Emerging Church--Renaissance Recapitulation?

Andrew Jones (TallSkinnyKiwi.com) divide’s the Emerging Church into three stages, and then looks at the Renaissance as it happened in stages also. There are some interesting parallels and as well as some unique points on the church emerging.

Emerging Church STAGE 1 (Barn Burning). The Emerging Church in its initial deconstructive, suspicious, reactionary stage is most similar to the Post-Renaissance period, or The Age of Mannerism (1530-1600), which is when much of the Protestant Reformation was happening. Mannerist art was a reaction to the perfection of the High Renaissance, and leaned towards discontinuity, extremism, and the bizarre. MTV has been called "Mannerist Art".

Emerging Church STAGE 2 - (Dumpster　Diving) This is the stage where the emerging churches are rediscovering what they missed out on, past history, and the Other, a time of exploration and stumbling around with new forms and ways. It corresponds to the Early Renaissance (1300-1500) which was a time of rediscovery (of classical Greek and Roman architecture) and a time of small experimental steps with new methods that no one really new how to use to the fullest potential

Emerging Church STAGE 3 (Lego Land) - a time of building with new blocks, non-reactionary, without finding identity from the past, succeeding with the new ways and methods in their recapitulated form. This partly finds its parallel with the Baroque period (1600-1750), an attempt toward harmony and grandeur, cross-disciplinary understanding (like today's emergence theory in complexity), emotional, powerfully imaginative, but also appropriate and proper.

[more...]