Emergent Church Archive

Articles related to the Emerging Church (also known as the Emerging Church) focusing on the theology and leadership of the movement.

"The Shack" by William P. Young (01/15/08 - 72 Comments)
I am certain that there is no other book I’ve been asked to review more times than William P. Young’s The Shack, a book that is currently well within the top-100 best-selling titles at Amazon. The book, it seems, is becoming a hit and especially so among students and among those who are part of the Emergent Church. In the past few weeks many concerned readers have written to ask if I would be willing...

The Gospel: Conventional vs. Emerging (09/18/07 - 70 Comments)
Brian McLaren shares two gospels, one new and one old. Those of us who have been keeping a wary eye on the Emerging Church know that to understand the movement we need to understand Brian McLaren. Though it is not quite fair to label him the movement's leader, he certainly functions as its elder statesman and his writing seems to serve as a barometer for the movement. But anyone who has read his books will...

Is Emergent the New Christian Left? (05/29/06 - 61 Comments)
Tony Jones, one of the more prominent leaders within the Emergent church movement has recently posted a pair of articles at the "Out of Ur" blog responding to the charge that Emergent is the new Christian left. "[I]s Emergent a new camp for Christian liberalism? In this post Tony Jones, the national coordinator for Emergent, responds to critics by championing Emergent's conversational purpose and celebrating the group's diversity." There are three things that struck me...

Boldness Is Our Birthright (04/10/06 - 120 Comments)
Yesterday morning in church we sang a song I knew from the album "Songs For The Cross Centered Life" but had never had the privilege of singing during a worship service. The song was "I Come By The Blood" by Steve and Vikki Cook. It is quite a recent song, but one whose expression of theology is easily equal to many of the old hymns. It proves, as do many of the songs recorded on...

Radical Reformission (Part 6) (09/16/05 - 0 Comments)
This is the sixth article in a series about Mark Driscoll's book The Radical Reformission. You can find the first article here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here and the fifth here. We are reaching the end of the book; all that remains is today's chapter and then the conclusion.

This chapter is an attempt to explain postmodernism. As anyone can attest who has attempted to define such a monster, arriving at a satisfactory explanation is no small feat.

Radical Reformission (Part 5) (09/13/05 - 0 Comments)
This is the fourth article in a series about Mark Driscoll's book The Radical Reformission. You can find the first article here, the second here, the third here and the fourth here. Today we arrive at a chapter cryptically entitled "the sin of light beer." As usual the subtitle is more helpful: "how syncretism and sectarianism undermine reformission."

Radical Reformission (Part 4) (09/07/05 - 0 Comments)
This is the fourth article in a series about Mark Driscoll's book The Radical Reformission. You can find the first article here and the second here and the third here. We are progressing through the book and have arrived at a chapter in which Driscoll begins to apply his understanding of culture and reformission. This chapter, entitled "going to seminary at the grocery store" has the more helpful subtitle, "connecting with culture in reformission." Driscoll begins by providing an example of a cultural disconnect, recounting a time he went to India and was unable to communicate with the people from that culture, not because they are deaf or stupid, but because they speak a different language.

Radical Reformission (Part 3) (08/24/05 - 0 Comments)
This is the third article in a series about Mark Driscoll's book The Radical Reformission. You can find the first article here and the second here. Today we are looking at the fourth chapter which is entitled, "Elvis in Eden" and deals with culture. Do note that because of his use of proper nouns Driscoll was forced to properly capitalize this chapter heading. That must have been very disappointing.

Radical Reformission (Part 2) (08/21/05 - 0 Comments)
This is the second part in a series examining The Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll. The first article, which you can read here, served as an introduction to the book. In the introduction to the book, Driscoll introduced himself in a brief biography and then provided three formulas that explain how different churches react to the competing forces of gospel, culture and church. He showed that Gospel + Culture - Church = Parachurch, Culture + Church - Gospel = Liberalism and Church + Gospel - Culture = Fundamentalism...

Radical Reformission (Part 1) (08/16/05 - 0 Comments)
I have just begun reading The Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll. Mark is known as being on the Conservative fringe of the Emerging Church. He must at least somewhat orthodox because he invited John Piper to deliver several messages at the 2004 "Radical Reformission Conference." Don Elbourne listened to the audio and wrote, "John Piper, the key note speaker, delivered three sessions saturated with Christ-centered, God exalting, relevant, practical theology. I admit being already partial to Piper as a recent enthusiastic convert to Christian Hedonism, but I must say I don't think I've ever heard Piper more radically poignant...

The Death Knell for the Emergent Church Movement (08/02/05 - 0 Comments)
Ron Gleason, (pastor, doctor of something or the other, and all-around nice guy) who posts in the Community Blog has begun a series called "The Death Knell for the Emergent Church Movement." The first article in the series has been posted and the other parts will follow in coming days.

Book Review - A Time of Departing (01/13/05 - 0 Comments)

The silence. This book is all about the silence. Whether that silence is part of the religious practice of Buddhists, Hindus, Sufi Muslims, New Agers or Contemplative Christians, Ray Yungen, author of A Time of Departing argues convincingly that it is all one and the same. As the subtitle suggests, a universal spirituality is changing the very face of Christianity. This universal spirituality is born from the religions of the East and is slowly infiltrating the Christian church, primarily through the New Age movement. Ray Yungen has studied this religious movement extensively and writes this book in response. It is an alarm sounded by one with a deep love for the church. "This book is not just another attempt to explain the New Age, but rather, an alert to the church of how and through whom New Age thinking is currently creeping into our pulpits, Sunday school classrooms, prayer groups, and Bible studies." The primary way the New Age has joined with the evangelical churches is through mysticism and contemplative prayer.

