What's the emerging fuss all about?

There seems to be a difference between emerging churches (emergent) and what is becoming known as emerging church leaders (reformed), both of which are culturally placed within postmodernism yet still with their differences. Is this a re-imaging of the conservatives and liberals within the context of the post baby-boomer worldview? It’s interesting that the two are still lumped as one by their critics, and perhaps it goes a little way to help me understand what all the fuss has been about. Its certainly attracted the attention of emergents outside the USA (and here) who don't necessarily want to be told what they believe and then criticised for it.

On one hand we have an American emerging church movement seen as liberal by the way it questions age old convictions and breathes fresh insight into what easily becomes barnacles religion. An older post covers much of the threat that the ‘journey of question’ holds for traditionalists and has some great summary points from a message I heard recently.

Christianity has never existed in a cultural vacuum, nor have we ever arrived with it in its purest from. We must know our own biases before we can do anything else….and this requires question.…..and that is true for most things, for we ‘see’ that which sits right with us, but what sits right for us has more to do with the experience of our life’s journey rather than having arrived in a place where all the answers have been worked through for us.

The loudest voice of the American emerging church is Brian D. McLaren recently said:

“When we present Jesus as a pro-war, anti-poor, anti-homosexual, anti-environment, pro-nuclear weapons authority figure draped in an American flag, I think we are making a travesty of the portrait of Jesus we find in the gospels,"

I don't see the issue of homosexuality as the simple black-and-white issue that some of my fellow evangelicals make it out to be," And while not happy about widespread abortions, he added, "to just say 'Okay, let's pass laws about it' seems to me to skip a number of important steps, like honest and open dialogue, persuasion and seeking to remove the conditions that make abortion so prevalent."

This is labeled liberal religion. But I can’t help but agree with
him. Then we have Mark Driscolli’s Mars Hill Fellowship. It has a shop front and a 5000 strong congregation who have re-skinned how church is done. It has a very strong connection with postmoderns because its leaders are not trying to attract people to slick programs nor compete for the entertainment vote, but are simply postmoderns themselves who know how to live in ‘today’. But keeping the more traditional emphasis on teaching although I suspect there is a healty approach to question.