It could indeed be a bad thing *if* these things were introduced under pretext of the New Age: i.e. "here, take these candles and this Christological heresy with it." Is that what is going here, though? It's not clear to me from the story, and perhaps you or someone else has a better understanding of the people behind the movement. Incidental things like candles, icons are/have been a part of Christianity since the beginning though; so I'm hoping that they are being introduced to these churches in that context, and not as a vehicle for heterodoxy.
http://www.understandthetimes.org/eca.shtml
Read through these 2 things. They are just a small sample of many more things I have read. My church hasn't gone that far out and called themself an emergent church, but they are getting close everyday.
The way I see it is the Emergent church wants to go back before the reformation happend, or basically say the reformation is over and now we are all one together, Catholics, and Christians. I am not a Catholic and I know many here are so I'm not trying to offend them or their beliefs. Anyhow, the reformation took place for a good reason and we can't just say it is over and accept all roads to heaven is acceptable.
I believe in justification alone and that is the key reason the Reformation happend. I'm not a real scholarly person but what I'm seeing is that the Emergent movemant is accepting of others ways to get to Heaven.
Anyhow, there is a lot of other reasons I have issues with the Emergent CHurch, but it would take all day to type them out, lol! Do some research on your own. I'm stay far away from this movemant. It is just another seeker friendly church and takes away from the truth and tries to spice it up. We don't need spice, we just need the truth.