Evangelicals Engaging Emergent: A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement

by Thom S. Rainer (Foreword), Adam W. Greenway (Editor), William Henard (Editor)

While plenty of books related to the conversations as well as controversies surrounding the emergent church have surfaced in recent years, no comprehensive evangelical assessment of the movement has been published until now. Evangelicals Engaging Emergent draws from a broad spectrum of conservative evangelicalism to serve as a clear, informative, fair, and respectful guide for those desiring to know what “emergent” means, why it originated, where the movement is going, what issues concern emergent believers, and where they sometimes go wrong theologically.Among the dozen contributors are Norman Geisler (“A Postmodern View of Scripture”), Darrell Bock (“Emergent/Emerging Christologies”), Ed Stetzer (“The Emergent/Emerging Church: A Missiological Perspective”), and Daniel Akin (“The Emerging Church and Ethical Choices: The Corinthian Matrix”).

Genres: Christian

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2009

About the author

Thom S. Rainer is the founder and CEO of Church Answers and Executive Director of Revitalize Network. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama where he received his degree in business administration. He received both the master of divinity and the Ph.D. degrees from Southern Seminary.

Dr. Rainer has served as pastor of four churches. He is the former president of Rainer
Group consulting. He served for twelve years as dean at Southern Seminary and for thirteen years as the president and CEO of LifeWay Çhristian Resources.

Dr. Rainer has authored or co-authored 33 books. Among his greatest joys are his family: his wife Nellie Jo; three sons, Sam, Art, and Jess; and eleven grandchildren.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This compilation of articles engaging various issues concerning the emergent/emerging church provides a helpful overview of the movement/conversation as well as a timely critique of much of the questionable practices of the movement. One of the biggest strengths of the book is that it provides three different categories of the emergent church--the least extreme being those who might not even identify themselves with the emergent church yet are commonly associated with the movement (Mark Driscoll, etc) and the most extreme being those who are considered leaders in the movement and those who perhaps deserve the most critique (Brian McLaren, etc). Because the authors are so careful to highlight these different categories, it keeps them from over-generalizing or lumping the entire movement together (perhaps the one criticism of D.A. Carson's book on the emergent church). This is a very helpful book when thinking about how to continue to engage the emergent church.