{"id":994,"date":"2005-09-25T01:18:28","date_gmt":"2005-09-25T01:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/september-qthe-emerging-churchq-part-1\/"},"modified":"2014-02-02T08:13:42","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T08:13:42","slug":"september-qthe-emerging-churchq-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aletheiabaptistministries.org\/Blog\/september-qthe-emerging-churchq-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Emerging Church (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no rut so deep to fall into as the need for constant change.\u00a0 Already we are being told that \u201cpostmodernism\u201d is out of date and we are now living in a \u201cpost-postmodern\u201d time.\u00a0 Spurgeon described the shifting sands of his own day in this way: \u201cIt will have no creed because it can have none: it is continually on the move; it is not what it was yesterday, and it will not be tomorrow what it is today.\u00a0 Its shout is for ‘liberty,’ its delight is invention, its element is change.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup> Whether the issues are the same or not, such rushing to ride the latest religious wave must be as old as the waves themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The Emergent Church<\/h2>\n

Many today feel that the Evangelicalism of the twentieth century has long outlived its usefulness (Fundamentalism being long since dead!).\u00a0 They are tired of traditional church and seeker-sensitive church.\u00a0 They are done with propositions and books and proofs of God\u2019s existence, even with the Bible as a final authority for faith and practice.\u00a0 They are stepping away from all of that and emerging into a much more fluid and relevant type of worship.\u00a0 D.A. Carson describes the testimony of one such pilgrim:<\/p>\n

\n

In 1998 [Spencer] Burke started TheOoze.com.\u00a0 The name of the active chat room is designedly metaphorical: Burke intends this to be a place where \u2018the various parts of the faith community are like mercury.\u00a0 At times we\u2019ll roll together; at times we\u2019ll roll apart.\u00a0 Try to touch the liquid or constrain it, and the substance will resist.\u00a0 Rather than force people to fall into line, an oozy community tolerates differences and treats people who hold opposing views with great dignity.\u00a0 To me, that\u2019s the essence of the emerging church.\u2019\u00a0 For several years, the Ooze hosted \u2018a learning party called Soularize,\u2019 where members of the \u2018online community\u2019 shared with each other\u2014and in 2001 they went out on a limb and offered a Native American potlatch\u2014i.e., \u2018a spiritual ceremony of gift giving and grace giving\u2019\u2014as part of the conference.\u00a0 \u2018More and more, my heart is about creating safe places for leaders to ask questions and to learn from each other.\u20192<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The Emerging Church may take the form of chat rooms and blogs, or it may take the form of liturgical church services with candles, incense and sacraments.\u00a0 More than the Seeker Church could imagine, the Emerging Church has placed the individual as the highest authority for the worship experience.\u00a0 In a sort of existential way, truth claims are treated as suspect and absolutes are unknowable even to the church!\u00a0 \u201cUnless we can know something absolutely and infallibly, we can\u2019t know anything truthfully.\u201d\u00a0 This is what Carson calls the \u201cmanipulative antithesis.\u201d3<\/sup> For the Convergent believer, the church of the last two centuries is more modernistic than historical because it has fallen for the modernistic approach to knowing things, i.e., that they can be known.\u00a0 To them, Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism were both \u201cmodernistic\u201d because they settled into the \u201cmodern\u201d age too comfortably, and argued, preached, wrote and reasoned from the \u201cmodern\u201d perspective of knowing truth.\u00a0 The Emerging Church will do away with all of that because now all \u201care being swept up in a new new world (p. 12).\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Some Emerging Church Writers<\/h2>\n

The list of writers, pastors and speakers representing this new worship is growing day by day.\u00a0\u00a0 I will review four of the more prominent names who have written books that come highly recommended if you are into this sort of thing.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Zondervan, 2000)<\/h3>\n

McLaren, as much as anyone, is pushing for churches to quit fighting postmodernism and embrace it.\u00a0 \u201cThe book is for people who don\u2019t think we can go back to the old world\u2014and don\u2019t want to.\u00a0 It is for people who want to help define and shape the church of the future\u201d (p. 15).\u00a0 In the process of arguing for this, many alarming statements are made.<\/p>\n

