know, wrestling with same sex attraction, uh, guys who were wrestling with, you know, they were alcoholics and they were, but they were pastors, kids and, and just all kinds of different things.

I had this whole ministry to guys and I remember trying to take him to some of the churches down there and there's some wonderful churches down there. Don't get me wrong, but a lot of them didn't fit in these churches.

And I remember thinking, you know, there needs to be a church for guys like this. And that's when the Lord began to talk to me about church planting. So I went up to seminary in Kansas city had Midwestern seminary, um, largely because a friend of mine, uh, a friend of mine's friend was planting a church up there and the seminary gave me a full ride and I'm all for free.

So I, so I went up there and I helped plant a church. It was going about eight months when I got there and I started the student ministry, the ministry for junior high and high school kids. And, um, just, you know, just got in the kind of the trenches of the church plant.

Meanwhile, the seminary had kind of gone through this shift, uh, that was more liberal leaning. And then they kind of, as, as happens, you kind of swing the pendulum too far. And so there was some, some, they attracted some students and some professors who were, you know, I'm pretty hyper Calvinistic.

And, and, uh, my opinion, uh, they were on the cutting edge of the 1600s and their ministry methods. And, um, I really honestly agreed with some of their critique of what was going on in the contemporary churches, but I didn't necessarily agree with the spirit.

Um, and this is students and professors. This isn't just professors. And, and, but I just thinking, what is the church supposed to be? I'm not sure. I don't know if it's supposed to be seeker sensitive, seeker insensitive.

What do I do? So I found out about this church. This is in, uh, 1998. Called Jacobs. Well, which all the emerging church had the weirdest church names, right? I mean, it's like Jacobs. What is that? I remember all that's in the book gospel of John.

So that's kind of biblical. So I, I went and met with this guy, Tim, and he had started a church in urban Kansas city. And you just don't start churches in urban centers. I mean, you just didn't do that.

If you wanted to start a church, you went out to the nice, safe suburbs, right? Well, this guy was in the hood in Kansas city. And I, and I heard about it. I, I said, man, I got to meet this guy. So, um, I started meeting with him.

He usually bought lunch, which meant I was going to meet with him as often as I could. So I met with him and, um, he began to talk to me about this whole idea of the church needing to emerge. And he'd been on staff at a church like me, a seeker sensitive church, and it kind of grown a little disillusioned and thought maybe there's another, you know, option here.

So we started talking. He's, he offered me a job. I said, no, I'm called to plant a church. I'm hanging out with you so you can teach me. He said, well, you know, I can help, but you need to do some reading on your own.

You need to figure this thing out. So I started, he sent me to a website, uh, called the ooze. Um, it's still around. Um, and it was all about the emerging church. He told me about acts 29, which hadn't even started yet.

Actually. Um, he said it's theologically driven and they have money for new churches. And I liked both of those things because I needed both of those. And then he said, I want, you should go to this church called pathways church, um, in, in, in Denver.

And he, and, uh, Tim had just finished a, um, a, uh, internship there when he was going to Denver seminary. And I'd actually met the pastor, Ron Johnson at another event that I was at. Uh, and so I just called Ron.

I said, Hey, could I come and I need one day with you. Could I stay at your house? I'll be in the mountains the rest of the time. I just need to process this whole church planting thing. This in, in a, I feel called to an urban area, but I don't know what that looks like.

I grew up in the sticks and I'm in the suburbs and I'm kind of freaked out. Would you help me? He's like, yeah, come and stay. So I get there like at one in the morning, my flights delayed and I get to his house.

I'm knocking on the door. Nobody's answer. He forgot that I was even coming. So he gets up, he's got his pajamas on. I'm like, Hey, I'm so-and-so. He looked at me like really strong. Oh yeah. Come on.

You can sleep on the couch. So, um, he talked to me and, and, and basically told me pretty straight up, uh, that I was soft and I needed just to man up and go plant a church and quit talking about it.

