Farewell Emerging Church

Well, that didn't take long.

Anthony Bradley, writing for World Mag makes the claim that whatever was called "The Emerging Church" is now officially emerged (is that a word?). Here's his point:

Reading a new book or going to a conference about the emerging church is a waste of time and money unless it’s to understand the movement as a recent historical one. The emerging church movement has ended. Andrew Jones, a leader of the movement in the U.K., wrote about the demise at the end of 2009. Rob Bell, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., delivered an April 4 sermon on the Resurrection that marks, in my opinion, the end of an era. Bell recounts how Mars Hill started out to be a different kind of church without the baggage of watered-down “seeker” churches and the religious legalism of “traditional” churches. In a moment of wonderful honesty Bell admitted that Mars Hill had become a big institution that wounded people in similar ways as the churches many Gen-Xers swore they would not mimic. Jones affirms much of Bell’s experience on his blog.

From Brian McLaren to Erwin McManus to Rob Bell to Tony Jones to Mark Driscoll and others, the theological lines have been drawn and are settled. We have all moved on. We know who fits into evangelicalism, post-liberalism, Anabaptism, Calvinism, and so on."

I'd have to say based on my limited experience, this commentary seems to be right on. I never saw any semblance of whatever was considered the "Emergent Church" really taking root anywhere (certainly not within the L.B., but also not in the broader Evangelical world).

So then, were there any Positives coming out of this movement? Negatives? Is Bradley right? Is the "Emergent Church" really over?