adventures in contemporary discernement

1. …adventures in contemporary discernement…

2. The Emerging Church The emerging church may be defined as a movement of leaders and communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures. Above all else, the emerging church movement is characterized by protest: against the modern church against the isolated church the success-driven church against the conservative church

3. Categorizing the Emerging Church Emerging evangelicals The “cool church” crowd House church evangelicals Believe that the structure of modern churches has been heavily influenced by paganism Emerging reformers Similar to the emerging evangelicals; place additional emphasis on reformed theology and church planting Emergent liberals *** Call into question, undermine, and even deny many essential doctrines of the historic Christian faith All that is emergent is emerging, but not all that is emerging is necessarily emergent.

4. Emergents are Agnostic Regarding Theological Truth “Postmodern spirituality is different from modern spirituality. A continental drift of the soul has taken place whereby spirituality is less creedal, less propositional, more relational, and more sensory. Logic is no longer converting anyone—only the transforming experience of the living Christ.” –Leonard Sweet “Jesus understood that it’s not only the truth that changes us, but also the journey of seeking truth.” –Chris Seay “No one has access to all reality in such a way that he can conclusively call his experience and understanding the truth.” –Doug Pagitt “The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimately can’t be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not…. The mystery is the truth.” –Rob Bell

5. Emergent Theology is a Revision of Liberal Theology “The emergent church is the latest version of liberalism. The only difference is that the old liberalism accommodated modernity and the new liberalism accommodates postmodernity.” –Mark Driscoll

6. Emergent view of…Scripture The Bible is “not reduced to a book from which we exact truth, but…is a full, living, and active member of our community that is listened to on all topics of which it speaks.” –Pagitt “A ‘The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it’ approach….denies the reality of the development of language and the pressures of culture.” -Pagitt

7. Emergent view of…Jesus “What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in? …Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart? I affirm the historic Christian faith, which includes the virgin birth and the Trinity and the inspiration of the Bible and much more. I’m a part of it, and I want to pass it on to the next generation…. But if the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place.” -Bell “The power of the gospel is the result of a person—Jesus Christ—not a message. The gospel is an event to be proclaimed, not a doctrine to be preserved.” –Erwin McManus

8. Emergent view of…Why Jesus Died “Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?” –Spencer Burke The doctrine of substitutionary atonement is “a form of cosmic child abuse” which “makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.” –Steve Chalke

9. Emergent view of…Human Depravity “Jesus believed in original goodness” –Chalke “Central to reclaiming creation and being a resurrection community is the affirmation that when God made the world, God said it was ‘good.’ And it still is.” –Bell “Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn’t resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as ‘sinners in need of a Savior.” -Burke The doctrine of human depravity is “biblically questionable, extreme, and profoundly unhelpful.” –Tomlinson “The call to repentance is the call to fulfill our natural potential, to improve ourselves by acting like God.” -Chalke

10. Emergent view of…Who goes to heaven? “Jesus did not come to make some people saved and others condemned. Jesus did not come to help some people be right while leaving everyone else to be wrong. Jesus did not come to create another exclusive religion… I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many…circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain with their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.” –Brian McLaren Jesus’ vision of God is “for anyone and everyone—Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, whatever…. What counts is not a belief system but a holistic approach of following what you feel, experience, discover, and believe; it is a willingness to join Jesus in his vision for a transformed humanity.” –Burke “Could it be that—beyond religion, reason, and conventional wisdom—grace is something to be opted out of rather then opted in to? Is it not something you get but something you already have?… The God I connect with does not assign humans to hell.” –Burke

11. Emergent view of…Who goes to heaven? “Jesus was not making claims about one religion being better than all other religions. That completely misses the point, the depth, and the truth. Rather, he was telling those who were following him that his way is the way to the depth of reality. This kind of life Jesus was living, perfectly and completely in connection and cooperation with God, is the best possible way for a person to live. It is how things are…. Perhaps a better question than who’s right, is who’s living rightly?” –Bell “The church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever (because) they work against Jesus’ teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody.” -Bell

12. Emergent view of…The Gospel “The good news is not informational…. Instead we have an invitation into a way of life—life we constantly realize is not ours alone.” –Pagitt Jesus did not live a perfect life primarily to earn righteousness for sinners, but to be “the model of sinless living, the ultimate example to which all humanity should aspire.” –Burke “This is maybe the biggest difference between emergent Christianity and historic evangelical Christianity. Being a Christian—for Burke, for McLaren, for Bell, for Jones, and for many others in the emerging conversation—is less about faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ as the only access to God the Father and the only atonement for sins before a wrathful God, and more about living the life that Jesus lived and walking in His way.” –Kevin DeYoung “Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity—liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood, while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative; liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God.” –J. Gresham Machen

13. Emergent view of…Homosexuality “Frankly, many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality. We’ve heard all sides, but no position has yet won our confidence so that we can say ‘it seems good to the Holy Spirit and us.’… Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. in the meantime, we’ll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they’ll be admittedly provisional. We’ll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we’ll speak; if not, we’ll set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out.” -McLaren

14. How should we respond? Acknowledge that the world has changed. Affirm that timeless truth exists, is relevant, and is found in God’s Word. Assume a missionary culture. Don’t neglect the narrative aspects of Scripture. Practice “humble orthodoxy.” Continue to oppose seeker-sensitive megachurch successism. Mingle timeless gospel propositions with authentic, practical teaching. Be clear on what we are against, but spend more time talking about what we are for.