So, um, after that display of gentleness, I thought, yeah, that would be great. I should really think about doing that. I said, well, where do I plant the church? I said, I'm in, I'm limited Kansas city, but there's like four church plants in this urban area and there, and there's not a ton of population down there yet.

He said, well, where are you from? When I, I said, I'm from this little town two hours South of St. Louis. You've never heard of, I mean, he goes, well, what about St. Louis? And I was like, I've never thought about that.

Go back. One of the girls on our staff was from St. Louis and she said, you know, I've heard you kind of talking about this, what you want to do in staff meetings. You, you should go to St. Louis. Um, you should think about that.

So I'm driving into the mountains. I'm going back and forth. Typical emerging church. You don't have linear thought. And so, um, I'm back in the mountains in Colorado after meeting with the guy at Pathways.

I'm driving. Um, I'm just, I'm processing what this girl said in the, in the, in the staff meeting. This has actually before what Ron said. And then I'm, I'm just thinking, okay, what do I do? How do I do this?

The Rams were playing in the NFC championship. This is now 1999 when this all happened. And I was watching the Rams. And the Rams were playing in the NFC championship. And, and, and just all the, it was like, this is where I'm supposed to go.

So I start making trips to St. Louis. I meet with PCA pastors. I meet with EPC pastors. I meet with Baptist pastors. I mean, with vineyard pastors, I mean, with any pastor that will meet with me and just basically waiting for somebody to tell me that I'm crazy and don't even try this honestly.

And all of them said, I think what you're talking about would work. If the Lord's calling you to do it, you should come. Um, so we moved to St. Louis. Um, and I, I'd heard about this thing. I'd heard about this thing, AX 29.

Um, and so we went to a bootcamp. Now, it was not a bootcamp. Like you would think bootcamp. It was a cruise bootcamp, which is really oxymoron ish. But, um, the, the co-founder of AX 29 is a PCA pastor by the name of David Nicholas in Boca Raton, Florida.

And he, um, had these connections to the cruise line somehow. So we're doing this cruise and that's where I met Mark Driscoll. And when I met Mark Driscoll, it was like, I met my long lost brother. Um, we both grew up in kind of a blue collar home, kind of a rough background.

And he, it was just like, man, this is my, this is my guy. And we begin to talk. And, um, and then, and this was in 2001. Actually, we were on the, um, fast 40. Now we were on, we were in, in the Bahamas when nine 11 happened.

So there are all the people from New York around. The crews were freaking out. They're hauling off every middle Eastern person in handcuffs on the ship. Um, it was, we get back. Driscoll calls me up and says, Hey, we want you to be an X 29.

So we were one of the first churches in the X 29 network, which I'll talk about a little bit later. So that's kind of my introduction. And as I continue to tell the story, it'll make a little bit more sense.

The Origins and Early Networks of the Emerging Church

Some of the, some of the characters, but this whole topic of the emerging church, what's funny is it sounds like it's new. Let me show you something here. Um, these are all books. That one on the left was published in 1970.

And the one in the middle, I think, was also in the seventies. And I think the one on the right was actually in like 1980. So, the idea of this is, it's been around for a while. In 2001, Karen Ward, who's one of the leaders in the, um, conversational, uh, emerging church, which I'll define for you in a moment.

Um, purchase the website, emerging church .org. Um, Dan Kimball is another leader, uh, purchase the website, emerging church .net in 2001 as well. Um, in 2001, emergent village, uh, purchase the website, emergent village .org.

And then in 2001, also the emerging church .com was purchased by you specialties. And so this, this whole term started kind of coming in vogue right around this time. And then a book was published in 2003 by Dan Kimball called the emerging church.

Now, as I said earlier, I'm going to focus on the U S side. If you want to get the UK side and some stuff in Europe, I suggest Tony Jones and his new book, the new Christians, dispatches, from the emergent front frontier, the new Christians dispatches from the emergent frontier.

And Andrew Jones, who is also called the tall, skinny Kiwi. He's a new Zealander. And, um, he can help you with all that other stuff. And he's got a blog and he's very thorough and very smart. And I recommend those two.

