Are you Emergent?

[SolaSaint]

I'm off my Rick Warren rant now, so on to another topic that has really made me see red. The Emergent movement. Many say it is not going anywhere, but I see it everywhere in the church today. Maybe not totally but in small doses. The sold out Emergents want to rid the world of Christianity as we know it. They are an all inclusive global religious movement that has a hatred for traditional Christianty. Check out this blog on science from Emergent Village:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/emergentvillage/

Does your church sound like this? If so maybe they are Emergent. If so I challenge you to do some research. This is some scary stuff. They are big into New Age and bringing Catholic rituals into the church.

I do feel that when they started this movement it had some good ideas, for it was moving away from the seeker friendly entertainment philosophy that has prevailed for the last 2 decades, but it has truly gone heretical in a lot of its endeavors. Please reply to what you know about this movement, and do you think it is dead or still alive?

 

[SolaSaint]

If you want to really see where Emergents are heretical--drop on down on the blog to John Spong's youtube video. If the Emergents look to Spong to base their beliefs then they are really out there. Scary Stuff. I have studied Spong and he is a heretic.

 

[plain_n_simple]

The Emergent church or movement is alive and well. The main authors are professors in our Christian colleges. Most of what I've read is that the bible is to be taken as a group of parables. Events that did not actually happen, but are an example of what God wants us to know. They started with the story of Adam and Eve. The garden was not real, but a representation.

 

[SolaSaint]

The Emergent church or movement is alive and well. The main authors are professors in our Christian colleges. Most of what I've read is that the bible is to be taken as a group of parables. Events that did not actually happen, but are an example of what God wants us to know. They started with the story of Adam and Eve. The garden was not real, but a representation.

That is sad if our Christian colleges are full of this type of teaching. Is this the end of the fundamental Christian church? I know it isn't the end of this fundamental Christian. I'm listening to Spong say how the death and resurrection was made up by early Christians. I guess we are supossed to believe Christainity for 2000 years had it wrong until the Jesus Seminar came along to straighten us all out. lol

 

[plain_n_simple]

To go further, why would a Christian college teach psychology alongside Jesus heals? To me, this opened the door to "anything manmade is welcome here" many years ago.

 

[SolaSaint]

I know Al Mohler cleaned up the Baptist Seminary in Louisville as of late, but I wonder how many Baptist Seminaries are still liberal in their classrooms? I've listened to R C Sproul talk of his days in Seminary and was shocked at what he was taught many years ago. I never knew the liberalism was so rampant in the past.

 

[righteousdude2]

This is a Fact....

...I know several pastors that went on to graduate school and seminary, and they all attended a well named school in Claremont, CA, and they told me that they NEVER once opened their Bibles, or had need for the Bible.

It is their statements that have caused me to rename seminaries to "cemeteries!

Now this is just sad :tear:

 

[plain_n_simple]

"Cemetaries" lol, I'm going to remember that one, so true in many cases.

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Would you consider this Emergent?

http://www.liquidchurch.com/first-time/what-to-expect/

 

[quantumfaith]

Would someone share a list of properties or characteristics which aid in defining "Emergent Church". I have seen this term on several occasions and as of yet I have only a nebulous concept as to what it is. Thanks in advance.

 

[glfredrick]

Let's remember that there is a BIG difference between CULTURE and DOCTRINE.

Any congregation or leader who is tagged as "Emergent" needs to be emergent in DOCTRINE not just in culture.

Sojourn Church in Louisville has been accused of being emergent by some who have never attended there or listened to a single sermon from the church because the CULTURE appears to be emergent, but the DOCTRINAL STANCE is far from it, and is in fact Reformed and Biblical without apology.

One cannot get very far AT ALL in that church without a Bible. The Bible is the center and focus of all they do, and yet they CULTUALLY do a lot of practices that appear to identify with the Emergent Movement.

I only use Sojourn as example because I am so intimately familiar with them. Others are likewise, and not, based on their actual DOCTRINES.

 

[Gold Dragon]

Would someone share a list of properties or characteristics which aid in defining "Emergent Church". I have seen this term on several occasions and as of yet I have only a nebulous concept as to what it is. Thanks in advance.

The emerging church is primarily a response to perceived "modernism" in evangelicalism and Christendom in general. Some of the following characteristics and buzz-words I find helpful in understanding the emerging church.

1. postmodern: being Christian in a postmodern and post-Christian world. Deconstructing church.
2. missional: seeing all Christians as missionaries and every day living as missionary work in contrast to "professional" missionaries.
3. narrative: to read scripture as a story as opposed to a document from which to draw principles for a systematic theology
4. conversation: multiple voices contributing to something continually developing with an openness and respect for differing opinions.

Andy Crouch wrote a good article back in 2004 on Christianity Today that might help some to wrap their minds around the emerging church.

Emergent usually references the specific community Emergent Village.

