The evangelical church is largely divided into “traditional” and “emerging” camps, and many people are not at ease with either option and would prefer a third way, according to Jim Belcher in his book Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. The characteristics of the third way which he proposes include deep truth, deep evangelism, deep gospel, deep worship, deep preaching, deep ecclesiology and deep culture.
Chapter 1 describes a community of Christians that formed at Georgetown University, and a subsequent community of young adults that started meeting at his home on Sunday nights with the aim of brushing aside the superficial and developing genuine family, then grew into a larger congregation meeting in a church building. These seem to me to be the types of deep experiences of community that the church is supposed to provide: people thirsting to know more of Jesus, lives being changed, and a high level of trust and sharing between believers.
This type of community can arise in a traditional church or in an emerging church, but frequently does not. The book compares a number of different features of emerging churches and traditional churches and suggests an alternative way. I agree with the “deep” part of the author’s proposals, but I am not convinced that the author’s model does much more to ensure the desired outcome than many other models.