I'm going to, I'm going to focus on the U S because, um, I think it's easier to, for me to track. I've interviewed, um, Mark Driscoll, Chris C, Rick McKinley, Tony Jones, Doug Padgett, um, who all of those guys, I consider friends.

Um, though we have disagreements and I've read everything I can get my hands on from Rob Bell, Dan Kimble, and Brian McLaren, who, and have, and have basically listened to lectures and read their books for nine years.

Um, and what I see is this movement began to take shape in the, in the kind of mid nineties, early nineties, mid nineties. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of note the, the situation in life of many of these early shapers, uh, from the, from the interviews that I've done.

And I'm especially grateful to Tony Jones, um, who helped me fill in the gaps by sending me an advanced copy of that book that I mentioned, um, which chronicle some of the movement. So I'm going to do some key players and I'm going to do some key events.

And, um, and then we'll take a break and get into some of the popular terms and then we'll do some Q and a sound fair. Um, in the mid nineties, Jack Caputo hosted a conference at Villanova university on postmodern philosophy.

Key Figures Shaping the Movement

And he featured this guy, Jacques Derrida, as well as some others. And Caputo heard that an event evangelical pastor from Texas was in the crowd. And this so astounded him that from the, from the stage, he says, I heard there's a, there's a pastor here, something Cecil.

I'd like to meet him. Please come and see me. That was Brad Cecil. And Caputo could not understand why Cecil, an American married evangelical pastor would want to hear from Derrida, a French gay atheist philosopher.

It astounded him. And he had to meet this person right around this time. Mark Driscoll, after studying communications and philosophy and epistemology at Washington state university was planting Marcel fellowship in Seattle.

Doug Padgett was serving as a youth pastor and growing increasingly disheartened with its theology and practice. Ron Johnson, after pioneering three churches with planting pathways church in midtown Denver, Tim keel was finishing up Denver seminary and interning at Ron Johnson's shirt pathways church in Denver, getting ready to plant Jacobs well in Kansas city.

Brian McLaren was serving as a pastor in the suburb of Washington, DC, and had yet to publish a book. Donald Miller was getting sick of the legalism and lack of life in his church. Karen ward was working for the evangelical Lutheran church in denominational life.

Andrew Jones, the tall skinny Kiwi was starting a church for goth kids in Portland, Oregon. Chris C was planting a church for college students at Baylor university in Waco, Texas, and was beginning to invest in a young, shy, insecure guitarist that you may have heard of named David Crowder.

David Dieter Zander had just left new song church in Sandy, San Dimas, California, which by all accounts is the first emerging postmodern Gen X church, whatever you want to call it, planted in 86 to develop the access ministry, uh, at Willow Creek, Dan Kimball and his hair, um, was watching his youth ministry at Santa Cruz Bible church.

Take on a life of its own as Graceland. He's big Elvis fan. It kind of looks like Elvis, uh, Sunday night service. Erwin McManus had just accepted a call to pastor the church on Brady, which was eventually renamed to mosaic church in Los Angeles.

Rob Bell was on staff at Calvary church, a seeker sensitive church in grand Rapids, Michigan, under the leadership of Dr. Ed Dobson, theologians, Stan Grins, the late Stan Grins and John Frank were working on a book called beyond foundationalism, which is an attempt at an evangelical justification for new forms of theology.

So all this stuff is happening right around this time. And all of these men realize something was wrong with the way the church was contextualizing the gospel as evidenced by the droves and droves of young people who were leaving the church.

And these men were not the only ones concerned. A ministry called leadership network was concerned. The leadership network is a ministry based out of Dallas. And in 1997, they asked Doug Padgett, who was a youth pastor at Wooddale church pastor by leaf Anderson in Minnesota to run a new initiative.

Doug was charged with gathering the next generation of evangelical leaders. No pressure. Doug traveled around the country to find what they call innovators and he invited them to what leadership network calls a learning community.

Gen X, Postmodernism, and the Shift in Worldview

And one of the first gatherings he hosted, we're going to move to key events now took place at the Glen Erie mansion outside of Colorado Springs. He had tapped a dozen young leaders to come for this first gathering to talk about ministry to Jen Xers.

