On September 21, 2007, Mark Driscoll was invited to speak at the Convergent Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In this session listen at Pastor Mark explains the major streams of the Emerging Church and specifically, the sub-set of of the Emerging Church, known as the "Emergent Church".
In part 3 Dick Staub comments on the Emerging Church Movement and cautions these new Churches on how much they embrace relativism. He goes on to encourage Christians to press being authentic and therefore become relevant. If you haven't checked out his latest book I would recommend it as a great current resource: The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for the Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity-Lite. Staub's concluding section of the book focuses on some highly important issues Christians need to embrace and some practical tracks to run on to implement the following. He exhorts Christians to be counter culture as Peter tells us to be aliens in a foreign land. As Paul tells us to be ambassadors Staub reminds us how we are to communicate in today's culture seasoned with salt and delivered through proper awareness. Lastly as being created in the image of God we have creative abilities to offer and minister to the world not just mimic current shallow art.
Christianity is not the same as ecclesiasticism. Christianity is centered upon Jesus Christ, as he is presented to us in the foundational document of Christianity, the Bible. Ecclesiasticism is centered in the church-its development, dogma and practice. Make no mistake about it, we cannot have Christianity without the church, at least in one vital sense, but the church is reformable and "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Christ does not change, thus the Christian gospel never changes. But the church must change if it is to be truly faithful to both Christ and Scripture.
This principle, and the point I am making through it, is both vital and dangerous. It is vital because without it you have a tradition rooted in particular times and debates, but not a tradition that is alive and vital for the present time. It is dangerous precisely because a church that is subject to the spirit of continuous reformation is a church that can go badly astray in any age or place, and often has. It can become a church that seeks to get so close to the culture that it is virtually indistinct from the culture.
Witness the influence of liberalism on the church in the twentieth century and the resultant bankruptcy of many churches and schools that bought into this deadly form of existentialism. Liberalism presented itself as a necessary reform movement and some of its call was, in actual fact, quite correct. (This is precisely the problem, some of it was correct but the central truth of the gospel of Christ was profoundly threatened over time as the seeds of destructive process infected the church.)
The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) introduce participants to the Contextualization Spectrum (C1—C6), a helpful missiological tool for describing Christ-centered communities in the Muslim world; (2) modify this tool so as to render it useful in assessing the emerging church phenomenon; and (3) apply this modified contextualization spectrum to assess some representative samples of actual emerging churches. At the heart of my proposal is the conviction that the emerging church phenomenon is, in part, a contemporary attempt at contextualizing the gospel and the church of Jesus Christ in a changing (postmodern) world.1 If this is the case, then the emerging church phenomenon (1) bears some similarities with contextualization efforts carried out in the past, and (2) manifests a spectrum of embodiments that are contextualized from a lesser to a greater degree.
This paper has a very narrow purpose and so I offer the following limitations: (1) I will not make a distinction in nomenclature between "emergent" and "emerging" as applied to churches and proponents; for the purposes of this paper, I will lump these together under the rubric of "the emerging church phenomenon."2 (2) Regarding this rubric, it is simply a placeholder for the ill-defined yet real phenomenon of which everyone listening to this presentation has (at least) an intuitive awareness. My purpose is not to write a definition but to do an assessment of a phenomenon. (3) One may agree or disagree with my placement of a specific church along the modified contextualization spectrum. Despite agreement or disagreement on the specifics, I will establish that the emerging church phenomenon manifests a spectrum of embodiments from a lesser to a greater degree of contextualization. (4) I will not consider the house church phenomenon per se. Though it is the case that some embodiments of the emerging church phenomenon are house churches, I will treat those as emerging church house churches and not as part of the house church phenomenon; such treatment would take me far a field from my purpose. (5) I also will not consider the phenomenon of individual Christians who purposely do not belong to any church, opting to pursue interaction with others through on-line venues or occasional gatherings of friends. A more fundamental question—"Do such connections constitute a 'church?'"—needs to be raised first, but this is not my purpose.
Thesis
The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I will raise three areas of concern Evangelicals should focus most of their attention as they assess both the Emerging Church movement (hereafter ECM) and Emergent Village (hereafter EV). Specifically, I will point to some examples of what three prominent EV leaders say regarding each. These concerns culminate with my most serious concern and secondly, I will argue there is a potential drift away from orthodox Christian views in the leadership of Emergent Village and thus, constitutes a serious concern for the larger ECM.
