Here’s a question, though: What would be the likely development if, instead of the minority — or, as is more often the case, the ones and twos — it were to be the majority in a stream or movement who elect to move on? Has that ever happened? And could it? To get even bolder in my dreaming: What if a radical lifestyle of ongoing pilgrimage should turn out to lie at the heart of the post-modern age?

Perhaps we might agree with John Wimber that each movement should be of its generation only, and that it is right for each movement to be subsumed by whatver comes in its wake.

“Emergent” is a provisional label. I’m planning to drop it when the time is right.

However, I think what it addresses is the changing of an age. In my 30 years of church, I’ve also thought of myself in “cutting edge” terms and grown tired. The advent of Post modernity has some features that were distinctly absent in 25 years of changing streams.

We can discuss futhrer, thank you so much for you comment.

Should it not ever remain such? During 54 years of church involvement (most of it on the so-called “prophetic cutting edge”) I participated in at least five major 20th Century new developments or “movements”. In a sense, each might have been termed “emergent” in that we were heaven-bent on leaving behind what had become dead and irrelevant in order to discover or create something that would be the very opposite. Sadly in none did we make it past the 10-year mark before we too were well on the way to becoming (you guessed it) dead, irrelevant – just like every other “movement” throughout the entirety of church history!
How can we “post-modern emergents” change all that? I would suggest by never arriving, never exiting the process, ever refusing to produce a “product” – not only in terms of worship, but of everything else – beliefs, practices, service, mission – you name it!

http://martoosmusic.com/jbsandifer.htm