Kimball: Yes. I think one of the big things is that there is such a wide variety of theological thinking, so when you hear the words "emerging church," there's great diversity in what they look like, how they think, how they express their faith and what they believe theologically. So it isn't like it's a denomination, or it isn't like in a purpose-driven church, though they're probably somewhat the same. But there's a great diversity among them. The more I've spoken around and do things, the broader I see that. So that makes it all the more hard to categorize.
I've also seen a lot of sadness in the relationships between senior leaders in churches and the emerging leaders who have different values and different ways of thinking. I've heard such horrible stories, to me, of how leadership in churches function with one another, not allowing new things to emerge because of control issues, or different things. And I've seen sad responses from emerging leaders and how they go about dealing with this. A sad part of it to me, is a lot of tension that is caused in the body of Christ in local churches, generally due to control issues and confusion: it doesn't all fit into a nice system or nice package, or this is what a church is supposed to be or this is how a senior pastor is supposed to function. That caught me off guard more, seeing how widespread that is.
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I think what is really refreshing is this interest in theology again, the discussion about it, the desire for depth. I think that's a very refreshing thing that's going on right now.
Preaching: Your comment about leadership conflicts leads to the question: does an emerging church need to be a new church, or can the things you describe be done within the context of an existing congregation?
Kimball: I mean I believe it generally depends on the senior pastor. I think there are senior pastors in existing churches who don't recognize this as kind of like starting a Korean church within your church or a Korean worship gathering and ministry. If you look at it like you're just starting a college group and one day they'll grow up and then become like you — those are the ones that end up having a lot of conflict.
Where it works, the senior pastors see this kind of like a mission. It's not just changing the music or adding candles; it's really a rethinking holistically. Like in The Emerging Church book where a chapter talked about it affects evangelism, it affects preaching, it affects how you view worship gatherings, it affects spiritual formation, and how you go about even small groups. For the senior pastors that have done that — there are some — I think it's great. If you're a senior pastor and you have more of a traditional view of the church and you can't get out of that, it's a disaster waiting to happen.