Two Preliminary Remarks
Let me begin with two preliminary questions. If you are privy to ECM conversations, you may see the value in starting with these questions upon hearing them. First, am I qualified to offer a critical assessment of the ECM? Second, do I reject all that comes out of the ECM?
Am I Qualified?
There is considerable concern amongst the ECM's ranks with criticism coming from outside the movement. Certainly D.A. Carson's book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, has garnered much criticism from leaders in the ECM. Tony Jones has called it "breathtakingly bad."1 Or listen to Brian McLaren's comments that are simultaneously an endorsement on the back cover of Bolger and Gibb's book, Emerging Churches, and a swipe at Carson's: "If you want to be truly conversant with emerging churches, this is the book to read."2 Of course, the implication is Carson's book is not the one to read.
My friends at Zondervan have recently begun shipping a book titled Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches, edited by Dr. Robert Webber. Contributing to the book are five pastors (Karen Ward, Doug Pagitt, Dan Kimball, John Burke, and myself) with varying beliefs on the assigned issues of the Trinity, the atonement, and Scripture. As is common in counterpoint books, we each wrote one chapter, and then briefly responded to the chapters written by the other contributors. We never did meet for the project, but over the years I have had the pleasure of meeting each person in various contexts, so that was helpful in allowing me to understand something of their ministry and theological perspective. Anyone wanting to order the book can do so here. You can also view and download a portion of my chapter that Zondervan has made available here.
Also, beginning on February 6th at the National Pastors Convention in San Diego, each of the contributors will be part of an extended discussion (you can find more information about the conference here. And, Friday June 1- Saturday June 2 we will have the authors in Seattle for an event hosted at Mars Hill Church where we will discuss/dialogue/debate various theological issues that are some of the hot topics among varying streams of the emerging church. The Resurgence will be distributing the sessions for free in case you cannot join us, and also giving the files to the other speakers to distribute as they see fit through their own networks. Sadly, the editor Dr. Robert Webber will not be joining us as his health is not good and I would encourage people to be in prayer for him and his family in this difficult season.
In 2004 Dr. Gerry Breshears, professor at Western Seminary, gave a presentation on the Emerging Church at that time during the Reformission Conference in Seattle, WA. In this audio piece we see Dr. Breshears critique the key players in the Emerging Church Movement up to 2004. The great thing about this mp3 that may be different then some other analysis is that Breshears looks through different writings to expose the theologies that tend to drive this movement. Although the audio is long it is because Brashears is taking questions along with his session. With that said we encourage the liste
In this audio from Chris Seay, we learn that the conversation does not start with what looks cool for the church but with the stand on convictions for the things we do know are true. There is a myth about narrative that it is just ambiguous, but in the church narratives are grounded in truth about God's redemptive story. We need to figure out how we can engage in culture with the modern tensions of our time, whether it is on the popular TV shows or current events. We need to gain Biblical wisdom which is seen as incarnational. Our knowledge must hit the road of reality so people may see authentic Christianity not just learn about it cerebrally.
I began reading the works of Dr. John Piper as a new Christian in college. I think the first book of his that I read was Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which was very seminal in shaping my understanding of gender roles in the home, church, and culture. A few years back, in conjunction with the release of my first book, The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out, I had the great honor of having Dr. Piper join us for a conference we hosted in Seattle to preach from the Mars Hill pulpit. It was a great joy to have people from my church fill up our room to learn about Jesus. Ever since, Dr. Piper has been something of a rock star to many of our folks. Over the years I have also greatly respected and enjoyed the work of Dr. D. A. Carson, who is one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world today. I had the pleasure of finally meeting Dr. Carson at a recent theological colloquium at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School that included such pastoral theologians as Kent Hughes, Alistair Begg, Bryan Chapell, Ligon Duncan, Phil Ryken and Mark Dever. Needless to say, the group of roughly forty men was the pumped-up, Barry Bonds version of a Bible study. Over the years I have also had the great pleasure of meeting a few times a year with Dr. Tim Keller. He and my friend Dr. Ed Stetzer are the leading missional thinkers in America today, in my opinion. Dr. Keller recently joined us for the Reform and Resurge conference in Seattle (click on the following for the conference audio and video).
One of the great rallying cries of the Reformation was ecclesia semper reformanda. Simply, it means that the church must continually reform itself to remain faithful to the mission of Jesus in changing cultures.
