Like so many attempts to understand a currently developing and growing phenomenon, the quest to comprehend the emergent/emerging church proves frustrating and often elusive. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger promises a comparatively more accurate window into the world of emerging churches because it taps a wealth of primary source material. So I tend to lend more weight to the findings of GB.

Chapter 6 is entitled “Welcoming the Stranger,” one of the nine defining patterns of emerging churches according to GB. Check out the following quote from Manchester (UK) emerging church leader Ben Edson of Sanctus1 from that chapter:

“We had a guy from the Manchester Buddhist center come to Sanctus1 a couple weeks ago and talk about Buddhist approaches to prayer. We didn’t talk about the differences between our faiths. We didn’t try to convert him.” Pip Piper of maji community Birmingham (UK): “Evangelism or mission for me is no longer about persuading people to believe what I believe, no matter how edgy or creative I get. It is more about shared experiences and encounters.” I am sorry but this statement from Piper reminds me so much of the mindset and values that infused the drug culture I once inhabited! Never mind. GB from the same chapter: “Christians cannot truly evangelize unless they are prepared to be evangelized in the process.”

One refrain I am encountering repeatedly in the emerging literature is their critique of seeker-sensitive mega churches. But Sanctus1 sounds fairly seeker-sensitive for Buddhists. I expect that emerging church leaders such as Piper and Edson would embrace, as I do, two conditions of real learning and converse passed on by my Ph.D. supervisor: #1. One cannot critique what one has not understood and #2 One cannot usually understand what one has not first engaged sympathetically. Let’s agree that screaming and shaking fingers in unsuspecting faces might not be the best way to share the love of Jesus whether it is done door-to-door or on the street corner or anywhere else.

But has genuine gospel witness occurred where the message is left unarticulated? And does that message not include the exclusive claims of Christ? And is not this claim bound to offend most? And do not the biblical warnings against having other gods (you remember, the first of the ten commandments!) belong to every kind of evangelism worthy of being called Biblical or Christian?