Zeal For Truth

Emerging churches tend to place a high value on community. For the many dictionary enthusiasts, I’ll point out that it is definition 3b I’m using: “Sharing, participation, and fellowship.” According to Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger in their book, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures -

Emerging churches destroy the Christendom idea that church is a place, a meeting or a time. Church is a way of life, a rhythm, a community, a movement.

Emerging Church types recognize that it’s not possible to live a true Christian life apart from sharing life with a group of people who are seeking to live in the way of Jesus. Emerging churches often meet in small groups, not only to have Bible study and prayer, but also to just spend time together in general.

Small groups are not new to the American church scene, and not all emerging churches have them. However, Emerging churches tend to have small groups more often and place more emphasis on them than other churches do, often to the point that it’s in the small groups where “church” really takes place. This demonstrates the trend in some Emerging churches to de-emphasize the importance of the Sunday morning service (the center, if not the sole, event of many churches). This is done in order to focus more on other events throughout the week, such as the previously mentioned small groups and activities that seek to connect the church with the non-believing communities they find themselves in.

Community is not just something that is merely surface level, but it seeks to be authentic, allowing people to be honest and open about themselves and the problems they are facing. In some churches, especially those influenced by prosperity “gospel,” people find this difficult to do. Emerging churches highly value this type of transparency.

This sense of community is not merely important for the sake of the people of the church, but it is also the best witness to the non-believing world. As Lesslie Newbigin put it:

How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.