Dan Kimball is a 43-year-old pastor who has helped launch a national conversation about the "emerging church." For a number of years he led an alternative worship service ("Graceland") for Santa Cruz Bible Church, and since February has been pastor of a newly-created church that is seeking to offer new models for ministry to younger adults in that community. He is the author of The Emerging Church, and his newest book is Emerging Worship. Preaching editor Michael Duduit recently visited with Dan.
Preaching: What is an "emerging church"?
Kimball: The frustrating answer is there's no definition. There are so many variations of what we're seeing emerging churches are like. Every so often in history — in American history and church history — there seems to be a rethinking of what we're about as culture changes. What I think is going on right now is a pretty widespread rethinking of church as a whole, primarily among younger leaders — many of whom have grown up and have been on staff at contemporary or traditional evangelical churches. They are rethinking, "Is this the way that we're connecting with our culture for the gospel?" So that's probably the common denominator — that most of them are rethinking the church.
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Preaching: Why is it important to rethink the church right now?
Kimball: To me, it's extremely important. It's hard to make a general blanket statement - because there are churches that God's doing things in all over the place. But when you take a general look around at most churches — even the mega-churches - what you find is a drastic dropout rate from teenagers. As George Barna said in a recent book (Real Teens), something like two-thirds of the teenagers will be dropping out, which is a lot higher trend than normal.
We're seeing more people growing up — younger people in particular — growing up outside of church culture, and we're not seeing that many churches significantly making a difference in the emerging culture. So even successful mega-churches are responding. Willow Creek does their Access service, Saddleback's doing some sort of video café with candlelight and acoustic music. Even large churches are realizing we need to do something different if we're serious about reaching and preaching to emerging generations.
Preaching: Rather than talk about the emerging church in terms of characteristics, why not just describe what I might see if I came to your church some Sunday. What would that experience be like?
Kimball: One difference is even in using the word "go to church" to describe what we're trying to do. I actually have a chapter in The Emerging Church book on this. When you say, "I go to church," we are trying to reframe it and say something like, "When the church gathers on Sunday." We're trying to break out of some of the subtle, consumerist kind of thinking by trying to watch our terminology. So I'd say, "When the church gathers." We're trying to build the church out of home communities, but then we all meet together on Sunday nights.