Description: This is the final key trait. I plan to summarize in a few days after giving these traits time to sink in. Here prayer, caring for others along with a holistic way of life is important, especially in a fast paced culture that is modern life with its growing demands and family pressures that play out side by side.

Description: Here it is a list of things that are highlighted. The goal is to facilitate creative freedom, not stifling control. The view is that one should not reduce leadership to power or do the same with the role of God.

We are almost through the E/E discussion (7 of 9 traits are up). Are entires in a subject area like this helpful? I am trying to determine if this kind of blog topic series is worth the time an effort.

Description: The theme here is the participation in the kingdom of God through creativity and aesthetics. So this trait often overlaps with themes from the previous trait. The goal is to fight against the McDonaldization of the church with its efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control.

Description: The goal here is a full participation with God in redemption with everyone bringing gifts they use to their service in the kingdom. The model is the participatory church of the New Testament.

Description: This involves more of the idea of hospitality. A kingdom generosity means challenging the consumer culture of exchange. Spiritual experiences are not consumed, nor are they to be marketed. The goal is to change church members from consumers to participants. No more drive-through one hour spirituality.

Description: This emphasis here is on hospitality as a part of community. Inclusion is another key value. "Jesus' community shared the benefits of the kingdom with those who were excluded." Another point is that "postmodernity represents, on the other hand, a time when plurality is accepted and order and control are relinquished." So there is an emphasis on the practices of inclusion.

Description: The emphases here include a missional focus. "The church is primarily a people, not a place to meet." "The church lives as a committed community in this world, which desperately needs redemption." "Nationalism, individualism, consumerism are a few of the ideologies that must be reappropriated or completely abandoned in light of the coming reign of God." The requirement of the kingdom is a profound change of allegiance.

Description: Here the goal and value is to challenge the sacred/secular divide that is a part of modern Western culture. This is said to result in a new ecclesiology where all space is sacred or at least claimed to be sacred, making all of life sacred.

I work with the book, EMERGING CHURCHES, by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, which Emerging church leaders have called "the best book on the emerging church." It notes 9 traits of the movement. I will work one at a time.