Dan Kimball, the evangelical ‘expert’ on the emerging church in America, wrote that the emergent church is concerned with ‘radical holiness’. Is it?

I often find in much emergent literature a sort of contempt for the holiness traditions of historic evangelicalism (especially of the Anglo-Saxon variety). No doubt many within the emergent church movement view such traditional conceptions of holiness as on par with that of the Pharisees’, illustrated in their taking offense at Jesus’ table-fellowship with sinners and publicans. But is this fair or accurate?

In the Reformed tradition, thanks to Karl Barth, we are often referring to the three-fold witness of the Word.  That is, 1) the Word that took flesh in Jesus Christ, 2) that is witnessed to in Scripture, and 3) that is proclaimed in Word and Deed by the church.  I’m particularly interested in your thoughts on the third (if there is a similar thread, please let me know).

Specifically, what form will preaching take in the emergent church?  In our tradition, the sermon has always taken center stage.  As a pastor who preaches every Sunday I’m starting to become a little dissatisfied with the practice.  I stress "a little."  I look forward to doing it, but the results are anti-climatic.

Ok, so the first day of the 2006 Emergent Conversation at Yale University is over and it was a very cool and exciting thing to be part of. The Divinity School at Yale is a very unique setup, with a beautiful chapel at its center. It is located outside the campus, not "downtown" as they call the main campus, and Dan (a graduate student we spoke with) told us that he feels like that’s a great metaphor for how Christianity is generally treated at Yale.

It would appear that what is at stake here, and has been for almost 1900 years, is "the way".  When you look at the Gospels and Christ’s message to repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand it seems like an odd way to "evangelize".  Where’s the four spiritual laws and the Roman’s Road?  But what if we were to realize that this Kingdom that he speaks of is not something future, or just while He was here, but something he…