Inside the Organic Church
Like every good conference, there was a bookroom at the Matrix. I picked up a copy of Bob Whitesel's Inside the Organic Church.
The book is a pretty good, short, easy to read description of Bob's journey to 12 emerging churches. 10 of the churches are US based. It's not an in depth book like Gibbs and Bolger's, but gives a good flavour, an introduction to some expressions of emerging church. My only concern is that people could read the book and look at his lessons from each church and miss the point totally by using them as a programme or way to change worship (he is very clear that that is not what he wants people to do).
One of the most helpful things in the book is a chart contrasting Institutionalization with Improvisation (which came out of his observations at Solomon's Porch).
He suggests:
"My observations led me to believe that the organic church sees effectiveness (connecting people to Christ) as trumping efficiency (doing it in the most programmatic and premeditated way possible).Thus improvisation...must be preferred over a propensity to execute things perfectly" (p118)