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Discussion Forum : Scriptures and Doctrine : The confessions of an almost Emergent Christian

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Compton
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Joined: 2005/2/24
Posts: 2732


 The confessions of an almost Emergent Christian

I normally try to avoid leaving large posts, but I made an exception in this case. If you are interested in the Emergent Church, please consider reading all of this and sharing your observations. I have tried to eliminate all wasteful redundancy in my text. Please pardon my length on this one!

The Good

I’ll be honest…I really tried to like the direction of the emergent churches. I resisted the conclusion that these churches were just offering a weak Christianity. Perhaps because I tend to be both artistic and analytical…two characteristics that are clearly being appealed to by the Emergent message…I was intrigued by the movement. Like many evangelicals, I have been growing wary of ideological loyalty to conservative politics in our evangelical churches.

Initially I thought this movement was about Christian community, "missional" living, and common heritage. I heard intriguing ideas about trying to remember the not so orthodox diversity in the early church as a way of accepting Christian unity in spite of doctrinal differences. The desire to build connections with community and heritage was visualized by the mixing of ancient Christian art with modern styles of worship in the church service, or similar stylistic and symbolic practices. Instead of a riotous praise and worship service, maybe the church would engage in a candle light liturgy and scripture reading. And perhaps a trendy inclusion of java into the churches doctrinal statement… ;-)

So at first I was hopeful with some of what I was seeing… the only real criticism that I had is that the Emergent Church might not be every one’s cup of tea. It was a minor irritation that the movement was preoccupied with “post-modern” theory and terminology. All of these elitist language games with words like “post-colonialism, deconstruction, narrative truths, and object/subject relativity” were perhaps making this movement limited to artists and academics. At worst, it seemed like just a new generation of “seeker-sensitive” churches.

The Bad

Yet, now I am not so sure. The latest iterations of the Emergent churches have shown some very disturbing trends by contradicting their own post-orthodoxy foundation; namely by defining a fixed systematic theology. (Of course systems are passé, so their theology is “narative”.) There is a growing interest in creating a definitive Emergent theological unbrella. Although this theology uses sporty 21st century “po-mo” terminology, it is really shaping up to be nothing more then 20th century liberal theology. Of course the first thing Emergent leaders like to point out is that labels like “conservative” and “liberal” no longer have any meaning. Perhaps their real objection is that these words contain plenty of meaning…not in terms of politics but in terms of fidelity to scripture.

Brian McClarens book for example, (A New Kind of Christian) uses a fictional conversation between a doubting evangelical and a post-modern Christian to endorse evolution as God’s “greatest creation” and goes so far as to portray pitiful Christians who opposes evolution as ignorant and needing help. On his website, as well as several other emergent forum sites, homosexuality is being considered as a viable life style for Christians. These forums are filled with conversations challenging the value of Christ's death, or rewriting the history of western Christianity as one huge mistake that the Emergent Church will rectify.

and the Ugly

Perhaps most alarming is Mclaren’s curious belief that Jesus recognizes a good life lived for other gods as unto himself. Quoting C.S. Lewis's Narnia "Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me he hath truly sworn though he know it not, and it is I who will reward him." This is extended elsewhere with the riddle “Christianity doesn’t save…Jesus saves.”

In “A New Kind of Christian” the post-modern mentor is a character nicknamed “Neo”, which is presumably a reference to the Matrix movies. Accordingly Brian McClaren claims an ability to see outside of his “traditional grid” while the Christian like myself who is resistant to liberal theology is simply unable to see outside of his own conditioning. This elitism portrays the emergent movement as the new enlightenment, while placing all that has come since Luther or Constantine under erasure. Yet herein lies the fatal irony of so-called “post-modernity”: by deciding on a system that is just as rigid as the one they denounce they fail to be any different in essence then those they claim are blind. Their enlightened post-modern terminology is simply graduate school jargon for traditional liberalism.

Perhaps some have decided that the market place of ideas can no longer bear the Christian product. If Rick Warren has created the purpose driven church….McLaren has created the customer-driven church. Yet if the church abandons biblical concepts of man in favor of more marketable philosophic, psychological, economic, and scientific notions, the church has abandoned it’s only compass by which to guide the lost back to reconciliation with God.

