“From someone who actually visited emerging churches” Dan Kimball

Vintage Faith blog: From someone who actually visited emerging churches

In the continuing sadness and frustration about what I would call urban legends and over-generalizations being made about "the emerging church" and their theological beliefs, I was reading a new book by Bob Whitesel that has something of merit to repeat here.

The book is called "Inside the Organic Church: Learning From 12 Emerging Congregations"

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I have read the entire book and he does say there is a small percentage who would venture into theological areas he called "not orthodox and even aberrant". But he continues again and reinforces that they are a minority when he states again "to my surprise, the majority of these emerging congregations have adopted the theology and core beliefs of the denominations that birthed them."

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May people who feel they want to be vocal and write books, or send letters, or write blogs about "the emerging church" please take Bob Whitesel's lead and have enough integrity, respect and professional maturity to follow his example. You may not have the time to go and visit 12 different churches, but if you are determined enough to want to go and publicly be expressing your opinion as facts and want to point out alleged error – you certainly can have the decency to take even a small amount of time to go to some emerging church web sites and check them out. Or have the decency to email the leaders or call them to ask them what they do or believe and to make sure you are aren't propagating incorrect accusations and bascally slander other Christians with generalizations and false stereotypes.