? His view of the new emerging church is one which will not be very tied to biblical mandates:\u00a0 \u201cThe new church does not view the New Testament as a \u2018New Leviticus\u2019\u2014a law book of strict rules\u2014nor as a fixed, detailed blueprint to be applied to all churches in all cultures across time.\u00a0 Rather, the New Testament serves as (among other things) an inspired, exemplary, and eternally relevant case study of how the early church itself adapted and evolved and coped with rapid change and new challenges\u201d (p. 23).<\/p>\n

? To emergent churches, the Bible isn\u2019t necessarily the rule for faith, and definitely not for practice:\u00a0 \u201cIn the old church, wineskins were mandates.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t be changed. . . . In the new church, we will not only be open to a new program but will loosen up about programs altogether\u201d (p. 44).<\/p>\n

? As is true of seeker-sensitive churches, emergent churches see the need to turn out the older saints and whoever else cannot make the change.\u00a0 In a section called \u201cPracticing Systems Thinking,\u201d McLaren gives fourteen analogies of new systems that must rid themselves of older baggage (organisms fighting disease, the rain forest, recycling, vomiting, etc).\u00a0\u00a0 Then in a clear reference to people who resist he says, \u201cA system will discontinue if it loses the ability to neutralize or discharge baggage, toxins, stress, germs, and waste products.\u00a0 Many churches languish or die because they have no way to rid themselves of destructive elements that have invaded or developed in the body\u201d (p. 47).\u00a0 He is not speaking here of necessary church discipline, but of older thinking that holds back the new thinking.<\/p>\n

? In addition, doctrine statements will be \u201ctraded up\u201d for more eclectic beliefs (p. 56); keeping to a denominational name is merely \u201cclinging to our little histories\u201d (p. 57); even \u201cpremillennial eschatology of immanence, urgency, and cataclysm . . . final judgment and heaven and hell\u201d are only as useful as \u201cgoing to the dentist for a root canal, you will feel better when it\u2019s over\u201d (p. 150).<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Robert Webber, Planning Blended Worship (Abington, 1998)<\/h3>\n

Webber writes more about the effect of emergence on the style of the worship service (see my May 2005 article in Aletheia).\u00a0 He believes \u201cthe two movements of worship renewal, liturgical and contemporary, had independent histories until the 1990s when a form of blended or convergence worship began to develop\u201d and among other objectives has \u201ca radical commitment to contemporary relevance\u201d (p. 16).<\/p>\n

? The arts are restored to their \u201crightful\u201d place in worship as in \u201cmedieval era communication\u201d though \u201cProtestantism rejected visual communication in favor of a more verbal approach to worship\u201d (p. 18).\u00a0 Drama, dance, pantomime are among the more prominent new art forms in emergent worship.<\/p>\n

? \u201cTable Worship\u201d is being introduced even in Evangelical churches.\u00a0 This specifically is the Eucharist in its sacramental form.\u00a0 Webber believes that \u201cthe form of table worship in most Protestant churches originated as a reaction against Roman Catholic Table worship\u201d (p. 150).\u00a0 This is seen as unfortunate because it robbed the churches of such a rich ceremonial message.\u00a0 \u201cAn intense encounter with God\u2019s supernatural presence takes place in the receiving of bread and wine, but this experience has been terribly damaged by modern thinking [read: Fundamentalism & Evangelicalism] . . . .\u00a0 The new appreciation of the mystery of Christ\u2019s saving and healing presence at bread and wine is captured in Cyril of Jerusalem\u2019s speech\u201d which Webber quotes at length (p. 136).<\/p>\n

? Interestingly, Webber makes much of distinguishing between message and methods, content and style, etc., echoing many fundamental voices today (see p. 28).<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Barry Liesch, The New Worship (Baker, 2001)<\/h3>\n

Liesch is writing more specifically about contemporary worship music.\u00a0 Though I don\u2019t believe \u201cconvergence\u201d is specifically mentioned, that may be due to the fact the this book first appeared in 1996 and again in 2001.\u00a0 The arguments and reasons for \u201cThe New Worship\u201d are found in almost any book supporting convergence.<\/p>\n