 

[Gold Dragon]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/emergentvillage/

Just want to let you know that the purpose of that blog is listed on that page as:

This blog is an experiment.We are seeking to include as many voices as are willing to join together and tell stories, create ideas, and generate friendships that will compel us to the future. There are more than 50 people who will be adding their voices to this conversation. Some will write, some will post audio, some will post video.You will hear from Christians and Jews; denominationalists and free-range spiritualists; conservatives and liberals; the faith-filled and the faith-hesitant.We are a collective of people who are not only concerned about the “right and left” but now and the future. Emergent Village is a community that wants to make something together.We invite you to join us.Read, comment, spread the word and consider adding your voice. If you would like to be one the bloggers contact Doug Pagitt at doug@dougpagitt.com.To learn more about Emergent Village go to EmergentVillage.com.

It is not meant to be a treatise on Emergent Theology.

 

[SolaSaint]

I heard someon say once that trying to define Emergent is like try to nail jello to the wall. It's all over the place. I assume some Emergents can bee OK, but what I've read and saw on Emergent Village is down right heretical. I think it is like the Seeker movement for most any church, they pick and choose what they want to incorporate into their beliefs and practices.

The real dangerous stuff seems to be heading towards a New Age type belief or doctrine. Belief that God is in all like in Pantheism. If you get time listen to the John S. Spong video on Emergent Village and you'll get an idea of what they feel about scripture. Doug Pagitt agrees with Spong in the interview and even laughs at conservative Christianity along the way. A lot of the Emergent crowd feel Evangelical Christianity has hijacked the faith and that it was never to be taken as a truth claim, but just a choice and no one's choices are wrong. You'll especially see the LGBT crowd taking refuge there.

 

[glfredrick]

The emerging church is primarily a response to perceived "modernism" in evangelicalism and Christendom in general. Some of the following characteristics and buzz-words I find helpful in understanding the emerging church.

1. postmodern: being Christian in a postmodern and post-Christian world. Deconstructing church.
2. missional: seeing all Christians as missionaries and every day living as missionary work in contrast to "professional" missionaries.
3. narrative: to read scripture as a story as opposed to a document from which to draw principles for a systematic theology
4. conversation: multiple voices contributing to something continually developing with an openness and respect for differing opinions.

Andy Crouch wrote a good article back in 2004 on Christianity Today that might help some to wrap their minds around the emerging church.

Emergent usually references the specific community Emergent Village.

i would suggest that none of what you propose above necessarily makes up an emerging church. Additionally, things have changed since 2004 in the movement. Part of being "emergent" is radid change for the sake of change.

Edit to include comments from the article cited above:

McLaren guesses that "only a few dozen" churches across the country are fully committed to the theological journey he sketched in A New Kind of Christian. Even Rob Bell did not start that journey until after founding Mars Hill Bible Church. The number of churches whose pastors have cool hair is, of course, much larger—but hardly qualifies as a single movement any more than the number of churches whose pastors wear ties. For the moment, as the Emergent Convention demonstrates, the confusion of style and substance makes for strange bedfellows.

Meanwhile, McLaren's fellow travelers—whether they are dozens or, as Emergent book sales would suggest, tens of thousands—are not the only Christians responding to the challenges of postmodern culture. Manhattan's Redeemer Presbyterian Church attracts several thousand culturally savvy young people with unapologetically Reformed preaching and worship, and churches inspired by Redeemer are thriving in several cities on both coasts.

Catholic journalist Colleen Carroll Campbell has documented the rise of "the new faithful," a growing group of young Americans, often drawn from the same locations and vocations as the emerging church, who are embracing orthodoxy without McLaren's qualifiers.

Implicitly responding to Emergent's disaffection with modern evangelicalism, in March the National Association of Evangelicals attracted more than 200 "young evangelicals" to the inaugural meeting of a network led by Carolyn Haggard, the niece of NAE president Ted Haggard. The 23-year-old Wellesley College graduate says, "The Bible has been relevant for 2,000 years, and popular culture isn't really going to change that. Saying that we're cooler than the generation before, we're more savvy, and we're obviously more intellectual than the generation before—that's not something we'd be at all interested in promoting."

The quote above from the article rather sums up what I have been saying about the true emergent church and ALL the other congregations who happen to have a couple of cultural qualities in the same light as the emergent church. In other words, DOCTRINE MATTERS, not what we wear, the length of our hair, whether we do "church in the round" with dimmed lighting and candles, with indie genre music. It is what is PREACHED from the BIBLE (versus what is made up from one's own ideas, then covered over with a "See, even the Bible agrees with me" eisegesis effort) that matters.

That those standing on the outside looking in cannot tell the difference is the problem of those standing outside. They are JUST as locked into a particular culture as is the postmodern congregation, and in fact, often more so. WHO EVER SAID that suits and ties for men and dresses for women, hair styled "just so" and often slicked with hair products to hold it in the style of the late 1950s, is THE only correct culture for a worshiping body of believers. EVERY AGE would belie the culture that has right now effected the current church in America, for in EVERY AGE the church has looked RADICALLY DIFFERENT from the way it looks today. That, however, is conviniently forgotten as the gossip and slander extends toward the congregations that are INDEED reaching the latest generations for Christ -- something that the traditional church will never do, nor every understand why they do not. Far easier to look at someone else and pass the blame than to examine one's own culture to see if it is utterly anachronistic.

