Emerging Churches
By Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger
352 pages
Publisher: Baker Academic (December 1, 2005)

Authors: Eddie Gibbs is the Donald A. McGavaran Professor of Church Growth at Fuller. Ryan Bolger is assistant professor of church in contemporary culture at Fuller.

Point of View: Eddie has been researching and teaching “church renewal, leadership, and evangelization” for over thirty years. He is from the UK, and was ordained in the Church of England. Ryan is a participant in new paradigm churches, has been part of emerging church leadership in Southern California, and is a native of Los Angeles (8).

Organization: After describing current culture and the emerging church, Gibbs and Bolger guide their readers through nine missiologically significant characteristics of the emerging church leaders interviewed during the research:

1. Identifying with Jesus
2. Transforming secular space
3. Living as community
4. Welcoming the stranger
5. Serving with generosity
6. Participating as producers\
7. Creating as created beings
8. Leading as a body
9. Merging ancient and contemporary spiritualities.

Intention: To identify the essential practices of emerging churches in the US and UK in order to enable and encourage conversation with and among the emerging generations of Christians.


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