ABC’s Nightline took a look at the emergent church recently during their “Faith Matters” series, visiting several churches in my own backyard. One of those churches, Bluer, has the entire segment online. I’m never eager to debate the whole emergent thing, but a couple comments in the segment jumped out for their marketing implications:
“I look at us as an R&D department, of people who are trying to innovate and experiment, make a lot of mistakes I’m sure, but hopefully we’ll discover some things that can serve the church at large.” -Brian McLaren, author and pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church (see our interview with McLaren)
“We originally, as a ministry to young adults, we did that, we did everything except shoot Jesus out of a cannon in order to be hip and cool, but after a while we just decided that you know what, why don’t we just be ourselves?” -John Musick, pastor of Bluer
Nightline noted that Bluer was one of the first churches to pioneer podcasting their sermons. Whatever you think of the emergent church, I hope we can at least learn a few things from what they’re doing.
