Why the Emerging Church Movement Failed

Part 2, Searching for Sunday

As Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller share in the Emerged podcast, their oral history of the emerging church movement, the movement began among church leaders and church planters. So, initially at least, the emerging church movement was focused upon churches. Churches associated with the movement, like Doug Pagitt's Solomon's Porch, were planted. And yet, as time went on, a broad, church-based network never really emerged. 

I mentioned in the last post how the peak of the emerging church conversation coincided with the golden age of blogging, the early to mid-2000s. (Twitter would show up in 2006 and do its part to fracture the movement, but more on that later in this series.) During these years, much of the energy associated with the emerging church conversation was taking place on social media rather than in church pews. So much so, that, in retrospect, I would argue that the emerging church movement eventually became a social media phenomenon. To be sure, an influential and impactful social media phenomenon, but a social media phenomenon nonetheless. 

For the first time in human history, people could connect and talk to each other about theological ideas online. This allowed Christians with minority viewpoints within their churches and faith traditions to find each other. That experience was thrilling. People were "connecting" online, and all that "connecting" was experienced as a movement. Especially when all these people would gather together under the same roof for a conference. But at the end of the day, those few hundred people at the conference, when they went back to their churches, remained in the minority. In short, while many people felt "seen" by the emerging church conversation, theological misfits finding an online community, the movement never captured entire churches at scale. In short, one of the reasons the emerging church failed was ecclesiological: the movement became overly dependent upon social media, books, conferences, and festivals.  

Consider, as one example, how many of the early leaders in the emerging church conversation, who were pastors, left their churches to become authors and conference speakers. As a result, the emerging church movement became increasingly focused upon individual voices, many of whom were no longer connected to a local church. Very little of the ferment and energy of the emerging church conversation that was taking place online was making its way into local churches. The metrics of growth were books sales, online followers, speaking gigs, and conference attendees. Actual churches were left behind.

Now, why did this happen? Why did the emerging church get pushed out of the pews and onto social media?

Well, to be fair to some of those pastors who left their churches to become public speakers and authors, many were pushed out of their churches. And many church members who identified with the movement eventually felt called or impelled to leave their evangelical churches. 

Recall, the emerging church was largely an evangelical phenomenon. And in the early years of the movement the emerging church could lean upon evangelical support networks and structures. At the start, as I shared in the last post, the emerging church movement presented itself as a missiological movement, as an evangelical attempt to reach a post-modern culture. As long as the emerging church kept its focus upon cultural analysis--how to evangelize GenXers and Millennials--it was a welcome and necessary conversation among evangelicals. If the kids wanted smells and bells, well, let's do that. If they wanted a more relevant and authentic Christian experience, let's give them that. And if they needed to carry more doubt and uncertainty, let's teach them to embrace their questions. The goal seemed to be evangelistic: Let's figure out a way to reach this post-modern culture. Books like Blue Like Jazz and Velvet Elvis, which exemplified this approach, became huge best-sellers. 

Soon, however, leaders within the emerging church movement began to endorse (or explore) doctrinal positions which ran afoul of evangelical orthodoxy. Rob Bell got farewelled for publishing Love Wins, questioning beliefs about hell. Rachel Held Evans fired her shot with A Year of Biblical Womanhood, pushing for egalitarian gender roles in evangelical churches. Soon, LGBTQ issues would become the focus. Evangelicalism Inc. circled the wagons and expelled the heretics. Suddenly, the structures and networks of evangelical support dried up. And without a robust network of churches to fall back on, the emerging church got pushed online. Pastors became authors and speakers. And while conferences could encourage the faithful, a conference, which is at root a money-making endeavor, isn't a church. 

(Plus, as we'll see, those conference lineups started getting called out and canceled once Twitter became weaponized.)

Without churches of their own, the emerging church movement fractured and stalled. Some left churches altogether. "Emerging" became "ex-evangelical." Some sought a home in the mainline. Some tried to start their own churches. Many of these emerging church plants, however, stumbled and failed. Read Rachel Held Evans' evocative Searching for Sunday for one such story about how all this looked.

Basically, the emerging church failed because it failed ecclesiologically. It never was able to establish a broad network of churches after support from the evangelical establishment evaporated. But all of this raises a question. Why did the emerging church movement struggle so much in establishing churches of its own? Why were so many in the emerging church movement left wandering and adrift "searching for Sunday"? 

We'll turn to that issue next. 

And do check out the Emerged podcast hosted by Tony Jones and Tripp Fuller, their oral history of the emerging church movement (webpage here, Apple podcast here, and Spotify here).