Wednesday, February 08, 2006

generalising

I am really enjoying this book - it's a very helpful survey of what's going on and the common themes that emerge from what's going on. i've already found it useful in clarifying my thinking, particularly when there's stuff you know intuitively but you haven't quite put it into words yet. There have been plenty of those moments.
But one aspect of the book disappoints and frustrates me and that is that it seems to continually generalise and perhaps doesn't recognise the diversity of approaches that are going on. Continually we are told that "emerging churches do this" or "emerging churches do that" or "such and such is important to emerging churches". I know for a fact that there is more diversity that this in the emerging church community.
They are doing a great job at picking out important themes, and Andrew Jones is probably right that this is the best book yet on the 'emerging church' but they just need to be more careful about some of their language I feel. Does this resonate with anyone else who has read the book?

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