Andrew,

Thank you for going out on a limb, opening yourself to some criticism, and attempting to answer what is apparently a very difficult question.

I’d like to re-phrase the question in three different ways. I offer them with the explanation that I am someone only just discovering this idea of “emerging church”/”emerging conversation” who is skeptical about the notion due in large part to negative past experience with other attempts to take a new approach (or recover an older approach that was “lost”) to the concept of Christianity.

To all reading this, I may not have the most precise language, I may offer up questions or insights which strike you as naive, or based on poor assumptions, but this is where I am in my process, and I would hope that Christian Charity isn’t too old fashioned of an idea to see it applied to the responses I may get :)

So, rather than asking what the emerging church stands for, I will ask these versions of the question instead in the hopes they provide a new window into what seems to be the underlying concern for both myself and others.

re-phrase version one:
If the above outline is correct and the emerging conversation is asking the question “How do we effectively communicate the gospel to a postmodern culture?” does this not beg the question “how do we define the concept of The Gospel if the very notions of the divinity of Jesus and other traditionally core aspects of that Gospel Message is now part of (to again quote) “a less confident - and in that sense postmodern - epistemology, that recognizes the problematic nature of truth statements”? If the traditional Gospel Message is John 3:16 paraphrased, and the emerging conversation has called that construct into question, what is the Message which replaces it which we are looking to effectively communicate to a postmodern culture?

re-phrase version two:
Is the concern that a postmodern, deconstructed approach to theology runs the risk of eventually reducing all the traditional tenants of faith to a question mark going to be treated as a fear of the unknown, a fear of change, a fear of losing the past and tradition, or is there some aspect of a genuine fear that we can “take this too far” and eventually end up like, for example, the Democratic National Party which bends over so far backwards to be unoffensive and all inclusive that they are incapable of standing up for anything at all, and so we render our emerging, postmodern church impotent?

re-phrase version three:
I see a website called Open Source Theology which appears to have become so embroiled in the emerging conversation, that no actual resultant theology will ever actually materialize. In open source software, there is certainly a great deal of debate and discussion, arguing and compromise, but in the end, if some actual software doesn’t result, you no longer have open source software, you have a software discussion group. Is it likely or even possible in a postmodern context to actually construct “a theology”, open source or otherwise, or does this simply become an inclusive, safe environment in which thinking Christians agree to disagree?

~jhimm
—
it is smarter to be lucky
than it is lucky to be smart.