While practices and even core doctrine vary, most emergents can be recognized by the following values:

• Missional living - Christians go out into the world to serve God rather than isolate themselves within communities of like-minded individuals.
• Narrative theology - Teaching focuses on narrative presentations of faith and the Bible rather than systematic theology or biblical reductionism.
• Christ-likeness - While not neglecting the study of scripture or the love of the church, Christians focus their lives on the worship and emulation of the person of Jesus Christ.
• Authenticity - People in the postmodern culture seek real and authentic experiences in preference over scripted or superficial experiences. Emerging churches strive to be relevant to today's culture and daily life, whether it be through worship or service opportunities. The core Christian message is unchanged but emerging churches attempt, as the church has throughout the centuries, to find ways to reach God's people where they are to hear God's message of unconditional love.
• Social Action"doing a “180” is putting others before yourself and also a willingness to be counter cultural."
  -© ginkworld.net 180

During recent centuries Western Christianity, like all of Western civilization, has been influenced significantly by modernism. In the 19th century modernist Protestant theologians sought to examine the individual narratives of the Bible and from them extract a set of underlying truths or "meta-narratives". By using methods borrowed from scientific reductionism it was hoped that a grand truth and worldview would be attained. In practice, however, the modernist approach led to additional schism within the Church (cf. Christian liberalism, Christian fundamentalism).

Postmodern church expression, on the other hand, encourages followers to deconstruct each element of their faith experience and reassemble the pieces according to his or her own unique journey of deconstruction.

One definition of the Emerging Church is that it is the collective term for the individuals who are emerging from this process of deconstruction and reconstruction of Christianity or for those who have joined groups/churches being led by such individuals.

Alternatively, the Emerging Church may be seen as both a reaction to, and a continuation of the Saddleback/Willow Creek movement, which achieved such great success in the 1990s using a "seeker-friendly" approach. The "seeker-friendly" approach practiced ‘come-to-church’ evangelism while the emergent church thesis is ‘discover church’ evangelism, in which the powerful (and often challenging) symbols and practices of the early church are poured into the modern church.

Both models are marked by their goal of evangelism and by their willingness to retool the church experience as necessary to meet their goal. However, the resulting church experiences can be quite different. The Saddleback / Willow Creek movement sought to forego the "irrelevant trappings" of the traditional church, such as stained glass, liturgy and candles, while the Emerging Church movement tends to value these same symbols as sacred expressions of faith and creativity.

The Saddleback / Willow Creek movement is comfortable applying the tools of modern American marketing (focus groups, advertising, polling, etc.), to deliver a highly polished product to a baby boomer target demographic. In contrast, the emerging church movement recognizes that their own target audience -- post-baby boomers -- has already been bombarded and over-saturated with advertising and thus places a higher value on authentic personal interactions and the power of the timeless truths themselves.

While there is no co-ordinated organization behind the Emerging Church and no guarantee that the Emerging Church will mature into a coherent movement at all, the term is becoming increasingly common among leaders of Emerging Church groups and Emerging Church thinkers. Many of these leaders and thinkers have written books, articles and/or blogs on the subject using a shared terminology.

• Highly creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection. This can involve everything from the use of contemporary music and films to liturgy, as well as more ancient customs, with a goal of making the church more appealing to the unchurched, and those within the church.
• A minimalist and decentralized organizational structure.
• A flexible approach to theology wherein individual differences in belief and morality are accepted within reason.
• A holistic view of the role of the church in society. This can mean anything from greater emphasis on fellowship in the structure of the group to a higher degree of emphasis on social action, community building or Christian outreach.
• A desire to reanalyze the Bible within varying contexts with the goal of revealing a multiplicity of valid perspectives rather than a single valid interpretation.
• A continual re-examination of theology.
• A high value placed on creating communities built out of the creativity of those who are a part of each local body.
• A belief in the journey of faith, both as individual and community.

Reflecting its decentralized and local nature, the emerging church does not maintain a mutually agreed-on ecclesiology, or set of beliefs defining the specific role and nature of the church. Eschewing doctrine, the emerging church instead seeks merely to continue the mission of Christ, while deeply respecting the different expressions that the body of Christ may bring to that mission.

The emerging church movement is highly decentralized so in no sense does any one person act as a spokesperson for the movement however the following people are often recognized as pioneers and important thinkers:

• Spencer Burke, former pastor, founder of The Ooze website, "dedicated to the emerging Church culture" and which has "developed a community that captures the ethos of the emerging church movement"
• Kyle Cheatham, founder and Pastor of Terranova in Georgetown, Texas
• Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle
• Dan Kimball, founder of the Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California
• Brian McLaren, founder of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C.
• John C. O‘Keefe, lead pastor at 247connection and founder of ginkworld.net, "an emerging/postmodern site exploring what it means to be a follower of the Jesus in today's world" (see also: Emerging Churches worldwide)
• Doug Pagitt, founding pastor of Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis
• Mark Pearson, founder of Cityside in Auckland, New Zealand.
• Leonard Sweet, the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University, and prolific author
• Dallas Willard, Professor of Philosophy at USC
• Jay Bakker, founder of the Revolution Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
• Chris Seay, the founder of University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, and the founder and pastor at Ecclesia in Houston, Texas.

