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malcolm chamberlain

musings about the emerging church, mission and contemporary culture...

God is at large, intimately involved in his world in ways that the church is maybe just waking up to!

... is it church? ...

Monday, January 11, 2010

Not sure if anyone is still out there (given how quiet I've been on this blog recently) but I thought it was worth directing anyone interested to a good paper written by Kevin Ward for the online New Zealand journal 'Stimulus' entitled It might be emerging, but is it church?

I found it a good well-balanced critique of the emerging church, although I have to admit to not really recognising some of his cited characteristics of the emerging church as being ones I'd really own. Nevertheless, Ward gives a good background to the 'movement', deals extensively with questions of church, culture and contextualisation, and critiques the emerging church (or, at least, his version of it) against the creedal confession of the "one holy, catholic and apostolic church".

You might not agree with all of his arguments or conclusions, but this is definitely (in my humble opinion) one of the better critical engagements with the emerging church.

Download the full paper from the Stimulus website 'here' (pdf format)

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posted by Malcolm Chamberlain, 5:07 PM

3 Comments:

Great article Malcolm. Thanks for the heads up.

commented by Blogger Glen Marshall, 6:24 PM  

Happy New Year Malcolm. Pleased you discovered the article. Kevin writes some very thoughtful stuff.

commented by Anonymous Paul Fromont, 6:45 AM  

Malcolm, thanks for drawing attention to this. One error in the article: Alan Hirsch is Churches of Christ, not Baptist.

commented by Anonymous Matt Stone, 6:30 AM  

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