If you can only read one thing on the emerging church, read this.
Scot McKnight gave a lecture Oct 26th entitled "What is the Emerging Church? and Misnomers Surrounding the Emerging Church" at a forum at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia area). It is excellent. It is 30 pages but is pretty easy reading.
I think Scot gets it right on. Scot is a prolific and wise blogger here. He is a professor of New Testament at North Park University.
I have pasted the paper below.
Download scot_mcknight_what_is_the_emerging_church.pdf
Here is a link to the audio.
Here is Scot’s own reflection on the day.
I was pleased to see David Black, Greek professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, responding positively to McKnight’s talk here.
Here is where you can buy the series.
I have recommended Scot as a good source for understanding the emerging church movement before. See here.
Scot, and everyone else it seems, recommend the book Emerging Churches by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs because it lets the movement speak for themselves. I reviewed that here.
Scot will be at ETS and SBL if you are attending them this week.
I found an article entitled More than a Fad: Understanding the Emerging Church by Walter Henegar of the PCA which shows quite a good grasp on the emerging church movement and responds quite fairly to it. Most PCA folks tend to be suspicious of it. Henegar was one of the speakers at the Westminster conference.
You can also read Scot McKnight’s article based on the paper for Christianity Today at "Five Streams of the Emerging Church."