What is the emerging church?

Brian McLaren recently concluded a sermon series at the church he pastors at (Cedar Ridge Community Church) title "What is the emerging church?" They are available as mp3 downloads from the church's website. The series is a great discussion of the EC conversation to this point.

What Is The Emerging Church? (Introduction)

What Is The Emerging Church? Missional, Evangelical, Integral

What Is The Emerging Church? Artistic

What Is The Emerging Church? Monastic and Communal

Emergents, Meet Saints!

Chris Armstrong writes in ChristianityToday:

Lately my days have been taken up with preparing a book and a course titled "Patron (and Matron) Saints" for Postmoderns (see my blog, deadchristianssociety.blog.com). The book, course, and blog feature the lives of Gregory the Great, Margery Kempe, John Comenius, John Newton, Charles Simeon, Amanda Berry Smith, Charles M. Sheldon, and Dorothy L. Sayers.

So the question has haunted me: "Why should Christians today read biographies of 'dead Christians' from ages past?"

One particularly forceful answer has hit me from (what some evangelicals might consider) "left field"—the young movement of Emergent Christian thinkers and leaders...

Armstrong encourages Emergents to read biographies of "dead Christians" and there find inspiration for their conversation about how we do church.

TallSkinnyKiwi calls this good advice, and cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the early favorite among German Emergents.

EmergentNo says that Armstrong is trying to hawk his upcoming book, and though they would probably not disagree that we can learn from the lives of those who have come before us, they argue that the Gospel is unchanging, and therefore we do no need to look to how it has been adapted in the past (ostensibly because it has not been adapted). As always, the comments attached to the EmergentNo post are enlightening (pun intended).