Deconstructing the Emerging Church: Wading in Holy Wars

Writing a 20 page research paper on the emerging church movement seems to be the living definition of "biting off more than i can chew".There seems to be no limit to books I can read on the subject, podcasts I can listen to, Lectures I can attend. After reading about ten books and countless internet and blog articles I start to realize that most of what i am reading is the same thing over and over again

"emergence is the movement of the church in a cultural shift toward postmodernism"

what the heck does that mean? sounds like a trendy twitter topic #postmodernism. And in the sentiments of Dan Kimball, most of those who are emergent realize they aren't philosophers and aren't up to defending the concept of postmodernism. It's a grass roots movement, charicterized by the fact that it has no centralized location, no creed or system of beliefs outside of a few basic ideas around orthapraxy and the McLaren Generous Orthadoxy. Which teriffies the baptists and my only complaint is how am i suposed to present my evidents in my research paper as credible and true if there IS no offical source? It's great to talk about at starbucks, it proves harder to... well... prove.
Of course there are plenty of people to shoot it down, plenty of people to yell from the pulpit about the dangers of emergence, that it's a bunch of hippies who want to sit around and pull the bible apart and ignore basic truth. That it's all a cult, a hoax, something to be afraid of.

well, i mean, they said that about EVERY church movement when it started.. didn't they? Come to think about it, somebody is going to freak out about the new no matter what. So a certain amount of hostility toward the movement is to be expected. right?
The main draw of this movement seems to be that when people walk into a church that is making efforts to "emerge" or speak with someone who considers himself emerging, and those people have been jaded and hardened towards God and any sort of mettanarrative (trendy postmodern word #mettanarrative) find something accessable.
You hear delightful phrases like
"i just didn't feel judged"
"They don't seem fake. very authentic"
"I didn't want to have anyhting to do with Jesus before, but now i do"

As people who love Jesus very very much, and as humans who in our nature are terrified and addicted to the New, can we rightfully dismiss this movement? If it is taking love to places that were unacessable by other methods, then i cast my lot with these crazy hippies. count me emerging.