Examining the Emergent Church

My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, he should know that the one who turns a sinner back from his wandering path will save that person’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19-20, NET).

I recently came across the following commentary from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the pastor of New Park Street Chapel (the Metropolitan Tabernacle) in London for 38 years. Five years before he passed away, he ignited a controversy among the Baptists from an article he wrote about what he termed the “Downgrade Controversy.” Because of issues surrounding this, his church became disaffiliated with the Baptist Union. This wikipedia article describes:

Contextually the Downgrade Controversy was British Baptists’ equivalent of hermeneutic tensions which were starting to sunder Protestant fellowships in general. The Controversy took its name from Spurgeon’s use of the term “Downgrade” to describe certain other Baptists’ outlook toward the Bible (i.e., they had “downgraded” the Bible and the principle of sola scriptura). Spurgeon alleged that an incremental creeping of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and other concepts was weakening the Baptist Union and reciprocally explaining the success of his own evangelistic efforts.

I found the following commentary by Spurgeon on James 5:19-20 to be applicable to the discussion around fundamentals of the Christian faith in the context of the discussions often occuring in Emergent/ing circles. I am interested in hearing your feedback on Spurgeon’s comments and the scripture from James that he is commenting on. If you don’t agree with him, how would you understand James’ intended meaning?

It was not merely that he fell into a mistake upon some lesser matter which might be compared to the fringe of the gospel, but he erred in some vital doctrine&emdash;he departed from the faith in its fundamentals. There are some truths which must be believed, they are essential to salvation, and if not heartily accepted the soul will be ruined. This man had been professedly orthodox, but he turned aside from the truth on an essential point.

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Rob Bell’s 8th Nooma film titled “Dust,” he deals with a very important subject — Faith. Here is the outline from nooma.com:

Believing in God is important, but what about God believing in us? Believing that we can actually be the kind of people we were meant to be. People of love, compassion, peace, forgiveness, and hope. People who try to do the right thing all of the time. Who act on the endless opportunities around us every day for good, beauty, and truth. It’s easy for us to sometimes get down on ourselves. To feel “not good enough” or feel like we don’t have what it takes. But maybe if we had more insight into the culture that Jesus grew up in and some of the radical things he did, we’d understand the faith that God has in all of us.

Rob Bell refers to the time when Peter walks on water, but then starts to sink. Rob believes that it is not because Peter lacks faith in Christ’s sustaining power, but because Peter lacks faith in himself. Friends, it is important that we get this straight because this is foundational to the gospel message. Is it really that we are to have faith in ourselves, that we can be the kind of people God wants us to be and do the things that Jesus did? Is it simply belief that because Jesus did it we can do it also? Does God have faith in us that we can do these things too?

Does the scripture teach anywhere that the object of our faith is in ourselves?  That God has faith in us?  Instead what we read is the following:

“Now while Jesus was in Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover, many people believed in his name because they saw the miraculous signs he was doing.  But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people. He did not need anyone to testify about man, for he knew what was in man” (John 2:23-25, NET).

The word translated “entrust” is pisteuo (from the word pistis, meaning faith).  Pisteuo is most frequently translated as “believe.”  So what this passage is saying is that while these people claimed to believe in Jesus’ name, He did not believe in them.  These same people who today were praising him will very soon be shouting “crucify him!”

In the following video, Cameron Beuttel shows us a clip from Rob’s video and helps us to compare it with the scriptures to see if what Rob is teaching is true.

Friends, what we believe has implications in how we live, what we do and whether or not we are pleasing in God’s sight. What do you think the implications will be for those who follow Rob Bell’s reasoning and take the focus of their faith from Christ and place it onto themselves as though the capability to do what God requires is innately within each and every one of us?

“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good” (Rom 12:9, NASB)

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In the context of some of the conversations in emergent groups as well as the recent A New Earth series being hosted by Oprah and Eckhart Tolle, I thought you would find this conversation from the Faith Under Fire episode featuring the debate between Deepak Chopra and Greg Koukl helpful. It is divided into 5 short parts, and you can watch them inline below. Thanks to Lee Strobel (the host of the debate) for making these videos available!

Part 1: What is the Future of Faith? [download]

Part 2: Is There Only One Correct Religion?

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I think E.R. has struck on something in a very powerful way. Please watch the following video clip and answer the question: can you give this man the answer? If this woman’s answer doesn’t work for a man on his death bed, then is it the right answer for everyone else?

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In conjunction with Mary Darling, Tony Campolo authored a book this year entitled “The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism and Justice.” On pages 34-35 in a section by Campolo entitled “Knowing God Intimately: Where Christian Mysticism can Take us,” he writes that Frank Laubach’s idea of telepathic evangelism is “a bold and intriguing proposal”:

While pointing out how important it is for Christians to pray for others, Laubach makes a bold and intriguing proposal for another way of praying. He suggests that in addition to praying for someone in need of God, that we should consider praying to that person as well. He tells us that God may want to work through the praying Christian as a channel to reach into the heart and soul of the person who is in need of saving grace. Laubach proposes that a person who is resisting God might be open to the spiritual impact of a Christian concentrating God’s power on him or her. It is as though, according to Laubach, a praying Christian might be a lens through whom God focuses saving power into another person’s life.

Call it a kind of mental telepathy, but what Laubach is suggesting is that the Holy Spirit flowing into a Christian, as a result of prayer, can stir up spiritual energy in that Christian that can then be directed toward a person who needs Christ’s salvation.”

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I’d like to recommend the following excellent audio resource from Greg Koukl and the Stand To Reason website:

Truth, Knowledge and the Emerging Church — Gregory Koukl

Perhaps the most salient challenge facing Christian ambassadors today is communicating the gospel intelligibly to an emerging culture steeped in postmodernism. In addressing this challenge, many within the church have adopted the philosophical underpinnings of the culture, namely postmodern conceptions of truth and knowledge, and in doing so have compromised the central Christian message.

Listen as Greg explains why the saving message of Christ hinges upon a proper understanding of truth–truth as it has been understood throughout human history–and teaches you how to winsomely engage the emerging culture on these issues in a relevant and meaningful way.

Click here for this audio resource.

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I’d like to recommend the following excellent audio message from the Stand to Reason website:

Truth Is a Strange Sort of Fiction: Understanding the Emerging Church — Greg Koukl

Francis Schaeffer held that three things are required for orthodox evangelicalism to become “a thing of strength and beauty” to others: doctrine, truth, and relevance. Yet as the Emergent Church attempts to become a relevant attraction to a postmodern culture, it has struggled to maintain a firm-enough grip on two of these three equally critical qualities.

So how can the church promote an attractive, winsome Christianity that is culturally relevant while still faithful to orthodoxy?

Listen as Greg teaches you to speak intelligibly to a postmodern culture - in their language and to their issues - while still boldly offering the only solution to the dismal condition of every person: Jesus Christ.

Click here for this audio resource.

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On November 19, 2006, a joint annual meeting was held of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Emergent church leader, Phyllis Tickle, likens Brian McLaren to Luther who helped to bring about a reformation. Tickle says McLaren might be instrumental in bringing about a “new reformation” through the emerging church. Indeed, it seems that Brian also believes this to be true. He is starting an “Everything Must Change” speaking tour based on the fall release of his new book by the same title.

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One of the most positive outcomes of the Emerging church is that people are being more transparent about what they believe and they feel more safe in sharing their doubts. Transparency should be welcomed as it allows for progress to be made. Deep seated unbelief can be brought to the surface and addressed by plowing out rocks and weeds, and cultivating the understanding that results in the deep roots of faith that allow the disciple to mature and weather inevitable temptations and trials.

A very unconstructive and therefore unloving thing that is often done is to squash the doubter by merely restating the articles of faith upon them and threatening them with condemnation if they don’t believe them. The doubter should not be treated like a wolf, but graciously like a wandering lamb, gently coaxing him or her back into the safety of the master Shepherd’s watch, not casting a rope around his neck and yanking on it as hard as possible. I confess that I am growing in this area too. Despite his very strong stand, Jude admonishes us that we should “have mercy on some, who are doubting” (Jude 1:22). But not everyone is a doubter; we cannot forget that some actively oppose the truth, refusing to acknowledge it. Peter speaks of false teachers who will be among us and “will secretly introduce destructive heresies…” (2 Pet 2:1). In the following verse he also warns that “many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the truth will be maligned.” It is them of whom the scripture says are “of depraved mind [and] rejected in regard to the faith.” (2 Tim 3:8).

On the other hand, one of the things I see as a poison in the Emerging church movement is the seeming unwillingness to separate from false doctrine and to make a clearly articulated and firm stand for truth while still being loving.

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In this YouTube video is an important conversation between Todd Friel and John MacArthur in response to the following comments made by Brian McLaren which are played within as an audio clip:

A lot of arguments happen about religious and non-religious people about the question of who is going to Hell and who is going to Heaven.  A lot of times Christians get into this argument by saying, ‘We have the only way to heaven.’  People often ask me what do I think is the way to heaven.  I have a problem when they ask me this question because it assumes that the primary purpose of Jesus coming and the primary message was a message about how to get to heaven.  Now, I think this is an important question.  Obviously, mortality rates are still pretty high, so what happens to us after we die is still very, very important to all of us.  And I think that the answer the Christian faith gives to the question how does a person get to heaven, is that a person gets to heaven not by being good enough, not by being smart enough, rich enough, not by your opinions or anything like that… that our only way to be accepted by God is by God’s love, by God’s grace and that’s something that we can’t earn or achieve; we just receive it and believe.  But I actually don’t think that Jesus’ primary message is focused on how to get to heaven.

–Brian McLaren

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I recently came across the PBS special aired in July of 2005 entitled “The Emerging Church.” For quotes and video clips of this series: (part 1, part 2).

Kim Lawton interviews Brian McLaren in July 2005 for a PBS Special about the Emergent Church (here).

Bob DeWaay did an excellent lecture in reference to this PBS special to address the issue from an evangelical perspective (MP3, Powerpoint).

Blog commentary on the special: http://www.wesleyblog.com/emerging_church/index.html

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The following is an excerpt from Roger Oakland’s new book to come out in September entitled “Faith Undone” as quoted on Lighthouse Trails:

Brian McLaren put it well when he admitted it isn’t just the way the message is presented that emerging church proponents want to change … it’s the message itself they are changing.  [In a section of his book "Church on the Other Side" entitled 'Strategy Five: Resurrect Theology as Art and Science' he states the following]:

It has been fashionable among the innovative [emerging] pastors I know to say, “We’re not changing the message; we’re only changing the medium.” This claim is probably less than honest … in the new church we must realize how medium and message are intertwined. When we change the medium, the message that’s received is changed, however subtly, as well. We might as well get beyond our naivete or denial about this.  [Brian McLaren, Church on the Other Side, op. cit., p. 68]

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There is a Barna update on house churches entitled “House Churches are More Satisfying to Attenders than are Conventional Churches“.

Here is a quote from the article:

George Barna, who directed the study, said that the results indicate that the biggest obstacle to the growth of the house church movement is not theological but cultural. … “Those who attend a conventional church are generally content to show up and accept whatever their church has on the agenda; they place the responsibility for their spiritual growth on the shoulders of the church,” according to Barna. “We found that most conventional church goers have no desire to help improve their congregation’s ministry, nor do they feel a need to increase their personal spiritual responsibility. “On the other hand,” he continued, “the intimacy and shared responsibility found in most house churches requires each participant to be more serious about their faith development. Clearly, the house church experience is not for everyone.”

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I came across an by Journalist Robert Jensen entitled “Why I Am a Christian (Sort-of): I Don’t Believe in God” that will give Rob Bell’s theological ’trampoline’ a thorough workout! This person has clearly decided to ‘jump on the trampoline’ (in other words, experience the Christian faith), but doesn’t believe in many of the core essential doctrines (Bell’s ’springs’). How many springs can you remove before the trampoline breaks? Are the springs interchangeable between different world religions? Or perhaps these are ‘human-made’ springs designed to provide a more ’satisfying’ ride… would they work just fine as replacements of the old, not-so-comfortable ‘creaky’ ones?  Note what Bell says in Velvet Elvis:

I am far more interested in jumping than I am in arguing about whose trampoline is better. You rarely defend the things you love. You enjoy them and tell others about them and invite others to enjoy them with you.

Jensen documents what one might call a new kind of Christian: the Secular Christian. It sounds like a reference to Brian McLaren’s book with a little push to perhaps its inevitable evolutionary conclusion, and perhaps it is. If anything highlights how post-Christian the church seems to be becoming, it is this article. And its really not that unbelievable because a neighbour of mine was the pastor of a local church while being openly atheist. And he told me that he knows a number of other pastors that believe the same as he does, but stay in the pastorate keeping their doubts to themselves because they just can’t leave; its the familiar community of their childhood, and they just like helping people.

Following are some interesting excerpts from the article:

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Some time ago, I received an email from Rev. Chris Currey in Ontario on this topic and I thought it was so relevant that I got permission from him to post it on my God’s BMW blog here. The following excerpt is worth repeating here for emphasis:

Unfortunately, some have decided to simply reach out with good works while leaving any offensive gospel preaching in the dust. The trend is to offer inclusive acceptance rather than be forthright. By doing so, we risk losing converts by seeking the friendship and approval of the ‘post-modern minded.’ We tuck truth under the table for fear we’ll scare them off, but in the end we do them more harm than good. We might have them in our church, but does God have them in His Kingdom?

One of our greatest examples of Christian charity is the salvation army. But listen to the words of William Booth, “Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you ‘go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin.’ Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there.”  Obviously, he was not referring to just feeding the poor.  How would such utterances be received by the church today?  No doubt, William Booth faced a society much like ours.  He did not bow to the threatenings of a callous and base-minded society by changing the method of reaching them.  If we are going to reach this post-modern world, we must do it the same way Jesus instructed us to do it 2000 years ago… preach the gospel!  It was Jesus who said, “unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”  By today’s standards, Jesus would be considered a radical for saying such things.  So while we follow His example of charity, let us follow His admonition to preach the gospel in its entirety.  To deviate from the blue-print is to build a crooked house on sinking sand.

Please feel free to comment.

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I came across a review of “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell done by Greg Gilbert of 9Marks.org here.

I found Greg’s review to be well thought out and courteous, yet with just as deep concern as I have about some of Bell’s teachings.  I am also slowly working through “Velvet Elvis” and intend to do a much more thorough review, chapter by chapter.  However, I wanted to post Greg’s review here to get the issues out front now since it presents a good summary of Bell’s main points and similar concerns as I have with them.

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I was reading an article on Christian Worldview Network entitled “Southern Baptist Convention Embraces the Emerging Church in a Cover Story“.  Unfortunately, this is a clear example of how to caricaturize, misrepresent and unfairly accuse a fellow minister due to what seems to be preconceived bias. (See my previous post entitled “How to Converse When We Disagree“).  I am not convinced that the author did careful research concerning Mosaic and Erwin’s sermons before making his warnings, or at least he didn’t present convincing evidence.

I spent some time listening to several of Erwin’s messages from his service to get an idea of what he teaches. When I listened to Erwin’s Oct 1 video podcast message entitled “Is Jesus the Only Way?” (you can subscribe to his podcasts here), I was taken aback by how loving, understanding and real Erwin was and yet he told the truth without holding back the hard doctrines. I learned something from this excellent message from Erwin: how to show people that you care immensely about their eternal destiny without compromising the truth.

We need to take care to keep from making a quick surface evaluation of someone and their teaching on the evidence of a few brief quotes that could be taken with an incorrect sense and a brief look at his website for anything that the culture might use in a pagan way.  While we need to keep on the alert for false teaching and worldliness, we shouldn’t set out on a fault finding mission to accuse, malign and unnecessarily warn against.  It is possible that there is reason to be suspicious, but given the evidence presented by this author, I remain unconvinced that Erwin is promoting mysticism and worldliness.  Perhaps he is, but this author should not write as he did, and the warnings are unsubstantiated without better evidence.  I may be wrong, but Erwin may be one of the few doing it right, attempting to hold to the truth in love.

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I was reading some quotations from Robert Schuller in the 1980s, and I wonder if these would resonate with many in today’s Emerging Church movement?

“I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and, hence, counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude, uncouth, and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.“  Time, March 18, 1985

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I found an excellent article by Stephen Shields entitled: “Theological Disagreement and the Emerging Church.”  I wanted to quote a few points from his article which I thought worthy of restatement here.  With the best of my ability (and with God’s help) I am endeavoring to follow this very wise advice despite the fact that I know I am going to fail at times.

Understanding the other [person's view] calls for imagination, because we have to provisionally assume the other may be correct - or at least partially correct - if we are to truly listen. We may have to hold our convictions in abeyance as we hypothetically consider the position of the other.

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You can find the interview by John Buckeridge here.

I found this interview with Rob Bell very informative, particularly since I am evaluating some of his works.  It is clear that Rob is just plain a nice, honest, straightforward kind of guy.  He seems to just want to be himself, honestly trying to be more effective as a Christian and improve the view the world has of the church.  He seems very humble in how he sees the astonishing growth of his church, Mars Hill, came about, as well as his Nooma video series.  All around, I think Rob Bell is a young, hip, real, personable and committed person.  I want to point out a number of things that I noticed he said in this video:

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One of the things that I admire about those sympathetic to the emergent or emerging church movement is that they are willing to ask hard questions and think more deeply about what they believe.

However, I believe there are two general motivations behind the asking of these deep questions, one that is healthy and the other that is not:

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Dan Kimball has coined the term “Vintage Faith” to describe the new Emergent style churches. From his website here, he defines Vintage Faith as follows:

vin·tage adj. of high quality, especially from a past time period n. the date or time period when something was originally produced or existed

faith n. reliance and trust in a person or thing

Vintage Faith is simply looking at what was vintage Christianity. Going back to the beginning and looking at the teachings of Jesus with fresh eyes and hearts and minds. Carefully discerning what it is in our contemporary churches and ministry that perhaps has been shaped through modernity and evangelical subculture, rather than the actual teachings of Jesus and the Scriptures.

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Rob Bell says the following in “Bullhorn,” the ninth episode in his Nooma series:

“That’s why the hell fire and brimstone stuff is so dangerous.  When you tell me that I should follow Jesus so that I don’t burn forever, it sounds like a threat.  As if you scare people enough they’ll all of a sudden magically decide to love God and follow Jesus.  Do you think it’s possible to scare people into loving God?” (Nooma, “009 Bullhorn” PDF, p17-18).

I’ll go over “Bullhorn” in more detail in another post, but I wanted to address this statement here.  I can see Rob’s concern, but it seems to me that he is mischaracterizing what proper gospel preaching should be like.  Telling someone that they are going to burn in Hell if they don’t repent when they think they have done nothing wrong (certainly nothing uncommon to all people) is brow beating and offensive.  But if you love people, you will first show them (like a good doctor) the signs of the mortal disease they have so that they will become convinced in themselves.  If they are convinced, you won’t need to push hell hard on them, they will understand.  Just set it out plainly and then offer them the good news in context to the bad.  After all, how can you truly understand salvation if you don’t even know what you are being saved from?  To be saved requires that the object of salvation knows their plight and that there is one who can save.  The whole context is utterly important when sharing the gospel.

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I noticed a series on Joel Osteen’s website entitled “Developing a Quiet Spirit.”  Here is the description:

Sometimes people feel that God doesn’t answer their prayers.  Often times, it’s not because God doesn’t want to answer, He simply can’t get a word in edgewise.  “God help me.  God, change my spouse.  God, fix my boss. God, I need that promotion.  God, I need wisdom.  God, show me what to do.  God, why don’t You ever talk to me?”  Does any of that sound familiar?  God most often speaks to us in a still, small voice.  If we want to hear His voice, we have to get quiet before Him.  Learn to let go of the busyness of life, to relax and allow the peace of God to restore and reenergize us.

However, is this true?  Are we not getting answers to prayer simply because we are not being quiet in our spirit to listen to the “still, small voice”?

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It is clear that in the marketplace, many ideas are represented. There are those who hold to pantheistic beliefs, others that are atheists or agnostics, others that are monotheists with different descriptions of who God is, and even others who may name themselves according to your faith but who hold and proclaim heretical, even damnable views.

We are commanded to be separate from the world, yet not removed from it. In but not of.

Therefore, in order to be able to engage in the marketplace, we have to be able to do so without first requiring that the marketplace itself adhere to the principles we hold to in the scriptures. However, how is the assembly of believers for fellowship to be ordained? Are we to tolerate immorality, pagan practices and heretical teachings in the assembly of the believing?

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A friend at work made the comment “I would rather serve God out of love than for reward or for fear of punishment.” I was also recently conversing on Dan Kimball’s blog concerning the topic of Hell. The objection from the emergent community seems to be that some Christians use Hell as a baseball bat on people, evidently without showing a loving concern for them. This is a very good objection which raises some very reasonable questions which I will seek to answer in this post:

1. Does the existence of heaven and hell require a Christian to be motivated by reward and/or fear?
2. Is it true that a Christian with saving faith is motivated to serve God out of fear, reward or simply out of love for God?