DaveEnglund.Name/DBlog

How widespread is the problem?

I know I am not the only one concerned about Emergent Church ideas and post-modern perspectives taking root in today's church. But the scope of this problem is starting to amaze me. I visited a church two weeks ago and found these two paragraphs in their weekly bulletin:

"As you participate in this gathering today, we hope you will have fun! -- and sense God's presence as well. We want to be a positive resource in your journey of discovering God."

Sounds like an "experience based" approach doesn't it? And it tends to fit in with "EPIC - Experiential, Participatory, Image-Rich and Communal" - which seems to be a major theme in the emerging church movement these days - not that all of that is bad, but it does leave out some very important things like objective truth and right doctrine. Funny how sensing God's presence seems to be taking a backseat to having fun.

 

How about this one...

"Our mission is to inspire religious people to develop a meaningful relationship with God, one person at a time."

I wonder who those "religious people" are. I mean, aren't Muslim's religious people? You could have Muslim's showing up and pursuing a relaitonship with Allah under this banner.  Just who is this "God" you're trying to inspire people to know? Frankly, this sentence smacks of liberal "inclusiveness" and "tolerance." We seem to be afraid to announce that we believe Jesus Christ is the way to God, the truth about God, and the very life of God, and therefore our efforts are going to be to know Christ and become conformed to his character.

The above two paragraphs came from the bulletin of a local church affiliated with the Baptist General Conference (BGC) - a decidedly conservative denomination.

Another local church is currently on my visitation docket. Tonight I checked out their website and found they are part of the Foursquare church. I visited www.foursquare.org and did a simple search of their site using the keyword "Emergent." That brought up this article which encouraged the reader to gain a better understanding of "emerging culture" (So, is this a unique culture in human history? Why the need for the special treatment of "emerging culture?"). The writer of the article states...

As postmodern thought continues to permeate our culture, church leaders would be wise to become fluent in the language of the emergent conversation. The best way to do this is to become a willing and intentional student of the culture, to become the humbled protégé instead of the mentor.

Humm...nothing wrong with understanding where any given culture is coming from, but am I hearing an encouragement to let culture form us, rather than bringing a timeless message to a lost culture?

Now, none of this says anything bad about the churches involved. But it sure gives me pause when I see how influenced churches and denominations are becoming by post-modern thought.

This morning I read a thought-provoking passage of scripture...

"Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light." -John 12:35,36

The people Jesus spoke to were the religious crowd of that day who were unable to recognize the work and presence of God in Jesus. In fact, they had flat rejected him by this point. Jesus' words were a direct warning to them - it is only under his teaching, his presence, and relationship with him that one can find the right way through life and through this world. Otherwise, we are bound to be overcome by the darkness of sin in ourselves and in the world around us and become thoroughly lost to the God who is truly God.

Again, these were the religious people, people "in the church," the people who were "serious about God." I can't help but think that the church of today is presently succumbing to the darkness of the post-modern culture in which we find ourselves. It seems that we have somehow lost our "light-connection" to the one (Jesus) whose light will help us find our way through this world and its many cultures.

Come now, and let us reason together

I know that within the Emerging Church there are many good, sincere Christians attempting to engage a postmodern generation with the gospel. That really is not the issue when it comes to the "emergent church." Let's use every means possible to meet the generations of our time with the life-transforming message of Christ. But we dare not sacrifice sound doctrine for the sake of that venture. We dare not abdicate our responsibility to perceive the unchanging truths God has clearly laid out before us in his Word, and to hold on to those truths and let them guide us in our every capacity, such as how we as Christians connect with the postmodern generations.

The emergent church is in danger of just that abdication, asserting that we cannot be sure of eternal truths, railing against absolutism; the message of Christ will take on less and less relevance as we conform the message to whatever we need it to be.

A couple of relevant quotes come to mind from an article I read tonight...

"A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert -- himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt -- divine reason...We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table." G. K. Chesterton

And then, Robert Bellah, as he describes the doctrine of twentieth century American culture...

"It is an understanding of life generally hostile to older ideas of moral order. It's center is the autonomous individual, presumed able to choose the roles he will play and the commitments he will make, not on the basis of higher truths but according to the criterion of life-effectiveness as the individual judges it."