Now I know we all can’t agree on everything…but there must be a boundary! For me Emergent Christianity is breaking this boundary like water pouring over the levee in New Orleans…evangelical churches are failing to hold back a flood of unregenerate earthbound rationalism. Self-styled micro politics of our “post-modern” age are indeed producing a “New kind of Christianity”: a Micro-Christianity where each individual blends their spirituality like a gourmet espresso from Starbucks.

Within emergent “communities” you will see members who have special blends of “Christianity” such as “Buddhist Humanist Christian” or something similar. While I would love to sit down and share a cup of coffee with a Buddhist humanist Christian to listen and talk…. I can’t recognize such a person as properly joined to the New Man that is the Christian church.

Now, I must confess I loathe some of the denominational defamation that goes on in the name of Christ. So-called “discernment” ministries often have the biggest logs in their eyes.

Like I said…. I was an early evangelical fan of the Emergent Church. Yet, now I feel hoodwinked by them. With best selling books like "Blue like Jazz" Emergent leaders claim they are replacing “triumphalism” with meekness, and “absolutism” with honest doubt. Yet at the center of this meek doubt is a stiff commitment to triumph over orthodox faith with a new “spirituality” that does not recognize biblical concepts of sin, falling away, and idolatry. Sadly, such false light lacks a via negative to help define biblical concepts of love, forgiveness, and righteousness.

The past century has buffeted the church with some profound cultural hurricanes...it was just a matter of time before the levee would break in our churches allowing the world to start defining what it means to be a Christian. Intellectual and philosophic schools of thought that were famously anti-Christian are now shaping the theology of the local church.

Instead of preaching decision and enduring response….the Emergent Church invites sinners to a spiritual journey or dance. Apparently, once the world sees how crazy sexy cool we have become…they will join us in this “dance”. I am of the opinion that the philosophic core of the Emergent church is not affirmation of biblical community but denial of biblical certainty. Emergent is a synonym for post-orthodoxy. It is Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr disguised as the familiar evangelical pastor. It is a spiritual comforter sent for the Old Man.

Any thoughts? I hope someone shows me where I am wrong on this growing movement…

MC




_________________
Mike Compton

 2005/10/20 22:55Profile
philologos
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Joined: 2003/7/18
Posts: 6566
Reading, UK

 Re: The confessions of an almost Emergent Christian

MC
Many, many thanks for this crystal clear focus. Many of us have a real longing in our heart to see a Christianity uncluttered by its denominational history but are somewhat haunted by the phrase 'nothing new under the sun'. As a younger man I had a good old friend who used to say "if you can just live long enough you will see everything... twice". The cycles just seem to go on and on. The details differ from one century to another but to read, even among evangelicals, the heart crys for reality from Spurgeon, Chambers and Tozer is a sobering thing. Their times were separated by half a century at a time and yet you would hardly guess it if you saw their protestations.

The danger is, I think, that we shrink back into the safety of the credal statements of previous generations rather than 'testing all things and holding fast to that which is true'. So we end up trying to carry the dusty truths that others have discovered into our own futures. That produces a very defensive Christianity which to my mind is a contradiction in terms. A body is wonderfully flexible and the New Man can thrive in any context Roman, post-Roman, post-anything. However, a body has a hidden skeleton and if bent to far from its normal parameters it will break and then it can only crawl into a corner and die. It is the dilema seen in every area of Christian witness from Bible translations to evangelistic methodology; how far dare we bend it? To change the metaphor, we take more more risks in order to communicate with those we wish to reach and the danger is that we arrive at a point where the whole world is now ready to hear us; the only downside is that we no longer have anything to say.

So again, my brother, thank you for this sobering witness. Your explorations have been much wider than my own but I witness strongly with your findings. I sense too that, like myself, you are probably a member of 'idealists anonimous'. I am told there is no cure. ;-) Resist the twin temptations to the cynicism which says it will never be any different, and to the hypocrisy which says we have got it right because they have got it wrong. It is written of our Captain that His 'goings forth are from everlasting'; He is always 'going forth' to reach men and women and we must never become cautious and safe. There is a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson which has a line or two that has often challenged me...
O knights of the unshielded heart!
Forth and forever forward!—out
From prudent turret and redoubt,
And in the mellay charge amain,
To fall but yet to rise again!


