Taking a Look at Emerging Churches

A creative church is quite a powerful book that was written by, Todd Smith that takes the reader into the past, and gives the reader an opportunity to learn more about art and the history behind Art.

In the Introduction section of the book, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, Israel Galindo states that a congregation is a “corporate relationship organization” (3) and is not an organization. He points out that the hidden life of a congregation would depict the “nature” of a congregation. This further identifies the relationships and faith of the congregation. According to him, the universal principles are followed by the congregations so that “systemic relationships” can work. The leaders learn the roles that they have within the people who are the congregation. The journal will focus on Dr. Fowler’s question “what is the purpose of this gathering we call the church?”

With these new advancements in the Protestant and Catholic churches, also came the growth of other religions. A network called the "Beat

What began as the leveling of hierarchies altered into several revivals of different religions. “Starting in the rural west in the beginning of the 1830's, cities became active centers of American Protestantism. ”(Foner) Protestantism became the leading church and conversions were quick.

Pastor Fred Dyess had retired after serving as pastor for thirty years and Director of Missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans for fourteen years. The Lord called him out of retirement to start a new church. Bro. Fred checked with the Eastern Louisiana Baptist Association Director of Missions, David Brown, to learn what areas the association had targeted for a new church and what was needed. He was told that the Louisiana Baptist Convention required a new church to have a sponsoring church. Dr. Roger Dunlap and Macedonia Baptist Church gladly voted to be our sponsoring church. The Louisiana Baptist Convention and the Eastern Louisiana Baptist Association each gave Victory a budget supplement of $500 per month decreasing

Perhaps the most powerful, fluent, and forceful paper promoting liberal Christianity is indeed Harry Emerson Fosdick's 1922 sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”. Fosdick seemed as if he was a very captivating human being in history during his time of existence. He wrote one of the most engaging papers that I have yet to read thus this far. It was definitely a wise decision to go ahead and read the two articles discussing fundamentalism to catch me up so that I did not have trouble keeping up with Fosdick's movement that he established in his sermon. Initially, I believe that the arising church is, amongst other things, is a rectifying of liberalism for a postmodern age. And I'm convinced that the same claims made by Fosdick in 1922 are just what we hear form emergents today. There is nothing new that lies under the sun today. It is only natural that the specifics argued for by the modernists are not those of the postmodern emergents.

Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis emphasizes the two overarching principles that govern the practice of church and mission, that is: Being gospel centered and being community centered, where the content of our message is the gospel, and the context of our message the Christian community. Only when those principles are put into practice does the Word is carried away, with the mission of the church being carried out and the mission of the church of making relationships a priority is carried out.

By the 1830s, the Protestant denomination which I am personally familiar with, had begun a few violent attacks against the Catholic, because of their republican values. Later in the same decade, the Protestants again ignited fire into a convention, here in Massachusetts related to difference in views. Within these 35 diverse Christian denominations, 50,873,000 members are Roman Catholic (Catholic) hence the largest. Other equally functional denominations are Baptist, Pentecostal, and several others; says a recent American Religious Identification Survey. (35 Largest Christian Denominations in the United States). While there are numerous varieties of their divide, the onset of Christian community emphatically, traces to only one unified community. Since its establishment in the 1st century, the Christian community was founded on the doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth, which rather contributes to the wellbeing of communities, regardless of whether their views aligned with theirs or not. Starting with the apostle Paul, several

Now, I tried to deepen my research using the Online Library, but my results continued to come back not found, but I was able to go on line and research some things regarding the denominational differences. I was able to find an online article that discussed the wrongs of denominationalism. In the article the writer stated that the definition for denominationalism is “the tendency to separate into religious denominations” (Copeland 2001). By this article, denominations are clearly non-scriptural, because God is about unity, for as Paul states in the book of Ephesians 4:4-6, “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

Time is the key difference in a new religious movement and a religion.There were thousands of failed religious movements most come to fall from failing to popularize and convince people of the world that their word is the best word.Currently there are four hundred two confirmed new religious movements. This is little to the four thousand two hundred estimated religions on earth. One of the many reasons American colonist seized from the British, was the heavy religious control of Christianity there. When they finally claimed independence one of the first things declared was the freedom of religion, allowing all to practice their religion within the united states without persecution, but freedom at what cost?

• What do you see in today's local church that is similar or different from the early church?

Christianity has been facing many obstacles from all the non religious world views. There has been a lot of contemporary influence in this modern churches and Christian gatherings as they try to fit in and accommodate the changing world views. Due to all this influences, everything about Christianity is being questioned especially on issues of sex, divorce, marriage and birth control. There has also been a rise in non denominational churches started by individuals or a group of people with no ties or relationships to already established churches

The similarities from the First Century Church and the Churches of today are that we suppose to give up the world and follow Jesus. When we focus on Jesus we can love people and take the message of the Gospel to the people by making friends and making disciples. The differences of the First Century Churches and the Churches of today are the availabilities. In the First Century Church the message was only able to be delivered to the people that were in ear shad of Jesus and the Disciples. In today’s Church we have social media, computers, and radios to assist with delivering the message of Jesus. We do not have to walk everywhere we go we have the availability to go in Cars, Motorcycles, and planes. Which allows us a greater opportunity to spread the

Emerging church adherents see a “cultural shift from knowledge to experience. The traditional evangelical view begins with facts which influence belief, which influences behavior, the emerging church begins with experience which influences behavior, which influences belief.[12] Thus the emergent church places a geat “emphasis on truth.[13]

Since the day I was born my parents took my sister and me to church ever Sunday. I grew up in a loving Christian home and was encouraged at an age where I could fully understand, to purse a relationship with Jesus. I accepted Christ into my heart when I was in the second grade and was baptized in the fourth grade at age 10. Growing up I have always been super involved in Church. I have a heart for people and love serving. Since 3rd grade until now, my senior year of high school I have been on the leadership team with my youth group. I can not imagine my life without Jesus as the center. I have been pushed to step out of my comfort zone and because of that I have grown in several different ways. For example, I am an extrovert and enjoy getting new people, but never liked public speaking as I felt nervous and intimidated. By the many adult leaders, and pastors coming along side of me and encouraging me to step of on my comfort zone I now highly enjoy speaking and spreading the truth about The Lord in big groups of people. I am so thankful for the many God loving people that have come in my life and helped stretch me. Jesus is my entire life and I am nothing without him.