Now, on to the substance of the article, it reminds me of something that I say to my journalism students: It’s very easy to point out what’s wrong and complain about it. It’s extremely difficult to answer “so what do we do about it?”

I suspect there’s something similar in the emergent church movement.

On the other hand, I’d have liked to have seen more specific examples. It reminds me of so much sermonizing: “some people in the church …” and “Other theologians say …”

Bryan, I suppose the difficulty with providing specific examples is that these are general comments coming out of a specific community of people involved in this stuff in Melbourne Australia. Naming specific examples would mean fingering particular people or ministries in our small little puddle.

I don’t know, maybe John will wade into this little comment thread and give some non-identified examples.

I think I know some of the people John is slamming.

If its who I think he is castigating then my experience of those people has been quite different.

I think like most things there is an element of truth in what John is saying, but he sounds like he’s carrying a pretty big chip too.

I don’t use ‘emerging church’ much in my own discussions / presentations. I prefer to talk about being missionaries. EC is quite a volatile term and has serious baggage (as John shows).

Perhaps its also true that things get birthed out of pain - and that may be true for the EC - but I think it is in a different and healthier place now.

I wouldn’t own much, if any of John’s crit and I’d consider myself probably in that fold he is critical of.

“In fact, I’ve been at the cutting edge of emerging church for 26 years, and frankly, many of the so-called leaders of the emerging church look to me like adolescent wankers.”

I dunno… but it sure sounds like a ‘people in glass houses’ scenario to me.

My question would be ‘who hurt him?’ (John)

As for naming names, well, that might actually be a good thing in the long run. Move the conversation out of the “your house/my house” realm and down into specific actions by specific people at specific times.

Generalizations such as those also make it very difficult for people to mount a proper defense. Should I defend my actions? What if he’s not talking about me? What if it’s this other group of people?

The link is http://www.frontier.com.au/truth. If people have trouble accessing it (perhaps it has problems with particular service providers?) then I can contact John and see whether he will allow us to reproduce the articles here.

As for the content, I resonate a great deal with some of what John is saying - particularly the separation between the emerging church and the “traditional” church (the archives of this blog will reveal many of the same themes). I don’t know that I would have expressed it in the same way, but I think that the conversation is valuable.

Or maybe it causes us to wonder if he’s not just talking out of his rear. (/sarcasm)

Seriously, didn’t Jesus say “woe unto you scribes and pharisees …” They knew who he was talking about, and he listed specific examples.

Paul was specific in his criticisms of fellow church leaders, and Peter even said paul was sometimes difficult to understand.

To fail to be more specific is to invite non-specific responses - if responses ye get at all.

Does the EC in Australia have so many imploding communities (as well as sucessful ones, of course)?