It is clear from God's Word that even apart from his Word God expects man to perceive a certain amount of unchanging truth. In Romans 1:19 we read, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." We who are Christians have moved beyond that beginning point of relationship with the truth. We rely on God's Spirit-breathed Word, replete with recognizable, unchanging truths, to instruct us.

And so, finally, as expressed by David Wells...

"Let's have a robust recovery of biblical Christianity -- that's what's needed in this time."

Emergent Church Refresher

Here are a couple of good places to start...

by Gary Gilley of Southern View Chapel
   The Emerging Church - Part 1
   The Emerging Church - Part 2
   The Emerging Church - Part 3

D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, ( Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005)

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I am becoming increasingly convinced that the Emergent Church is on a collision course with moral relativism. I know there are many good, Spirit-filled, Christians who are investing in it because they are sick of the falseness of modernism, and they sincerely and rightly want to reach the lost generations of our times, but they are deluding themselves if they think what they think doesn't matter, and eventually their message will become unintelligible and devoid of the Christ who is really Christ. It is interesting to note that the very arguments put forth by those in the emerging church, arguments that lead to the rejection of absolutism, are themselves based on thought - linear thinking, something they are trying to rid themselves of. –DaveE

What's Emerging in Your Church?

Today in church we had a guest speaker who said, "I have a secret to tell you - I want to change the word." He then referenced a number of the obvious current issues with the world; homeless and displaced people in Lebanon, all that violence over in Iraq, gangs and crime in our own streets. The speaker used 1 Thessalonians, chapter 1, verses 1-10 to explain his passion and methodology. The gospel and work of the Holy Spirit had made such an impact in that church that they took "the Lord's message" to their whole region (about the size of the U.S. upper Midwest). The speaker claimed that this happened because they had such an amazing community of believers who were working together toward that end. He then extrapolated to wonder what kind of change our communities of believers, our churches, could accomplish in the world.

I have some problems with our speaker's message. First, in his effort to voice his concerns about the world he was very careful not to "bash" any particular group or country. And yet, he did focus on the plight of the Lebanese to the exclusion of the oppressed Israelis. And he did mention the violence in Iraq without ever mentioning it is happening largely at the hands of people representing Islamic fascism. In other words, his silence and political correctness was disingenuous. He really does have a point of view and he was voicing it in "whom" he was expressing concern or lack of concern for.

Secondly, his mission is not biblical. Jesus did not send us to change the world. He said, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel" (Mark 16:15), and "Make disciples of all nations...teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19, 20). No mention of a social or political mission. In fact, the scriptures tell us the world will only get worse until Jesus returns (his Second Coming) and then he (Messiah) will set up his 1,000 year reign on earth.

Jesus instructions to his disciples were to bring his message to the world and let the Holy Spirit change one person at a time - individualized internal renovation. He clearly had something else in mind in terms of a world-wide external renovation. That is not to say that believers should not become active in social issues as a means to express the life of Christ to the world around them. The early church had quite an impact on the world of their time, and also throughout generations, but their impact was a witness of how the resurrection life of Christ brought transformation to individuals, who when acting in community demonstrated the full life of Christ in the world around them. Even so, poverty and violence were not stamped out and have continued, some might argue have increased, to this day.

Our speaker today is representative of a new movement called the "Emerging Church." According to the Encyclopedia...

The emerging church seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct Christianity as they live in a postmodern culture. While the movement is very diverse, many emergents’ display the following characteristics:

• Missional living. Christians should go out into the world to serve God rather than isolate themselves into communities of like-minded individuals.
• Narrative theology. Teaching should focus on narrative presentations of faith and the bible rather than systematic theology or biblical reductionism.
• Christ-centeredness. While not neglecting the study of scripture or the love of the church, Christians should focus their lives on the worship and emulation of the person of Jesus

I won't go into a full debate of the emergent church today other than to say that, what we find "emerging" is a focus on changing the world through social activism, watered down theology, and an emphasis on personal experience with God, rather than sound biblical teaching made transformational by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our guest speaker was right in line with the "emergent" message, and he is out of line with what I believe as a conservative evangelical.