From an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (when, I have no idea):

“This new flavor of evangelicalism, with echoes of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and a dash of medieval ritual, is especially popular among young urban adults. It stresses tolerance, inclusiveness, social justice and environmental stewardship, and it shifts the theological focus from individual salvation to helping one’s earthly neighbors.
“This blows away the assumption of what church should be,” said Jayne Wilcox, 36, of Levittown, after the service, as son Kobe, 4, clung to her leg and Seth, 6, headed for the door. “It attracts the college age and young families… it catches the ones that other churches miss.”
Emergent blog is where this came from. Read the whole thing below…

‘Emergent’ churches seek a looser approach
A shift in focus away from salvation.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
The church is a converted machine shop in an industrial park. The choir is three young women, accompanied by drums and guitars. There is no offering plate. Communion is self-serve.
Sunday worship at the Well in Feasterville is coffee-house casual, complete with couches and computer stations and an artists’ corner. The 40 parishioners, some of whom carry their coffee and doughnuts into the candlelit worship area, favor jeans and shorts. Most are under 30.
The Well is one of a growing number of churches in the “emergent” movement, a disaffected segment of evangelical Christianity that rejects what it sees as the rigidity of the religious right and the timidity of liberal mainline churches.
Brad Jackson, a 33-year-old former seminarian who is the pastor, doesn’t so much deliver a sermon as lead a discussion. Today’s topic: Christian identity.
Jackson, invoking Galatians 2, says Jesus’s example, not cultural or religious trappings, should be the constant model.
“Sometimes we start to find our identity in the American ideal – the right kind of home, the right number of kids,” Jackson said. “I wonder how many times we so identify with the American ideal that we lose sight of our Christian identity. What do we add on that distorts the meaning of Christ’s message?”
This new flavor of evangelicalism, with echoes of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and a dash of medieval ritual, is especially popular among young urban adults. It stresses tolerance, inclusiveness, social justice and environmental stewardship, and it shifts the theological focus from individual salvation to helping one’s earthly neighbors.
“This blows away the assumption of what church should be,” said Jayne Wilcox, 36, of Levittown, after the service, as son Kobe, 4, clung to her leg and Seth, 6, headed for the door. “It attracts the college age and young families… it catches the ones that other churches miss.”
Robert “Woody” Wood, 35, a social worker from Fairless Hills, said he found the Well relaxing. “It’s not overly religious. It’s kind of like being in your living room. You don’t feel so regimented.”
While conservative evangelicals typically oppose abortion and support the Iraq war, there are worshipers at the Well on both sides of both issues.
Wood, who grew up in a Baptist church where his father was a minister, said “people feel really accepted here, whether they know Christ or not.”
Another preacher’s son, Dan Dauenbaugh, 22, of Langhorne Manor, said: “A lot of the mainstream churches are superficial. At almost all churches, you do this and the other thing and then you go home. This is completely different. It’s the difference between doctrine and rules and just loving people.”
“Emergent” churches are loosely affiliated with each other through a network of like-minded pastors and theologians, but their teachings and styles vary from church to church. Some incorporate practices such as the medieval labyrinth walk, with worshipers moving among different prayer stations. Because the movement is so fragmented, it’s impossible to know how many adherents it has. Tony Jones, a former youth minister and a doctoral candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary who is coordinator of the network, estimates there are several hundred emergent churches in the country.
“It’s gaining popularity, and there is the potential there to change the entire landscape of what Protestant Christianity looks like,” said Jeffrey K. Jue, assistant professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside and an academic critic of the emergent movement. “It’s not just a new form. It’s not just window dressing. They’re talking about something more radical than that.”
Critics see the emergent movement as Christianity Lite, unmoored from any absolute truths.
“Is there at least some danger that what is being advocated is… a church that is so submerging itself in the culture that it risks hopeless compromise?” wrote Donald A. Carson, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., and author of Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church.
“My opinion… is that the intellectual depth of this movement is really lacking,” Jue said. “… The concerns that the movement has are quite valid – how to address 19th- and 20th-century evangelicalism in a contemporary context. But do we start all over?”
The intellectual leader of the movement is Brian McLaren, a former college English teacher who is the founder of Cedar Ridge Community Church in a Maryland suburb of Washington, and author of nine books exploring emergent theology, including A New Kind of Christian. McLaren was named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential evangelicals earlier this year.
He was also disinvited as a speaker to the Kentucky Baptist Convention in February because his views were deemed too liberal. He wrote in A Generous Orthodoxy that all people did not have to convert to Christianity to be followers of Jesus, that they could “become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus.” He also raised Baptist hackles by dodging a question on gay marriage. He said the issue “breaks my heart… that there’s no way I can answer it without hurting someone on either side.”
And in his latest book, The Last Word and the Word After That, McLaren questions the existence of hell.
“[McLaren’s] reading of the Bible’s story line turns out to be so selective that the uncomfortable bits are discretely dropped,” Carson has written.
Emergent churches that have formed around the country, like the Well, often avoid the name “church” altogether. There is Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minn., Jacob’s Well in Kansas City, Mo., and Circle of Hope in Philadelphia.
“Language is important. If you hear a word 25,000 times, it loses meaning,” said Jackson, the Well’s pastor. “If you change the word, you think about it. If the old phrase has become meaningless, use another one. Like ‘Christian.’ What does that mean? It’s lost its meaning. If you say ‘Christ follower’ or ‘Jesus follower,’ that’s meaningful.”
Jackson, who grew up in a conservative evangelical family as the son and brother of graduates of the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, views Christianity through a different prism than most evangelicals. He, like other emergent leaders, puts less emphasis on the “fire insurance” aspect – avoiding hell in the next life – and more on changing the world in this one.
“Christianity is not simply about getting to Heaven when you die. It has huge implications for how you live your life now,” he said. “We want to be for the world what Jesus was for the world.”
Many emergent churches are nondenominational, but some are affiliated with traditional Protestant denominations. And some mainstream churches have adopted elements of emergent worship style to try to attract younger audiences.
At the Well, Jackson and his flock are considering joining either the Presbyterian Church (USA) or the Evangelical Covenant Church.
Jones, the movement’s national coordinator, says the goal of the emergent movement is to find “a whole different way of doing church” that is neither conservative nor liberal.
“We refuse to play by the established rules. It drives people crazy on both sides. On the right, they’re talking about better leadership or how to grow bigger churches. On the left, they’re almost in panic mode, asking ‘How do we save these churches’? But what’s not being talked about is the missional center of the Christian gospel.
“We’re not trying to overthrow megachurches or Bob Jones or the Christian Century [magazine]. Just give us a little space where we can talk about these things with a little theological vigor. We’re trying to carve out a place in the American church for dialogue, where there aren’t set answers.”