I love that term. Jen Xers, Jen X 1 .0 is the name of the gathering in 1997. Now the common wisdom of the time was that the changes that were happening were based on generation, generational theory. And so the issue was all these people born between 1965 and 1980, they are, they think differently than the baby boomers.

So we got to adapt ministry. The Gen X, the busters, they need a new style of ministry kind of leading the charge in that was Dieter Zander and Tim Selleck who published this book inside the soul of a new generation.

Um, and I believe 1996. And so they were kind of leading the charge. I actually, my pastor at the time in Kansas city, I was a youth pastor. Remember, um, I was trying to convince him of this, that we, that this was a generational thing and that's why he didn't understand and he needed to listen to me.

And, um, so I was really passionate about this whole generational theory, but according to Jones and others at this first event, Brad Cecil, member of the guy that was at the Derrida conference, that was, that the guy called him out and couldn't believe he was there, got up and he challenged this conventional wisdom of the day.

The previous talk had been, let's attract Gen Xers back to the church by basically doing what highballs and Warren did. Let's make church cool for younger people. That's the issue. Cecil got up and went to the whiteboard and in the room and he began drawing diagrams all over the place, explaining that the shifts were much more profound than simple generational differences.

He says the middle ages were characterized by mysticism. This is Brad Cecil. God was the author of all, but in the modern pairing period, starting in the 17th century, man was seen as the author and we entered into an age of empiricism.

Now he continued, we're experiencing the postmodern turn toward an age of enlightened mysticism. By the time Brad was done, the board was covered with a timeline stretching from Jesus to the present and litter with names like Foucault, Descartes, Rorty and Kant.

Right. Brad later turned this talk into a PowerPoint presentation, which has legendary status among emergence. I think I actually viewed this in Tim Kiel's office. His argument was this. The issue was not generational.

It was epistemological. And so there was this huge kind of divide in the room. Dieter Zander, Tim Selleck, guys who wrote the book were like, no, no, no, that's not right. It's age. It's generation, not worldview.

Driscoll, Chris C, Doug Padgett basically agreed with Cecil and Tony Jones rights. They decided that Brad was onto something and that he got it, whatever it was. They called Brad over to the corner of the room during the next coffee break and begin pointing out others in the room.

Does he get it? Does he get it? They were splitting the room between those who understood Brad's presentation and those didn't. And for their part, Doug, Chris, and Mark were interested in spending time with those who got it.

Get what? Brad replied, you know, the stuff you just talked about, the four of them couldn't articulate the it, but they could feel it. It was like the beginning of something new and the overthrow of something old.

It felt like to them, the burgeoning of a whole new way of understanding who they were as Christians and what the church was supposed to look like. These guys, Chris C, Doug Padgett, and Mark Driscoll, under the direction of Padgett, under the leadership network, formed what was called the Young Leaders Network.

They began traveling the country looking for others who got it. And this is a slide from Leadership Network in April of 2000, where the term emerging church was first used. Let me give you a little history on that.

Dan Kimball writes in Next Wave, kind of a history of this. Let me read it to you. It's helpful to understand how this term came about. He writes, since Leadership Network was hosting these events, specifically focused on younger generations, and their tagline was Advanced Scouts for the Emerging Church, it slowly began being used, it slowly began being used as emerging, as a substitute word for what was called Baby Busters, then Gen X, then Postmodern.

Emerging was the final word. When we realized that the Gen X thing was not just an age group thing, but a cultural change, it shifted to Postmodern, which soon became totally misunderstood and equated with a style of music, or ministry, or worship service, rather than a philosophical response to modernism.

And since most of us were not philosophers, and realized we were in way over our heads even trying to explain it, so the word Emerging Church seemed safer, and more non-age specific, and began being used more and more, not only for church, churches and ministries, focused on younger generations, but also for churches focusing on the fact that culture was really shifting and changing.