 

[glfredrick]

I heard someon say once that trying to define Emergent is like try to nail jello to the wall. It's all over the place. I assume some Emergents can bee OK, but what I've read and saw on Emergent Village is down right heretical. I think it is like the Seeker movement for most any church, they pick and choose what they want to incorporate into their beliefs and practices.

The real dangerous stuff seems to be heading towards a New Age type belief or doctrine. Belief that God is in all like in Pantheism. If you get time listen to the John S. Spong video on Emergent Village and you'll get an idea of what they feel about scripture. Doug Pagitt agrees with Spong in the interview and even laughs at conservative Christianity along the way. A lot of the Emergent crowd feel Evangelical Christianity has hijacked the faith and that it was never to be taken as a truth claim, but just a choice and no one's choices are wrong. You'll especially see the LGBT crowd taking refuge there.

The writer of the article names names. They are familiar and of late have come out as decidedly heretical in nature. But, again, don't paint ALL with the same brush. You would be slandering brothers and sisters in Christ!

 

[quantumfaith]

The emerging church is primarily a response to perceived "modernism" in evangelicalism and Christendom in general. Some of the following characteristics and buzz-words I find helpful in understanding the emerging church.

1. postmodern: being Christian in a postmodern and post-Christian world. Deconstructing church.
2. missional: seeing all Christians as missionaries and every day living as missionary work in contrast to "professional" missionaries.
3. narrative: to read scripture as a story as opposed to a document from which to draw principles for a systematic theology
4. conversation: multiple voices contributing to something continually developing with an openness and respect for differing opinions.

Andy Crouch wrote a good article back in 2004 on Christianity Today that might help some to wrap their minds around the emerging church.

Emergent usually references the specific community Emergent Village.

If that is the "defining" criteria, then I am close. Don't understand either, what "postmodern" means. I attend a "contemporary" church. I do see my role as a believer as "missional" where ever I am. I do see "narratives" in scripture, scripture is bigger than both being a narrative and being a set of properties from which to design any systematic theology. Not sure about the "conversation" thingy.

 

[glfredrick]

If that is the "defining" criteria, then I am close. Don't understand either, what "postmodern" means. I attend a "contemporary" church. I do see my role as a believer as "missional" where ever I am. I do see "narratives" in scripture, scripture is bigger than both being a narrative and being a set of properties from which to design any systematic theology. Not sure about the "conversation" thingy.

Indeed, one can be all of those things -- I am as well -- and yet not be emergent, because DOCTRINE DECIDES, not culture and all of those things are mere cultural issues.

 

[DaChaser1]

Would someone share a list of properties or characteristics which aid in defining "Emergent Church". I have seen this term on several occasions and as of yet I have only a nebulous concept as to what it is. Thanks in advance.

Think have to realise that the Emergent churches seek to accomodate Christian to a post modern cultutre, so they seek to reinterprete bible based on current contemporary views!

So they tend to "water down" greatly concepts such as jesus ONLY way to be saved, that there is Hell, and that that the Bible infallible inspired word from God!

basically, they seek to rewrite theology based on how they view it would had been down if Bible just wriiten today!

 

[DaChaser1]

i would suggest that none of what you propose above necessarily makes up an emerging church. Additionally, things have changed since 2004 in the movement. Part of being "emergent" is radid change for the sake of change.

Edit to include comments from the article cited above:



The quote above from the article rather sums up what I have been saying about the true emergent church and ALL the other congregations who happen to have a couple of cultural qualities in the same light as the emergent church. In other words, DOCTRINE MATTERS, not what we wear, the length of our hair, whether we do "church in the round" with dimmed lighting and candles, with indie genre music. It is what is PREACHED from the BIBLE (versus what is made up from one's own ideas, then covered over with a "See, even the Bible agrees with me" eisegesis effort) that matters.

That those standing on the outside looking in cannot tell the difference is the problem of those standing outside. They are JUST as locked into a particular culture as is the postmodern congregation, and in fact, often more so. WHO EVER SAID that suits and ties for men and dresses for women, hair styled "just so" and often slicked with hair products to hold it in the style of the late 1950s, is THE only correct culture for a worshiping body of believers. EVERY AGE would belie the culture that has right now effected the current church in America, for in EVERY AGE the church has looked RADICALLY DIFFERENT from the way it looks today. That, however, is conviniently forgotten as the gossip and slander extends toward the congregations that are INDEED reaching the latest generations for Christ -- something that the traditional church will never do, nor every understand why they do not. Far easier to look at someone else and pass the blame than to examine one's own culture to see if it is utterly anachronistic.

Think that the Emergent church is attempting to find a "compromise" bewtween they perceive as conservative/liberal wings in Christiandom...

So they rtry to mediate a stance, but problem is that they do redefine chriatian terms/theology to be "easier' for people to digest, such as eliminating hell pretty much, refinelifestyle choices, and have the bible as saying some good things, but NOT inspired/infallible, so we take out what matters to us, and redefine it when it sounds wrong to us for today!