? Liesch says, and quotes Clinton Arnold for support, that \u201cthe pluralistic culture of Colossae suggests the use of a variety of materials\u201d since the city was a blend of many cultures.\u00a0 Arnold says that since Christians at Colossae coexisted with people who worshiped \u201cAnatolian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian deities\u201d as well as Jews, \u201cTheir music probably reflected their multicultural environment, an aspect our pluralistic society in North America has in common with the early church\u201d (p. 41).<\/p>\n

? Liesch argues that the three participles in Colossians 3:16 (teaching, admonishing, singing) should be taken as instrumental (\u201cby\u201d) rather than imperative (followed by a period), circumstantial (\u201cas\u201d) or resultant (\u201cthen\u201d).\u00a0 That is, he believes\u00a0 these things themselves (especially singing) produce the filling of the Spirit, rather than being products of the filling.<\/p>\n

? Increasingly convergence writers use and quote neo-orthodox and existential thinkers to support their emotionally charged view of worship.\u00a0 Liesch actually includes a section called \u201cKierkegaard and Performance\u201d in which he praises what the father of existentialism calls \u201cworship performance.\u201d\u00a0 From this Liesch promotes the idea that in worship we are the \u201cprompters\u201d and \u201cplayers\u201d and God is the \u201caudience\u201d which makes worship seek an emotional response from God.\u00a0 If, rather, we are the audience, waiting on God to speak through His Word, worship is cognitive (an idea convergence people think is \u201cmodernistic\u201d).<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Leonard Sweet, Post-Modern Pilgrims (Broadman, 2000)<\/h3>\n

Along with McLaren, Sweet is one of the most vocal and recognized emergence speakers.\u00a0 He admits to dedicating his ministry \u201cto moving the church back to the future\u201d an idea he calls \u201cancientfuture faith\u201d (p. 46).\u00a0 He says, \u201cPostmodern culture is my here and now.\u00a0 I will take the church back to the cyberage, or will perish in the attempt\u201d (p. 47).\u00a0 Earlier he had asked, \u201cWhy can\u2019t we kiss the postmodern culture?\u201d (p. 6).<\/p>\n

? The old culture is \u201cbook-centric\u201d while the new culture is \u201cweb-centric\u201d (p. 140).\u00a0 \u201cPostmodern hermeneutics of participant-observation\u201d. . . .\u00a0 is \u201cdethroning the old epistemological pretensions of knowing\u201d (p. 143).\u00a0 The western way of knowing is modern (occidental) while the eastern way of thinking (oriental) is \u201cmore biblical\u201d (p. 145).<\/p>\n

? \u201cTruth resides in relationships, not documents or principles . . . Not until the fourteenth century (at the earliest) [Read: Reformation] did truth become embedded in propositions and positions\u201d (p. 131).<\/p>\n

? In a shocking admission of the convergence agenda in worship, Sweet insists on \u201cThe importance of shifting worship from the exegesis of words to the exegesis of images if we are to birth and build churches that last\u201d (p. 95).\u00a0 Again, \u201cDivine revelation has occurred.\u00a0 There are universal moral truths.\u00a0 Yet knowledge about these truths is socially constructed.\u00a0 We both discover and construct knowledge\u201d (p. 146).\u00a0 Sweet says we are \u201cawakening to a postmodern world open to revelation and hungry for experience\u201d (p. 29).<\/p>\n

? Sweet\u2019s book is largely outlined by the acrostic EPIC:\u00a0 Experiential, Participatory, Image-driven, Connected.\u00a0 This is his formula for success in the postmodern age in which we live.\u00a0 My analysis of this will follow in next month\u2019s issue.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

And So . . . .<\/h2>\n

D.A. Carson writes, \u201cMost of the emergent writers have gone to great lengths to say that unless Christians make the kinds of adjustments they are calling for\u2014adjustments that they think are mandated by the assumptions of postmodernism\u2014they will confine themselves to obsolescent enclaves.\u201d\u00a0 He then frankly says that those are \u201cthe shrill cries of sectarians.\u201d4<\/sup> And I surely agree!<\/p>\n

\n

Footnotes:<\/address>\n
1. Charles Spurgeon, The Downgrade Controversy (Pasadena: Pilgrim Publications, nd) 71.<\/address>\n
2. D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 05) 19.<\/address>\n
3. Carson, 104 (see also his refutation of this concept)<\/address>\n
4. Carson, 155.<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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