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Ten Years Out: A Retrospective on the Emerging Church in North America by Stephen Shields

January of 2009 finds us at a crossroads for the emerging church in North America. There’s increasing discomfort with the term “emerging church” itself, with a number of leading lights in the movement expressing hesitations about the term. Andrew Jones, who was an early leader in the conversation, recently announced that he would no longer be using the term “emerging church” as “the word no longer communicates what i want it to.” Prominent emerging church blogger, and Next-Wave Contributing Editor, Bob Hyatt, a pastor with The Evergreen Community in Portland, OR, recently posted his frustration over both the term and the identification of the movement itself, commenting, “I'm more often than not now answering a question about what we aren't than what we are about- and that saddens me.” Bob also shares, “I do have some deep concerns about some of the things I see in the movement as a whole- and to be honest, though I once spent a lot of time defending the emerging church, I want to be about the Gospel.” Theologian and author Scot McKnight, who has vigorously participated in the emerging church conversation through his Jesus Creed blog, expresses his reservations: “I like the diversity of ‘emerging’ but the problem is that the term has been so abused by its critics that embracing the term leads to endless discussions of just how one is part of that emerging conversation. I've basically given up on using the term except in audiences where I think it is understood.” Dan Kimball also limits when he uses the term saying, “I don’t use the term too much anymore because of the confusion and also that it means so many things, depending on who you ask.” Then there is the cyclical parsing of any difference there might be between the term “emerging church” and “emergent.”

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