"Emerging Church" what is it. Pros and cons.

[Bunyon]

What is the Emerging Church? What are the pros and cons.

 

[Chemnitz]

The latest fad, it will pass with time when the next fad. Meanwhile, the historic church will rescue those who got sucked in.

 

[KCLorelei]

Funny you should ask...an associate pastor at my church just mentioned this book on the emerging church and said it wasn't an easy read but explained the subject well:

"Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church"
by D. A. Carson

Hope that helps a little

 

[Marcia]

The book by Carson is supposed to be very good.

The Emergent or Emerging Church has good intentions about interacting with the culture and some of their ideas have been good - like not being afraid to change some things about "doing church." However, in trying to reach the postmoderns, some of these churches are themselves drifting away from the basics of the inerrancy of scripture and absolute truth.

Here's a good critique of a book by one of the leading exponents of the Emerging Church, Bruce McLaren's book, A New Kind of Christian :
http://www.equip.org/free/DP808.htm

Here's a good evaluation of the postmodern issues vs. truth:
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5682

Links to Christian articles on postmodernism:
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/topic/postmodernism.html

 

[Gold Dragon]

Originally posted by Marcia:
Here's a good critique of a book by one of the leading exponents of the Emerging Church, Bruce McLaren's book, A New Kind of Christian

It's Brian McLaren and I would highly recommend reading A New Kind of Christian to understand postmodern Christianity like the Emergent church.

 

[Gold Dragon]

Here are some links you may consider.

Wikipedia : Emergent Church - I contributed to the intro of this article
Emergent Village
Postmodernism: Taste and See that the Lord Is Good

 

[Marcia]

GoldDragon, thanks for the correction. I always get "Brian" as "Bruce" for some reason when I write or say his name.

 

[Marcia]

An excerpt from the article in the last link in GoldDragon's post:

Consider the ways God spoke to the Jews through their experience—through the sensory experience of animal sacrifice, through the physicality of the parables, through the earthy symbol of eating together and sharing table fellowship.

God spoke to the Jews through words that came through His prophets and were written down (Heb. 1.1). Animal sacrifice came as a result of acting out commandments given in words; parables were words; and you have fellowship, but these actions alone were not God speaking. They were actions. God spoke through words.

Living life is a sensory experience, and of course, God used illustrations from life since that is what people knew. He had the prophets also use some visual illustrations, but these were always accompanied by words. This is a point the postmoderns do not like to focus on.

 

[Gold Dragon]

Originally posted by Marcia:
GoldDragon, thanks for the correction. I always get "Brian" as "Bruce" for some reason when I write or say his name.

I always seem to get it confused with Kyle McLaren the hockey player.

 

[tenor]

Originally posted by Marcia:

..., but these were always accompanied by words. This is a point the postmoderns do not like to focus on.

And nothing in these pages hints that words are not to be used. Visual imagery is very powerful. Have you never heard the adage "A picture is worth a thousand words"?

In reality, the emergent church uses both. God gave us 5 senses. Why not use them all to worship Him?

No, I am not part of an "emergent type church" I join Paul as he say "I Christ be preached..."

According to all I've seen this is indeed happening in the emergent churches, perhaps more effectively than in our traditional churches.

 

[Marcia]

Originally posted by tenor:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Marcia:

..., but these were always accompanied by words. This is a point the postmoderns do not like to focus on.

And nothing in these pages hints that words are not to be used. Visual imagery is very powerful. Have you never heard the adage "A picture is worth a thousand words"?

In reality, the emergent church uses both. God gave us 5 senses. Why not use them all to worship Him?
</font>[/QUOTE]But have you noticed that the Bible is all words -- God did not inspire artists to pass on images as His inerrant message.

I am not against using visuals, music, etc. in church, but some of the postmoderns have been putting such an emphasis on the senses that God's word has been demoted. Have you read some of what these postmodern leaders have said? At least one has said that we don't really know what the gospel is.

I'm very much into the arts and most of my friends are artistic types (before I was saved, too). This is not about the arts vs. God's word, but about where we find truth and what we base truth on.

 

[Monergist]

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