A few fellow AG bloggers have been writing about Pentecostalism and the Emergent Church. It’s an interesting conversation.

Yesterday, SingingOwl wrote about an article Bryan Thompson wrote titled, “On Being Pentecostal and Emergent.”

This morning, Earl Creps published a post titled, “Can we be Pentecostal and Emergent?”

I find this whole emergent church conversation very interesting… very confusing. The movement is hard to define. Hard to understand.

Southern Baptist, Ed Stetzer wrote an article that tries to help. In Understanding the Emerging Church, he describes three groups in the Emerging Church. Relevants, Reconstructionists, and Revisionists.

I found this helpful. When discussing the Emergent Church movement sometimes we put all of these people into one big group. And that just isn’t accurate. There’s a big difference between those who want to share the gospel in a culturally relevant manner and those who revise that gospel. It is this unorthodox doctrine, this questioning and denying of the very foundations of our faith that makes me so uncomfortable.

Creps says on his blog:
“Since mentioning the EmChurch tends to be incendiary, let me leave no room for assumptions: I am painfully orthodox doctrinally, with a Pentecostal identity that is a matter of choice, not of inheritance. I feel unthreatened by having friends who see things differently.”

For some reason I found that statement comforting.

Random Notes:

While searching for more on this topic, I ran across a post by Rich Tatum:

“It’s okay … I’m Emergent. I’m here to help.” Or, deconstructing the helpful deconstruction.

And here’s a five part essay titled, The Emerging Missional Church: A SWOT Analysis.

I haven’t read all of it yet… but if I post the link here, I’ll eventually get around to it.