The Emerging Church is not confined to one denomination or gathering. Emerging churches can range in denominational affiliation from the Anglican/Episcopal Church to the Southern Baptist Church; still others are best described as non-affiliated intentional communities or house churches.

The following sites list just a few of the emerging websites found around the world:

• The Ooze Search Engine
• Ginkworld Blogroll

A sampling of emergent blogs can be found at the aggregator Emerging Church Blogs

United Kingdom

• Jonny Baker, a member of "Grace" in London, and author of the influential book, Alternative Worship.
• Jason Clark, founder of Vineyard Church in London,coordinator of Emergent UK and doctoral student at Kings College, London.
• Andrew Jones, one of the first emerging church bloggers and director of the Boaz Project. He is now based in the Orkney Islands.
• Ian Mobsby, writer, theologian, founding member of Moot and has been involved in three other alternative worship groups and now an Anglican Priest and part of the UK Fresh Expressions team. Has written a book on Emerging & Fresh Expressions of Church.

Australia and New Zealand

• Michael Frost, a founding director of the Centre for Evangelism and Global Mission at Morling Baptist Seminary in Sydney, Australia, and the author of several books, including The Shaping of Things to Come and Seeing God in the Ordinary: A Theology of the Everyday.
• Alan Hirsch, a founder of FORGE Mission Training Network, and key mission strategist for churches in the UK and New Zealand. Co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come and The Forgotten Ways.
• Steve Taylor author of Out of Bounds Church, founder of Graceway Baptist Church, currently pastor at Opawa Baptist Church

United States of America

• Rob Bell, founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, located in Grandville, Michigan. He is featured in the series of spiritual short films called NOOMA. Bell is also the author of a recent book entitled Velvet Elvis: Repainting The Christian Faith. (Bell has claimed no affiliation with this movement.)
• Spencer Burke, former pastor, founder of The Ooze website.
• Mark Driscoll, pastor who started the Mars Hill Church Seattle. He considers himself one of the founders of the emerging movement and as part of the emerging church. He has distanced himself from the emergent stream of the conversation. Consequently, he is considered both a prominent figure and a critic of the movement.
• Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of several books promoting the movement.
• Stanley Grenz, now deceased, former professor of theology who co-authored the influential book, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context.
• Tony Jones, the National Coordinator of Emergent Village USA, an organized network of cooperating emerging ministries. He is a doctoral fellow and senior research fellow in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary whose books have been highly influential in the movement.
• Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, CA and author of the book, The Emerging Church.
• Scot McKnight, author and professor of theology at North Park University in Chicago, Illinois who represents a more conservative and scholarly element in the movement. His blog has been a catalyst for emerging church discussion.
• Brian McLaren, founder of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C. He is a prolific author and popular speaker who is considered a prominent leader in the movement.
• Erwin Raphael McManus, pastor of Mosaic in Pasedena, California. Originally from El Salvador, he has authored seven books on the Emerging Church, and his 3,500 member church was noted in The Church Report, a national research magazine, as ranking number 12 on its list of the 50 most influential churches in the nation. McManus rejects the ideology of the emergent church
• Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What; campus minister; member of Imago Dei, an emerging church in Portland, Oregon. (Miller only claims to be friends with many from this movement.)
• John O'Keefe, an early member of the conversation, founder of Ginkworld and Lead Pastor at 247THECHURCH.
• Doug Pagitt, founding pastor of Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis
• Chris Seay, founder of University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, and the founder and pastor at Ecclesia in Houston, Texas.
• Leonard Sweet, the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University, and prolific author.

References

• CTLibrary.com
• Amahoro. Retrieved on 2006-08-09.
• ReligionLink.org : Emerging Church trend expands, diversifies. Retrieved on 2006-07-20.
• Kreider, Larry (2001). "1", House Church Networks. House to House Publications. ISBN 1-886973-48-2.
• Tony Jones, Postmodern Youth Ministry (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 201.
• Emergent Village : Values and Practices. Retrieved on 2006-08-09.
• Brian McLaren http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/01/brian_mclaren_o.html
• Spencer Burke
• 25 Donald Miller, Blues Like Jazz (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 215.
• TheResurgence.com
• Moot.UK.net
• ApostlesChurch.org
• TheologicalStudies.org
• Scot McKnight (2007). Five Streams of the Emerging Church (html). Christianity Today. Retrieved on 2007-05-04.
• Emerging church resources: A beginner's reference guide. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
• BrianMcLaren.net
• TheOoze.com
• LeonardSweet.com
• David Kowalski. Surrender is not an Option: An Evaluation of Emergent Epistemology. http://www.apologeticsindex.org/612-emergent-epistemology p.8.
• Brian McLaren, More Ready than You Realize: Evangelism as Dance in the Postmodern Matrix (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 80-81.
• Erickson 2004, 59-79
• ApologeticsIndex.org
• Smith, 97-98
• Carson, 59-60
• Carson, 157-187
• Equip.org
• SonLifeAfrica.com
• Acts 2:12,41;8:4-5,25,30,35,39-40;10:27,44;13:16;16:13;17:1-4,16-17;18:4,27-28;19:8;28:30;2 CO 5:11
• Veith 1994, 192-193
• Forgewa.org
• "Truth, Contemporary Philosophy and the Postmodern Turn", JETS, March, 2005, 48:1. by J. P. Moreland
• opensourcetheology