Who knew? The creators of the National Council of Churches' 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches have decided that the two hot trends at the beginning of the 21st century are blogging and the "Emerging Church" and that one of the places that postmodern, hip, emerging church leaders do that dialogue thing they do is at GetReligion (honest).

I don't think we need to define what a "blog" is for those who visit this site, but it is interesting to see how editors at Church Executive define that vague (yet very news-media-friendly) term "Emerging Church":

The Emergent Church is defined by Yearbook Editor, the Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner, as a "conversation" (some would say movement) birthed in 20th century Protestantism and "characterized by a robust, energetic and growing online and hardcopy literature" that attempts to shape responses to contemporary culture.

Common attributes of the EC, Lindner believes, are an emulation of the person and ministry of Jesus, a fondness for anecdotes and stories as means of discovering truth, a focus on mission, and a stress on the centrality of worship, even in experimental forms. ... Emergent Church has become so popular among evangelicals that an EC track appears on the agenda of the National Pastors Conference sponsored by Zondervan and InterVarsity.

If you want to compare that with the Wikipedia materials on this movement (or anti-movement), then click here.

The NCC yearbook listed 25 blogs and websites as being crucial to the Emerging Church era and its emphasis on communicating ideas -- old and new -- and probing the roots of Christian worship (on the way to creating highly individualistic new forms that are ultimately very modern and "free church"). Here's that link again to see the emerging blog list -- check it out.

I have been writing about some of these trends for a long time, back to the days when people referred to "post-contemporary worship." Here is a chunk of an interview I did in 1999 with one thoughtful observer of these trends, the Rev. Daniel Harrell at Park Street Church in Boston:

If the Baby Boomers shunned churches that they thought were pompous and boring, then their pierced, tattooed and media-numbed children appear ready to shun churches that feel fake and frivolous. The key, according to Harrell, is that worship services must feel real. Services are judged to be authentic when they feel authentic. ...

"(People) are borrowing things from all of these traditions, often without realizing that some of these symbols and rites may even clash with each other," he said. "It's easy to be cynical about this, but they really are searching for something. They are borrowing other people's images and rites and experiences, as part of their own search for something that feels authentic. They are trying to step into the experiences of others."

So who is the closet emerging-church mole at GetReligion?

It goes without saying that Eastern Orthodoxy is about as premodern as one can get. The Divine Ms. M is a very traditional Lutheran and young master Daniel Pulliam is an old-fashioned Presbyterian. Ah, but does his church sanctuary have giant video screens that can show icons as well as Matrix clips?