Dan Kimball is an author and was a leading voice in the beginning years of the Emerging Church movement in the USA. Kimball's writings focus on encouraging churches and Christians to creatively make any changes needed in order to break the negative stereotypes of church and Christianity that inaccurately may exist. Kimball focuses on doing this through the arts, apologetics and Christians removing themselves from the Christian subculture. Kimball began using phrases such as "Vintage Faith" and "Vintage Christianity" which are used to express the desire to be returning to the historical and missional values of the original Christian Church and teachings of Jesus.
Vintage Faith's vision statement identifies their desire to be a "worshipping community of missional theologians". The church, along with Kimball's writings, focuses on re-thinking church through a missional lens for new generations and culture. This includes designing worship services that use art, prayer stations, and other creative and artistic forms of worship in addition to preaching and singing. As part of this mission oriented vision using the arts, Vintage Faith Church opened a 7-day a week coffeehouse, art gallery and music venue in the church building called The Abbey in Santa Cruz, California.
Much of Kimball's writings question the existing forms of church and their effectiveness in an increasingly post-Christian culture. However, he stresses that while change in the church is needed, the historical doctrines of the Christian faith do not need to change. Much of his writings focus on ways that methods of worship, preaching, church structure, evangelism and leadership need to change in order to be missional in a post-Christian or postmodern culture.
Books
Kimball's first book, The Emerging Church, describes his realization that even in a seemingly successful and large church that he was part of was not making the shift to living in a post-Christian culture. He describes how this recognition led him to change his methods of church ministry to see emerging generations part of the church. The Emerging Church details the specific methods of worship, preaching, leadership, evangelism and spiritual formation and why change is needed. They Like Jesus But Not The Church is based on a series of interviews with non-Christians about how they feel about the Church and Jesus. The conversations reveal that while many people have a positive impression of Jesus, they have a dislike of the Church. The book discusses what the Church has done to foster these views, and how to address them. Kimball encourages Christians to leave the "Christian bubble" and listen to what non-Christians are saying.