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Ron Bailey

 2005/10/21 4:27Profile









 Re: The confessions of an almost Emergent Christian - from an optimist

Hi MC,

Difficult for a non-American to comment on what's going on over there, and it seems the people who write the books always get the limelight; whereas I'd like to think there are more than academics and artists laying themselves open to truth on a Sunday, in those venues where the Bible is opened and those putting in the footwork do really know the Lord and have been called by Him to this departure.

Quote:
Their enlightened post-modern terminology is simply graduate school jargon for traditional liberalism.

I liked this sentence and have no way of countering it. One hopes some changed lives will emerge from this movement, to prove you wrong.
Quote:
evangelical churches are failing to hold back a flood of unregenerate earthbound rationalism.

This does create its own tension, as not [i]everyone[/i] in the evangelical church is unregenerate. ;-)
Quote:
it was just a matter of time before the levee would break in our churches allowing the world to start defining what it means to be a Christian.

[u]Good observation[/u]! Isn't that mass media for you?

We do really [i]need[/i] an emergent [i]CHURCH[/i], don't we? Aren't we part of it here?.... as long as we don't imagine for a moment that we're the [i]only[/i] ones with truth on our side.... or, on the side of Truth....

 2005/10/21 10:36
sermonindex
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Joined: 2002/12/11
Posts: 39795
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Online!
 Re:

Quote:
Mclaren


I am going to a Christian conference this next month and guess who the main speaker is "Mclaren" :-P This is going to be a church planting confernece and the organisation behind it is partnering with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada to see over 10,000 new church plants (some home churches) start from now to 2015. All denominations are getting involved with this and sadly most of the vibrant church planting groups and very post modern and "emergent church". I feel there is going to be much that is bad in this conference but the Lord has me to going to it for many reasons. I feel right now the most important thing is for me to get some relationships with brethren that are involved in ministry and "get my ear to the ground" spiritually of what is happening in the Toronto area.

My prayer is God revive your work..

And tremendous post compton "crystal clear" is the best term to describe it. Your brutal honesty and openess you share resignates with many of us here including me. I am there right now brother.


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SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

 2005/10/21 11:47Profile
habakkuk3
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Joined: 2005/10/18
Posts: 490
Virginia

 Re: David Wilkerson on the emerging church

Pastor David preached a message on the emerging church some time back. I can't remember which one it was but I believe it was entitled "The Unhindered Gospel" but I may be mistaken.

You can download the sermons either at www.timessquarechurch.com or www.worldchallenge.org. The more recent sermons are available via video on the World Challenge site.


_________________
Ed Pugh

 2005/10/21 17:36Profile
Compton
Member



Joined: 2005/2/24
Posts: 2732


 Re:

Quote:
Resist the twin temptations to the cynicism which says it will never be any different, and to the hypocrisy which says we have got it right because they have got it wrong.



Quote:
Your...honesty and openess... resignates with many of us here including me.



Thanks very much for your encouragement.

As a footnote, I feel that part of the reason the Emergent Church is hard to define, is because for some it is not so much a set of beliefs, as it is a set of methods or experiments.

Some of this more benign methodology will probably find it's way into evangelical churches just as Charismatic music, and Willow Creek seeker sensitivity has. In fact, many churches just might adopt the name "Emerging" because it's trendy. For instance, my parents attend an independent church that has been around for years but is now thinking of itself as "emerging"...even though nothing about it has changed. It is a cut and paste label. Eventually, the unbrella of "emerging" may come to mean so many things that it will come to mean nothing, bringing an end to the project.

Emergent theology on the other hand, is not so benign. And because the movement is appealing mostly to younger Christians, it's corrosive effects could be felt for many years, especially if the movement dissolves back into evangelical Christianity. (Just imagine Søren Kierkegaard teaching your congregation or fellowship how to read the bible...)

Since Emergent theology is rooted in epistemological crisis, perhaps a better name for the movement would be the Existential Church.

Blessings all,

MC


_________________
Mike Compton

 2005/10/24 3:55Profile





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