So the term moved past a generational focus to more of a cultural focus. Then in 1987 they had Gen X 2 .0. And Mark Driscoll spoke. And this was kind of Mark Driscoll's coming out party, in a sense. He basically articulated that the change that was happening was not a generational issue.

And all this kind of coalesced in his mind because he had studied epistemology in college, and had become a Christian in college, and he kind of brought all this together, and Mark is a brilliant communicator, and at that conference in Mount Hermon, California, really kind of set the stage for this idea that it's not a generational thing.

Mark Driscoll and the Emerging Church’s Theological Tensions

Another thing that happened at that conference, Mark took the stage, and he told me this story personally, that as he took the stage, he began to see in his mind that many of the young leaders who were at the conferences, who were at that conference, were committing adultery, and had some hidden sin in their life.

And he just began to pray what he was seeing in his mind. And a couple of guys actually repented, I believe, at the conference, but in the coming years, it was discovered that many of these young leaders had basically disqualified themselves from ministry, and God had shown Mark that from the stage.

It was quite an event. In 1998, Brian McLaren, a pastor from the Burbs of D .C., joined this group that was traveling around the country. And that's Brian. And Brian is a very influential guy. He's very winsome.

Very, very nice guy. Very winsome. But that began to kind of change the tone of the group. And LN kind of saw the writing on the wall. And if you know anything about Leadership Network, they're very atheological by nature, because what they want to do is gather pastors and ministry leaders from all across the spectrums and get them to basically learn best practices from each other.

And so they were seeing that this whole movement was becoming very theological, and they said, You know what, guys, I don't think that's where we're going. And so Padgett left, who was the young leader network under Leadership Network, and went to plant a church called Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis.

This group kind of followed Doug, and they eventually became what was known as the Terra Nova Project. And in my interview with Doug, he said that the shift was apparent and very evident early on in Terra Nova, because this is a direct quote.

He said, It became about rethinking everything, not just church and ministry style, but also the content of Scripture. Now it's here that Driscoll began to be a little disturbed, because the conversation seemed to be shifting from changing the church to contextualize the gospel in culture to changing the gospel to contextualize it in culture.

And things got very heated at a certain planning meeting when Tony Jones began to join the party. Tony is now the national coordinator for Emergent Village. Tony at a Mexican restaurant writes this. He said, I ended up sitting across from Brad Cecil.

The two of us got to talking, and I can't remember the exact trajectory of the conversation, but I do remember saying at a somewhat inopportune time in a far too loud a voice, The Bible is propaganda.

It came out, even though I didn't believe it, and I'd never really thought about it. But to be honest, I was a bit amazed that I'd even said it. Everyone else at the table looked at me, their face betraying the thought, Who's the new guy?

As one does in these situations, I begin to feverishly defend my position, even in the face of Brad's face, and cries of, You've got to be kidding me, that's crazy. Propaganda has a point and a purpose, I retorted.

It isn't claimed to be objective. It's trying to convince someone of something. It's trying to get people to join a cause, a movement. Isn't that what the Bible is about? And Tony writes,. Particularly torqued at this assertion was Mark Driscoll, who let me know how much he disagreed with me.

I would love to know exactly what was said there. Later on in 1999, there was a regional conference event for this group. And it was there that Driscoll drew the line theologically, saying that he was Reformed, that he believed that only men should be elders, and that that's where he was, theologically.

And so what happened was, this group of men who had covenanted together to be friends, this group of men who had shared meals together with their families, this group of men who had begun to talk about theology and focus on that, not best practices, would now be separated by theology.

Mark writes, Mark Driscoll writes, I eventually had to distance myself from the emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Padgett began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me.

Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and a denial of hell, which is one hell of a mistake.

Tony Jones and Doug Padgett and Chris C. have a little different take on that. They say that Mark was divisive and harsh with his language and despite attempts to ask Mark to tone down and submit to the group, he refused.

The Formation of Acts 29 and Emergent Village

So in late 2000, David Nicholas from Spanish River Church in Boca Raton and Mark Driscoll formed the Acts 29 Network with a mission of churches planting churches, male elders, reformed soteriology, church planting churches.

