How did Emergent start?

Hi Brian, My name is ???. I'm an undergraduate student at ??? College in ???, TN researching the Emerging Church Movement for my senior thesis. I attended the Emergent convention in San Diego last year and have read many of the Emergent books. However, there are a couple of questions that I have not been able to find the answers to about Emergent. I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer these questions or direct me to someone else that could help me. 1). When and how did Emergent start? Who was involved? 2). Can you estimate how many people or churches are involved in Emergent? How many people attended the 2003 conference? How many people are expected to attend the 2004 conferences? 3). How do 'postmodern' churches in Emergent relate to the academic, postmodern (French) philosophers and their views of postmodernism?

1. Emergent grew out of the Young Leader Networks, which was launched in the mid-90’s by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based foundation. Doug Pagitt, Chris Seay, Andrew Jones, Brad Smith, and others were involved before I was, and they did a great job of setting a tone and direction for the emergent conversation.

2. I’m terrible with numbers. I can’t guess how many people or churches are involved. I think the convention attendance was 1100 in 2003, and then about 1500 total in two 2004 conventions

3. That’s a complex question, as there are many French philosophers and they say many different things. Many of us are trying to engage responsibly with their thought, some of which is very helpful in my opinion, some of which is less so.