Intro to Emerging Church

For flat information, you would probably do best to just go to Wikipedia or some other encyclo-type site. As my knowledge of the movement - excuse me, conversation - is piecemeal, I might have my attention focussed on some dominant, but not exclusive, EC position and miss an important minority view.

For wandering about the web, these sites provide ongoing discussion of what people are doing and thinking about the EC: Tall Skinny Kiwi and Scott McKnight's Jesus Creed site. Both have the advantage of talking about many faith issues with emerging church views in prominence, rather than a mere back-and-forth op-ed style of defense and attack of EC versus traditional model church. The Emergent Village site has both. There are hundreds or thousands of other sites, for which you can follow the links at these three.

McKnight also has essay length discussions, mostly positive, about what the EC is and is doing. The best of these are the (similar) What Is The Emerging Church? and Future Or Fad? There is also a mostly sympathetic Glenn Innes essay for a course intro: What Then Is The Emerging Church?

Prominent books would be the Brian McLaren self-explorations about Generous Orthodoxy and A New Kind of Christian, plus the more recent The Secret Message of Jesus. I am currently almost finished the Gibbs and Bolger overview Emerging Churches. The D.A. Carson book Becoming Conversant With The Emerging Church is critical, so I have left off reading it for the moment. That's an oddity of mine. If I am going to come out in favor of something I want to make sure I have read the negative, but if I am going to be critical, I want to be sure I am bringing my own thoughts, not those of other critics.

Yes, that does telegraph that I am going to have some significant negatives in my little offerings to follow. But I also strongly approve of some of the paths they are taking.