Book Review - Emerging Churches by Bolger and Gibbs

I had flipped through the book several times and always thought it looked interesting but was probably just a lot of what's already out there.

I stumbled upon an excellent podcast by red herring http://yeredherringe.blogspot.com/ that interviewed Ryan Bolger about this book. I was fascinated with their commitment to actual feet on the ground interviews and how they didn't include many larger mega-church type churches that want to appear like an emerging church but have just changed a few things in their services. Once I listened to the podcast I had to go and get the book.

After interviewing hundreds of churches and focusing on about 50 leading people within the emerging church movement in mostly the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US they found some similarities between these churches. They share three main things and six other things flow out of those. The three main things were Identifying with Jesus (most specifically the life of Jesus as a way of life), transforming secular space (focusing on losing the dualistic viewpoint many of us have) and living as community (most specifically people learning to live in the kingdom of God create a community and the community life supercedes all desire for programs or services).

I highly recommend the book as a way to hear how many churches are actually doing these things we keep hearing about. Don't be expecting hundreds of people at these churches though many communities in this book are under fifty people. Brian McLaren's review of the book on the back is hilarious it's basically why this book is helpful and D.A. Carson's book isn't.

If for some reason you stumble onto this site and you have read this book let me know what you thought or if you have questions about it being worth the read for you let me know.