My personal reflection would be that it is more important for the young people I work with (most of them anyway) that the bible works, rather than it is proved to be true.

As they live out Jesus’ teachings, they discover that being His disciple "works". The Spirit leads them into truth, so they experience the truth of the teaching by living it. Many of us have been brought up with the understanding that "the bible says it, I believe it and that settles it!" (at least, my baptist background taught me that) - er, nonsense!

Application (an applied theology then) is what brings about transformation and the truth is discovered through praxis. My greatest fear for the "future church" is that many of our children in sunday "school" up and down the land are taught about the bible - but are not encouraged to question, explore, discover, challenge anything!

We may put lots of effort into developing a theology of emerging church or becoming a movement, but unless we change the way our children and young people are discipled and nurtured in the faith we will be revisiting this stuff for the next twenty years.