The emerging church movement is larger than North American. My remarks pertain mainly to the American version. But keep in mind that this is part of a larger worldwide conversation with its own dynamic and nuances. The Wikipedia Definition. Wikipedia—the free, online, open-source encyclopedia—is a helpful place to begin for defining the emerging movement as a whole:. The emerging church or emergent church is a diverse movement within Christianity that arose in the late 20th century as a reaction to the influence of modernism in Western Christianity.
The emerging church seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct Christianity as its mainly Western members live in a postmodern culture. While practices and even core doctrine vary, most emergents can be recognized by the following values:.
Authenticity People in the postmodern culture seek real and authentic experiences in preference over scripted or superficial experiences. Missional living Christians go out into the world to serve God rather than isolate themselves within communities of like-minded individuals.
Narrative theology Teaching focuses on narrative presentations of faith and the Bible rather than systematic theology or biblical reductionism. Christ-likeness While not neglecting the study of Scripture or the love of the church, Christians focus their lives on the worship and emulation of the person of Jesus Christ. Note that a definition like this contains an element of protest. There is a flip-side to all of these attributes.
The Emergent Village website is another source that sets forth the self-understanding of the movement. Again, notice the implicit protest in each of these values. Though the book is not a defense of the movement but aims to present an objective analysis, it has been well received and commended by prominent members of the emergent community.
At the core, emerging churches are those 1 who take the life of Jesus as a model way to live 2 and who transform the secular realm 3 as they live highly communal lives. Derivatively, emerging churches 4 welcome those who are outside, 5 share generously, 6 participate, 7 create, 8 lead without control, 9 and function together in spiritual activities.
By now it should also be evident that all emerging church folks are not the same. The revisionists question and revise not just the church, but what most evangelicals would understand the Gospel to mean. As we turn to evaluating the emerging church movement, it is important to remember the diversity within this movement. Speaking in generalities without acknowledging some of these nuances and distinctions will paint an inaccurate picture and will hamper our ability to speak clearly and convincingly on these issues.
Like I mentioned earlier, when most people think of the emerging church, they think of couches, candles, clothing, and music.
These things grab our attention. But the Bible does not have a lot to say about drums versus organs, slacks versus jeans, or candles verses chandeliers. Yet the Bible does have a lot to say about ours heart and our doctrine.
In what follows I am only able to scratch the surface and to provide a brief sketch of these issues. One of the things I appreciate about the Emerging Church Movement generally is that they stress the narrative aspects of Scripture. As they rightly insist, Scripture is not just a big fact-book. Also, we must ask questions about the way some within the EM view the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. But God has given us the details of Scripture for a reason.
Not a word is wasted in our Bibles. Satan does not begin by lying, per se, but with a question. Raising the issues. Exploring the terrain. We do not need a generous orthodoxy, as some have claimed. It is neither humble nor orthodox to undermine the inerrant, authoritative Word of God.
We are weak. We are biased. We are sinful. We idolize ourselves. And God has a powerful Word that stands over and above us. We must submit. Mark Dever has said it well:. Christian humility is to simply accept whatever God has revealed in His Word. The humility we want in our churches is to read the Bible and believe it—everything God has said, dogmatically, and humbly! It is not humble to be hesitant where God has been clear and plain. If you read the EM writers, you will often hear them contend that the atonement is bigger than substitutionary atonement—the biblical idea that Christ acted as our substitute and graciously absorbed the wrath of God that we deserved.
And the EM folks are right; there is more to the atonement than substitution. The Bible also refers to the cross in terms of his example for us e. Yes, more happened on the cross than Christ bearing our sins and the wrath of his Father.
But less was not happening either! Tom Schreiner, in a recent address on Penal Substitution as the Heart of the Gospel , expresses the biblical view on this:.
The theory of penal substitution is the heart and soul of an evangelical view of the atonement. I am not claiming that it is the only truth about the atonement taught in the scriptures. Nor am I claiming that penal substitution is emphasized in every piece of literature, or that every author articulates clearly penal substitution. I am claiming that penal substitution functions as the anchor and foundation for all other dimensions of the atonement when the scriptures are considered as a canonical whole.
I define penal substitution as follows: The Father, because of his love for human beings, sent his Son who offered himself willingly and gladly to satisfy his justice, so that Christ took the place of sinners.
The riches of what God has accomplished in Christ for his people are not exhausted by penal substitution. The multifaceted character of the atonement must be recognized to do justice the canonical witness.
A few years ago Chalke said the following about substitutionary atonement in his popular book The Lost Message of Jesus :.
Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. I have to say, as kindly but as forcefully as I can, that to my mind, if words mean anything, both McLaren and Chalke have largely abandoned the gospel. Perhaps their rhetoric and enthusiasm have led them astray and they will prove willing to reconsider their published judgments on these matters and embrace biblical truth more holistically than they have been doing in their most recent works.
But if not, I cannot see how their own words constitute anything less than a drift toward abandoning the gospel itself. As far as I can tell, Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke are the most influential leaders of the emerging movement in their respective countries. I would feel much less worried about the directions being taken by other emerging church leaders if these leaders would rise up and call McLaren and Chalke to account where they have clearly abandoned what the Bible actually says.
Such matters cut to the very heart of our faith. Others, borrowing the words of the old hymn, point to a "wideness in God's mercy. They say what really matters is orthopraxy and that it doesn't matter which religion one belongs to, as long as one loves God and one's neighbor as one's self. Some even accept Spencer Burke's unbiblical contention in A Heretic's Guide to Eternity Jossey-Bass, that all are born "in" and only some "opt out.
This emerging ambivalence about who is in and who is out creates a serious problem for evangelism. The emerging movement is not known for it, but I wish it were. Personally, I'm an evangelist. Not so much the tract-toting, door-knocking kind, but the Jesus-talking and Jesus-teaching kind.
I spend time praying in my office before class and pondering about how to teach in order to bring home the message of the gospel. So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.
A final stream flowing into the emerging lake is politics. Tony Jones is regularly told that the emerging movement is a latte-drinking, backpack-lugging, Birkenstock-wearing group of 21st-century, left-wing, hippie wannabes.
Put directly, they are Democrats. And that spells "post" for conservative-evangelical-politics-as-usual. I have publicly aligned myself with the emerging movement. I also lean left in politics. I tell my friends that I have voted Democrat for years for all the wrong reasons. I don't think the Democratic Party is worth a hoot, but its historic commitment to the poor and to centralizing government for social justice is what I think government should do.
I believe in civil rights, but I don't believe homosexuality is God's design. And, like many in the emerging movement, I think the Religious Right doesn't see what it is doing. Sometimes, however, when I look at emerging politics, I see Walter Rauschenbusch, the architect of the social gospel. Without trying to deny the spiritual gospel, he led his followers into the social gospel.
The results were devastating for mainline Christianity's ability to summon sinners to personal conversion. The results were also devastating for evangelical Christianity, which has itself struggled to maintain a proper balance.
I ask my fellow emerging Christians to maintain their missional and ecclesial focus, just as I urge my fellow evangelicals to engage in the social as well. All in all, it is unlikely that the emerging movement will disappear anytime soon. If I were a prophet, I'd say that it will influence most of evangelicalism in its chastened epistemology if it hasn't already , its emphasis on praxis, and its missional orientation.
I see the emerging movement much like the Jesus and charismatic movements of the s, which undoubtedly have found a place in the quilt called evangelicalism. This article is condensed and adapted from a lecture given at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, in October See the blog JesusCreed.
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Scot McKnight January 19, Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, in their book, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures Baker Academic, define emerging in this way: Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures.
This definition encompasses nine practices. Emerging churches 1 identify with the life of Jesus, 2 transform the secular realm, and 3 live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they 4 welcome the stranger, 5 serve with generosity, 6 participate as producers, 7 create as created beings, 8 lead as a body, and 9 take part in spiritual activities. Article continues below.
Free Newsletters Get the best from CT editors, delivered straight to your inbox! Issue: February , Vol. More From: Scot McKnight. This article is from the February issue. Log in. February More from this Issue. But instead of uniting the traditional conservative leaders and the widening circle of emerging leaders, the groups became divided when radical ideas mixed openly with fresh perspectives about faith.
Mark Driscoll, a high-profile pastor initially associated with the movement, distanced himself from the emerging church and later became a vocal critic of it , and critics began addressing their own concerns about maintaining such an open discussion about theology.
As new voices and new ideas continued to enter the dialogue, formal groups started to organize. Many of the churches actually began encouraging dialogue and conversations about faith within the church and started to re-think what the role of a pastor looked like in some Sunday morning settings. Since many of the authors and pastors that are associated with emerging movements have continued to gain notoriety, criticisms about the emerging church have escalated.
And without a statement of beliefs or official doctrinal statement, Emergent Village has done little to quiet its critics. Because the emerging church has no organizational structure and is an incredibly loose collection of Christians, the conversations that are taking place in churches and coffee shops around the country have begun to raise even more eyebrows of concerned pastors, who question the theological safety of such an open discussion, the alignment some were starting to show with traditionally liberal political groups and the abandonment some churches began to show to formal leadership structures.
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