Author: D. Brown

Book Review: Signs of Emergence, by Kester Brewin, published by Baker Books

Kester Brewin is a writer and pioneering church planter based in London. In emerging church circles he is best known for working with a collective of artists and city lovers to create the experimental, alternative worship group Vaux. Brewin has worked in an advisory role at Fuller Theological Seminary, helping them to think about new ways of training emerging leaders.

"This book is about change," says Brewin in Signs of Emergence: A Vision for a Church that is Organic, Networked, Decentralized, Bottum-up, Communal, Flexible, Always Evolving (in stores now). A change in how we organize church, from a "top-down," centralized body of believers to a "bottom-up," decentralized body of "organized complexity."

According to Brewin, ideas do not thrive when they are funneled to one person or a few for acceptance. People do not grow when their freedom is stymied. We need to explore new things, new ways of living life. The church will not thrive if we do not allow it the same freedom.

"...Any exposure to a different situation can help us learn something positive," says Brewin, and exposure to new ideas of how church can work is a tremendous learning tool the church should use. Brewin prefers education over legislation and he believes that awareness of your surroundings is key to the survival of the body of Christ.

"...We need to be incarnate to the place where we are and the place that most needs us," he says, which means that a "best way" to do church doesn't exist. He adds that although a "...top-down church will not survive in an emergent world, it is also clear that a totally deregulated, anarchic church will do no better."

What it comes down to is the unknown. We don't know where we are going. Brewin warns that, "[t]here may not be any clues to the shape of the Emergent Church in current alternative worship practice, even if in years to come people look back and say they were inspired by it." And mistakes will be made-- "...I suspect that we will see many more emerging churches, or umbrella groups, fail in the coming years." But he also mentions that, "In a healthy learning environment, such things ought not to be perceived as failure." When something ends, look at it as "an exercise in hope, rather than despair."

Brewin's point is for anyone at all jaded by the current state of the church: Do not be discouraged. A change is possible. And he suggests that anyone involved in this emerging Christian movement should "Start something. Anything." And do not simply sit back and critique the ways the church should change. This new way of church needs what you have.

While Brewin's tone assumes that the reader is already somewhat familiar with the emerging church movement, if you are at all interested in the thinking behind the church of the future--or the future of the church--either way, you need to get this book. But be warned: Brewin could inspire change in a lump on a log.

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Kester Brewin

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