Contemplative prayer has been practiced by professed Christians since the early days of the church. Once a practice known only to a few Catholic mystics, today it is quickly gaining popularity in both Catholic and Protestant circles. Many prominent Protestant leaders have endorsed the practice, either explicitly or by declaring their respect for those who teach it.

Book Review - A Generous Orthodoxy (12/30/04 - 0 Comments)
In this article I will be reviewing Brian McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN, known hereafter simply as A Generous Orthodoxy. This is going to be quite a long book review - probably the longest I have written. To spare you having to read the full text if you are not so-inclined, I will ruin any sense of expectation by giving in advance my general impressions of this book. In short, it is awful. I consider it, in terms of content, one of the worst I have ever read and it stands as damning evidence of what passes for Christian reading in our day. Though it was easy to read, and even enjoyable at times, throughout the text Brian McLaren has consistently, deliberately and systematically dismantled historical Protestantism. From Sola Scriptura to hell to biblical inerrancy, nothing is sacred. At this point, those who are devotees of McLaren, The Emergent Church and post-modernism, will no doubt already have felt their blood boil and will be ready for a fight. I would encourage those people to keep reading. Those who are more traditional Christians will be grappling with an all-too-familiar feeling that this book represents yet another attack on the faith. And that is exactly what this book is. The remainder of this review will concern itself with showing how this book does away with biblical faith, replacing it with something far less godly and far more human. In short, something that is simply not Christianity.

It is difficult to critique the writing of people like McLaren because discerning what they actually believe is far more difficult than finding what they do not believe. Settling on those beliefs is akin to nailing Jello to the wall - it is a near impossible task as the Jello has no consistent form or shape, always changing, always conforming to what contains it. We are often left to read between the lines, interpreting what the author believes in light of what he rejects.

One has to become accustomed to McLaren's rather odd style of writing. He is able author who writes in a conversational tone, continually pokes fun at himself, uses many long sentences and, by his own admission, uses parentheses far too often.

Brian McLaren's TULIP (12/28/04 - 0 Comments)
Brian McLaren seems to enjoy controversy. Actually, it would seem from his books that he even likes controversy merely for the sake of controversy. Like the boys in days of old who used to sneak out of church, go into the adjoining outhouse and stir up the "pot" just to create a stink, so it seems McLaren likes to make trouble. He does this in a nice way, accompanied to all sorts of disclaimers and warnings, but at the end of the day, that seems to be his clear intent. He seems to view his job as being the one to ask questions, sometimes even outrageous ones, but never to answer them - a definitively postmodern attitude.

His theology (or lack thereof) is difficult to nail down, mostly because, as I indicated, he prefers asking questions to answering them, but seems to be a fusion of the New Perspective on Paul, Mysticism, Inclusivism, Open Theism and humanism. While he operates under the guise of a teacher of the Bible, in reality it seems he teaches mostly human wisdom with just the occasional reference to Jesus or the Bible. He is a student of every branch of Christianity and, in reality, of all religion and human experience, trying to draw and absorb what he likes while rejecting what he does not.

In his latest book, A Generous Orthodoxy McLaren tells his audience why he is a "Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN." He goes through each of these topics, showing what he has learned from each, which aspects of each he has integrated with his faith and why he considers himself an adherent to all of them. In other words, he makes up his faith as he goes along, much like someone might choose a meal from a buffet line...

Campolo On The Emerging Church (12/17/04 - 0 Comments)
Tony Campolo, who, despite absolutely awful theology for some reason continues to be an exceedingly popular Christian speaker and author, recently weighed in on the Emerging Church in an article published in the Winston-Salem Journal. He describes the movement as expressing "progressive evangelicalism," and defines this as meaning that they hold to traditional Protestant theological distinctives while rejecting the structures and styles of institutionalized Christianity.

Most conservative, Reformed believers would have no issue with people meeting in small home-based churches rather than in the type of church buildings that are foreign to the Scriptures. As a matter of fact, church often seems to work better in small numbers than in large. "The Emergent Church turns away from spending money on buildings. Instead, most congregations meet as "house churches" or gather in makeshift storefronts and warehouses." While I believe that statement is, in theory, true, when these churches begin to grow they will have no choice but to either continually split into smaller groups or invest in buildings...

Emergent Church � Nothing New Under The Sun (11/19/04 - 1 Comments)
The November issue of Christianity Decay Today featured an article entitled The Emergent Mystique which examines the so-called emergent church. The subheading says �The 'emerging church' movement has generated a lot of excitement but only a handful of congregations. Is it the wave of the future or a passing fancy?� The emergent church, knowing elsewhere as the emerging church seems to defy description. I have read long, drawn-out discussions where various members of this movement...

Experience The Labyrinth (Insert New Age Music Here) (11/16/04 - 2 Comments)
When I hear the word "labyrinth" I immediately think of that awful movie from the 80's starring David Bowie. If you grew up in the 80's I'm sure you remember it - the one that launched that career of Jennifer Connelly and brought so much pleasure to so many young girls (it seems the girls liked the movie more than the boys). Of course, and unfortunately, labyrinth also has a religious connotation, as it describes...