2001, Emergent Village was formed with a mission of being a growing generative friendship among missional Christians seeking to love our world in the spirit of Jesus Christ. No mission statement, I mean no statement of faith for Emergent Village.

Now as I see it, these two movements are the most influential in the emerging church. Acts 29 to the right, Emergent Village to the left, theologically. And so what I want to do is actually add another stream to this because in the last couple of years, as I said, the conversation has gotten very nuanced.

And you have to understand that the emerging church cannot be separated from the postmodern situation in which it finds itself. And so it's notoriously slippery. Classification is a very un-postmodern thing to do.

And the point with my taxonomy is that emerging churches are not monolithic and that's what I really hope to help you understand. So I actually see three streams and everybody has given their streams and their thoughts and so I'll just add mine to the pile.

But since I'm here, I'll give them to you. The first one I'll classify as emerging conversational. The emerging conversational stream, their main focus, in my view, is theological revision. They are interested in the Missio Dei, the mission of God, which we will actually talk about in the second lecture and how that's a little different than the other side.

A lot of bloggers in this conversation. Driscoll refers to some of these guys as those who blog in their pajamas while living in their mom's basement. So those are his words, those aren't mine. A lot of bloggers.

And a lot of bivocational pastors. So a lot of pastors who actually make their living traveling, speaking, and then are in this conversation. A lot of seminary students. A lot from mainline seminaries are in this conversation and would be classified emerging conversational.

Three Streams of the Emerging Church

Theologians that the emerging conversational, you know, they look at. Scott McKnight, who is a professor at Park, I believe. The late Stan Grins. Nancy Murphy. Miroslav Volf, Croatian theologian. Walter Brueggemann.

And many others. I could name a ton, but those are some of them. Some of the people that I would put in this group. Doug Padgett. Tim Keele, a pastor in Kansas City. Karen Ward, who is a pastor of Apostles Church out in Seattle.

Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids. And Brian McLaren, who used to be a pastor and now travels and speaks. And what I see from the emerging conversational group is that they really are about challenging evangelical theology and reframing it.

Brian's new book, Brian McLaren's new book, is called Everything Must Change. And I've not read, I've read excerpts and reviews, and a couple of my good friends have read the book. And they say that what he hinted at in some of his other books, he has now completely, in their opinion, left evangelicalism.

That book's coming out. Heavy on critique and then kind of, instead of just alluding to things, actually is kind of moving in a new direction. Hence the title of the book, Everything Must Change. The second group I'll highlight is what I call emerging attractional.

I'll explain that in a second. They are after mainly revision in methods. And I say attractional because they highlight large group worship as opposed to the last group that I'll mention, the incarnational guys who downplay large group worship.

But there's two streams within this one. The Reformed, the Neo -Reformed, the Neo -Calvinist that has been written about so much. Some of the theologians they look to, Piper, Graham Goldsworthy, Chris Wright, Wayne Grudem, Tim Keller, the classic theologians like Calvin and Luther.

Some of the guys in this group, Matt Carter is a pastor in Austin Stone Church in Austin, Texas. Chris Tomlin is his worship leader, a very large church, doing some great things in Austin. Matt Chandler, pastor of the Village Church in Dallas, Texas.

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Daniel Montgomery, pastor of Sojourn Church in Louisville, Kentucky. And David Fairchild, pastor of Caleo Church in San Diego. I would put myself in that group as well.

There's also a group of non -Reformed, kind of the Neo-Seeker guys, guys like Andy Stanley. I'm not sure where to put Dan Campbell. I'll put him here. I'm sure he'll disagree with me, but he can do that.

John Burke is a pastor also in Austin. He was on the leadership team at Willow Creek before he planted. Perry Noble, this is a guy who planted a church in the middle of the sticks in Anderson, South Carolina, wherever that is.

The church has grown to like 9 ,000 people. It's amazing. Erwin McManus. And another guy that I'll throw in because he's local and he's doing some great things is Greg Holder at Windsor Crossing Community Church, which is a church about 15 minutes from here in the Chesterfield Valley.