This was a funny, nostalgic thing :
I found this post TallSkinnyKiwi: Kimball on “Emerging” and “Emergent” where Andrew Jones blogs that Dan Kimball is posting about the origins of “Emergent Church”. Andrew includes a picture of a couple of books, and one of the authors of a book “The Emerging Church” from 1970 looks like it says “Bruce Larson”. Since in the late 70’s I was buying everything I would find by either Keith Miller or Bruce Larson, I thought I might have that book. I do. Published by Word Books, this little paper back was a buck twenty-five cover price.

I have often commented to people how today’s “Emergent Church” movement reminds me of the “Lay Renewal Movement” of the 70’s. I read “The Edge of Adventure” by Bruce Larson and Keith Miller, and from there I went on to read anything I could get my hands on by either of these guys, and along the way picked up Robert Raines, Elton Trueblood, Lloyd Ogilvie, and I took a course at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from Findley Edge (an early Lay Renewal writer/advocate, as was Elton Trueblood) on “Church Renewal” in 1979. MIller , Larson, Raines, and company really opened up theological vistas for me. I went on from there , along with the exposure I got to Clarence Jordan by my youth minister (he took a group of us to Koinonia Farm in 1974) to delve into the writings of Elizabeth O’Connor, who wrote about The Church of the Saviour. MIller and Larson and Raines took stories from the Church of the Saviour fairly often to point out how important it is for the laity to be in ministry, and not simply depend upon “preachers” to “do stuff”. Seems like such a simple concept, but so often “the ministry” is asumed to be referring to the ranks of “profesional clergy”.

From Andrew:

Kimball on “Emerging” and “Emergent”

Dan Kimball is blogging out a brief history “> of how “Emerging Church” and “Emergent” came into USA’s ecclesiastical vocabulary.

Emergent Church Cover
1970 (I bought a hard copy) and in 1984

from Dan:
Vintage Faith: Origin of the terms “Emerging” and “Emergent” church – Part 1

Now, the irony is that about 2 years ago someone bought me a copy of a book called “The Emerging Church” that was published in 1970 written by Bruce Larson and Ralph Osbourn. It actually is a great book and I have been in contact with one of the authors who now is in his 80’s. So in 1970 the church was “emerging” and someone even wrote a book about what was emerging then. They actually have a great quote in this book which says: