Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck
This is one I've been working on for... a while. The 'emergent movement' is a relevant and important issue conversation that all serious Christians ought to engage. As I think about the manner Kevin and I can portray our faith to the largely unreached Idaho Springs community, I want to guard against sacrificing foundational things for the sake of relevance... as the use of Scripture and the understanding of God and His Church are being redefined in the emergent movement.
From the intro:
One of its critics has described the emerging church as a protest movement - a a protest against traditional evangelicalism, a protest against modernism, and a protest against seeker-sensitive megachurches. Others, sympathetic to the movement have used the acronym EPIC: experiential, participatory, image driven, and connected.
The reason we (more "mainstream") evangelical Christians must take this movement seriously is that it is gaining followers with an attractive message. Doesn't sound too horrible, right? But at what cost:
-demoting to mere story the Holy Word of God,
-reducing the Almighty to a weak (albeit all-loving) power with no semblance of majesty, holiness, or justice, or
-redefining Church to mean an all-inclusive community of fellow journeyers with little direction beyond "live as Jesus lived"?
One of the authors described the 'theology' thus:
It reaffirms my place in the center of my own universe. It's about me and my journey. Is this true Gospel? Or is it a dangerous sort of placebo for people who have been burned by traditional church, or seekers who can't tell the difference? Ours is a religion that cannot be compromising to this self-serving, trendy culture.
The dangers of compromising Scripture:
We can wax eloquent about the beauty of the story and how the Scriptures read us, but unless people are convinced that the Bible is authoritative, true, inspired, and the very words of God, over time they will read it less frequently, know it less fully, and trust it less surely.
The dangers of compromising who God is:
Where sin is the main problem we need a crucified Substitute. Where pain and brokenness are the main problems, we need to learn to love ourselves. God is no longer a holy God angry with sin, who, in His great mercy, sent His Son to die on our behalf so that divine justice might be satisfied. God becomes a vulnerable lover who opens Himself up to hurt and rejection in order to be with us because we are worth dying for.
I have no doubt that this message will find a receptive audience, but it is not the message the apostles proclaimed and for which they died. Christians don't get killed for telling people that God believes in them and suffers like them and can heal their brokenness. They get killed for calling sinners to repentance and proclaiming faith in the crucified Son of God as the only means by which we who were enemies might be reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10).
The dangers of compromising church - who's in, and its structure:
There is a log of ambiguity, like "take part in spiritual activities" and "identify with the life of Jesus." Then the thought came to me, If you stopped a random handful of Americans on the street, they would all aspire to identifying with the life of Jesus in much the same way they would hope to identify with the life of Martin Luther King or Muhammad Ali. The tough part is that "taking part in spiritual activities" won't help a person in the afterlife, regardless of whether or not McLaren is ready to dialogue on that topic.
...Many in the emerging church lament the central place preaching has received in Protestant worship services. Pagitt, for example, decries how preaching has becoming "speaching."...The problem, according to emergent leaders, isn't with the people or the preachers, but with the method of one-way communication where one clear message is spoken to passive listeners. ...Much of the emergent disdain for preaching is really an uneasiness about authority and control. Discussion, yes. Dialogue, yes. Group discernment, yes. Heralding? Proclamation? Not on this side of modernism.
In the final chapter, the authors urge us to consider the examples of the seven churches in the book of Revelation. There is a message of warning for
us, in the camp of the traditional and orthodox church,
The light at Ephesus had grown dim. They had good deeds, but not in love for one another. They defended the light, but they were not shining it into the dark places of the world. ...It is sad but true. Theologically astute churches and theologically minded pastors sometimes die of dead orthodoxy. Some grow sterile and cold, petrified as the frozen chosen, not compromising with the world, but not engaging it either. We may think right, live right, and do right, but if we do it off in a corner, shining our lights at one another to probe our brother's sins instead of pointing our lights out into the world, we will, as a church, grow dim, and eventually our light will be extinguished.
and for
them, the all-inclusive and organic emergent church,
Ephesus was under-engaged with the culture; Pergamum over-identified with the culture. The Christians in Pergamum bore witness to Jesus, but they had compromised in what it meant to follow Him. Undiscerning tolerance was Pergamum's crippling defect. Their indifference to religious and moral deviancy was not a sign of their great relevance to the culture, or their great broadmindedness, or a great testimony to their ability to focus on God's love; it was a blight on their otherwise passionate, faithful witness.
To conclude:
Emergent Christians, to use the language of Revelation, have many good deeds. They want to be relevant. They want to reach out. They want to be authentic. They want to include the marginalized. They want to make kingdom disciples. They want community and life transformation. Jesus likes all this about them. But He would, I believe, also have some things against them, some critiques to speak through other brothers and sisters. Criticisms that shouldn't be sidestepped because their movement is only a "conversation," or because they only speak for themselves, or because they admit, "We don't have it all figured out." Emergent Christians need to catch Jesus' broader vision for the church - His vision for a church that is intolerant of error, maintains moral boundaries, promotes doctrinal integrity, stands strong in times of trial, remains vibrant in times of prosperity, believes in certain judgment and certain reward, even as it engages the culture, reaches out, loves, and serves. We need a church that reflects the Master's vision - one that is deeply theological, deeply ethical, deeply compassionate, and deeply doxological.
This seems to me a message we all need to "catch".
