A Generous Orthodoxy or a Dangerous Heterodoxy? [Ron]

Chapter 7-Why I am Post/Protestant

What's in a Name?

Brian McLaren and the rest of the ECM tribe are part and parcel of what David Wells calls "The New Disablers."[1] What is that exactly? It's a cadre of modern, often self-styled, pastors that lead those that follow them into "a new order of sacred fools."[2] In his search to carve out a niche for himself, the modern pastor all to frequently seeks what is ostensibly "cutting edge" or "creative" rather than making use of the ordinary means of grace that God has provided.[3]

One of the most egregious errors of "hip" pastors like McLaren, Bell, and others is that as pastors they co-opt theology and thereby remove it from the soul of the Church.[4] No all, however, bow their knees to the Baal of modern or postmodern thought. Thoughtful-not trendy-pastors are able to see and see through the pitfalls of both modernity and postmodernity and understand how pluralism and secularism work without capitulating to it. Wells correctly states, "Those who manage to do so go on to preach with passion the truth of God's Word, reflecting on that truth and seeking out he points at which it intersects with modern life. There they uncover a wisdom that will not be coopted by the self movement, a wisdom centered instead in the objectivity of God's truth and in the transcendent God to whom it points."[5]

Wells hits on an indispensable point with this observation: the centrality of preaching Christ. What is most needed is faithful pastors preaching the Word of God to God's people. Preaching, according to Scripture, focuses on the Lord God Almighty and is not dialogical, but proclamation. It is the "foolishness" of preaching Christ and him crucified. It does not skirt around unpleasant words like sin, rebellion, transgression, or iniquity. At the same time, it does not leave people hopeless, but once the pinch of the Law of God is felt in their lives speaks in glowing terms of God's graciousness to repentant sinners.

I make this point because Wells culls some interesting statistics from surveys of sermons by two reputable magazines: Pulpit Digest and Preaching. Here are his findings: Wells documents that more than 50% of the sermons surveyed were either those in which neither the content nor the organization arose from the biblical passage but what was said was at least identifiable as being Christian or those in which neither the content nor the organization arose from a biblical passage and in which the content was not discernibly or obviously Christian.[6] What this amounts to is this: less than half of the sermons in the modern Church are explicitly biblical and "a significant number are not discernibly Christian at all."[7]

As bad as this is, what is even more unnerving are the findings regarding the orientation of the sermons in the modern Church. The survey revealed that less than 20% of the sermons "were grounded in or related in any way to the nature, character, and will of God."[8] So if modern pastors are not preaching about the nature, character, and will of God is it because they don't know it themselves or because they have co-opted theology and removed it from the soul of the Church? Either answer is untenable, but probably reasonably accurate.

In addition, Wells goes on to point out that "The overwhelming proportion of the sermons analyzed-more than 80 percent-were anthropocentric."[9] For those of you like me who still believe that the sixth grade was the best three years of your life, anthropocentric means "man-centered." Rather than centering, concentrating, focusing on God, the sermons focused on man. "Contemporary sermons are reserving the center for the issues that engage us in the course of life, or, more specifically, for the self. It is around this surrogate center that God and his world are made to spin."[10]

I have belabored this point somewhat so that it might become increasingly clear that modern preaching whether in its mega-church or ECM form has co-opted theology for a cheap surrogate. It has just enough Christian jargon to keep the natives from getting too restless, all the while tickling their itching ears (2 Tim. 4:3).

McLaren's contention is that what began as "a succession of disorganized and often erratic uprisings within the Roman Catholic Church"[11] eventually became a far-reaching revolution called the Reformation. Wrong. The Reformation was just that-a Reformation. There is a decided difference between a reformation and a revolution. McLaren's distorted history lesson concludes that "The Protestants protested many problems in the Roman Catholic Church, especially confusion about how people are saved."[12]

His thesis is that the central issue was this: "By what means do people get to heaven?"[13] Without being overly critical it can be said that that is just a bit of an oversimplification. Anyway, McLaren generously applauds the Reformation-well, most of it. He writes, "Through the Reformation, Christianity has flowered in a hundred new ways."[14] Nice. But what the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away. He continues, "But I'm not completely proud of it. Because although the Protestant Reformation did much good...it unleashed a lot of problems..."[15] What might they have been? McLaren lists three for us.

First, "After protesting Catholic excesses, Protestants started protesting each other."[16]

Second, "This protest frenzy created a kind of market economy for religion, where religion was commodified."[17]

Finally, "Protestants have paid more attention to the Bible than any other group, but sadly, much of their Bible study was undertaken to fuel their efforts to prove themselves right and others wrong (and therefore worthy of protest)."[18]

These statements need to analyzed and evaluated and that is precisely what we shall do in our next issue.

Pastor Ron Gleason, Ph.D.
Yorba Linda, CA

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[1] David Wells, No Place for Truth, Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 218-257.
[2] Ibid., 245.
[3] Comp. Ralf Dahrendorf, "The Intellectual and Society: The Social Function of the Fool in the Twentieth Century," in On Intellectuals: Cases Studies, (Philip Rieff [ed.]), (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 53-56.
[4] Wells, NPFT, 251.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., 251-252.
[7] Ibid., 252.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), p. 123.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., 124.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid., 125.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid., 126.