I agree that HTB is doing some good theological education – I’ve seen it at first hand. But Gordon Fee is hardly a progressive theologian, and I wonder how long we will have to wait for the content of the Alpha course to reflect anything like a New Perspective on either Jesus or Paul. Perhaps a new Alpha course is in the works, but for now I still see a disjunction – a potentially a widening disjunction – between theology and mission or between theology and successful church life.

Of course, the problem here may lie with the theology rather than with the missional life of the HTB churches. But it seems to me that the emerging paradigm simply has not developed far enough yet to provide the sort of coherent credal framework or worldview that will support longterm effective missional activity and community life. So it doesn’t surprise me too much that people are oscillating between two thought-worlds at the moment. In fact, I would see that as a healthy state of affairs while (I hope) a new ‘evangelical’ paradigm develops in the background. (I think the word ‘evangelical’ probably should be retained, but there is a big difference between how Tom Wright, say, understands ‘gospel’ and how the word functions within Alpha-thought.)

I wouldn’t attempt to put the developmental argument on such a grand scale. The fact is that a lot of people grow up within confident, faith-ful, conservative religious environments and then go through a crisis of faith that is for the most part intellectual or theological. We had a young American guy here last night talking about his struggle to come to terms with the intellectual dishonesty of his Campus Crusade student background. There seems to me a pretty strong case for saying that the emerging church has been driven by a broad-based crisis of that nature. Where it goes next is another question, but I don’t think the answer is to go back to a ‘modern’ Alpha style theology simply because it appears to work in the short term. The theological flaws inherent in it won’t go away.

In fact, come to think of it, aren’t you rather arguing for a Hegelian dialectic yourself: from the thesis of modern evangelicalism to the antithetical reaction of disillusioned post-evangelicals to a synthesis in which a ‘robust critique’ modifies mainstream evangelicalism from within?

I also would not want to argue that the emerging church or emergent movement as you describe it represents the future of the church.

1. I think that the significant development is much broader and less recognizable than what we currently identify as the emerging church. I think it is much more helpful, though admittedly simplistic, to talk about the church as it emerges from Christendom, as it adjusts, intellectually, socially and culturall, over many decades to its new place in the world following the failure of the model of Christian Europe. The Alpha course is itself an element in that adjustment, but it would be naïve, surely, to think that things will stop there.

2. Not everything ‘emerging’ is tainted with cynicism. The small church that we are part of in West London retains a healthy relationship with the evangelical-charismatic network from which many of its members came, but they are passionate about developing a way of existing as church that integrates worship, community, social action and witness within a thoughtful, imaginative and evolving theological framework. Now at the moment they have one small child between them, so perhaps they will all eventually defect to the local HTB clone as things change. But that is a very utilitarian – if not cynical – defence of the HTB format. And there is no reason why they should not find other ways of involving children in their community life.

3. An emerging theology should not be judged by the success or failure of the emerging churches. There is no reason why large, formally traditional churches should not develop an emerging theology – a theology that takes seriously, for example, the New Perspective, or that supports an understanding of mission that is broader than personal evangelism or sending missionaries to foreign countries. In fact, I’m sure that’s happening. And of course, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that the current spate of emerging communities is flowing in theologically coherent or sustainable directions.

Finally, I love your last paragraph!