The Emerging Church

That's because it is kosher. It has been an interesting dicussion.

What would you say is the key to being a Baptist?

 

Not so sure about that, brother. In fact, I don't believe it.

 

Thank GOD! Paul was used of God to settle the Kosher stuff!

IMHO EC may be Kosher, but it is not Biblical.

 

Surely God can lead us too many things when we submit to his will?

God may use us as he sees fit. I didn't think too much of 'purpose driven life' but it may have been aimed at couple of people...I don't know Gods mind but I think we try to keep it open.

What do we do if something that has been deemed as biblical is infact cultural? for instance...sex before marriage. It is generally accepted Christians that people should not have sex before marriage but I can't find anything biblical to proove that point...

And that IMHO is because it came from Victorian values and an accepted interpretation but not necessarily a correct one.

 

Surel you jest ... The Bible is absolutely unquestionably explicit on the issue of sex outside of marriage in passages like 1 Cor 7, 1 Thess 4, Heb 13, etc. Your approach to this topic is exactly the problem with the emergent church ... there is no authority. On the issue of premarital sex, God has spoken without equivocation.

 

sorry Pastor Larry - I'm looking in my NIV, I can't see it - can you show me exactly where it says it? Thess talks about avoiding sexual immorality which is a good thing, but then who has decided what sexual immorality is, by whose standards do we judge?

Again Heberews - it's talks of keeping your marriage pure, but what of sex outside?

Do you see, it all comes down to interpretation and culture. If we say it's wrong to have sex if you are not married because it says so in the bible (which I do tend to agree that marriage is the best palce for sex) - don't we then have to do everything that is in the bible and everything that is not, including the old testament?


and then which interpretation?

 

One of the cultural contexts to keep in mind for why premarital sex is not explicitly forbidden in the bible is because before the legal and elaborate cultural ideas of marriage developed, sex was marriage. The idea of sex consummating a marriage is from the bible "and the two shall become one flesh".

As our culture separated the ideas of marriage and sex, the importance of prohibiting premarital sex became important as being in line with the spirit of what God outlined as appropriate sexual behaviour even if it was not explicitly stated so.

 

My attention was first brought to this "MOVEMENT" by John MacArthur. And after reading everything that I can find on this (mostly from the web)I agree that this is not a denomination but a movement who in a not so suddle way is tied to and openly admitting to be a post modern group.
My discernment makes me believe that its eventual goal is uniting other religions with Christianity
such as Islam and Buddhism. More information is available on the web under THE EMERGING CHURCH NETWORK.

 

Yes the Emergent church openly identifies with postmodernism, which many conservative Christians like John MacArthur confuse with relativism.

Your discernment is incorrect. This is not in any way a goal of the emergent church movement.

 

Wow this could be a big problem if nothing is done. It takes the relativistic views of reality that the world has today and impregnates the church with it. It also contains a neopaganistic and new age approach to truth when it refers to it as being "from experience". Be very aware of this.

-David

 

Going back to the premarital sex issue. Larry is absolutely correct!

When Jesus spoke of a man and woman coming together in marriage he made it explicitly clear that a man leaves father and mother and cleaves to his wife.

Sex is only permissible in the marrital relationship - a relationship that is identified by a man leaving his parents and cleaving to his wife. A man doesn't cleave to just any women. He cleaves to his "wife."

A boy who has sex with his girlfriend is committing sexual immorality. And no, they are not married in God's eyes! They ought to be married in God's eyes!

 

What do you suppose it means to 'shake off' our 'leave it to beaver' orientation and 'begin swimming within the postmodern culture?'

Here is a snippet from the page describing post-modernism:

Here's another good one:

It seems generation X is going to remake the church in our own image. I wonder if they need a new bible translation </font>[/QUOTE]I would like to note, as a "Gen Xer", that most of the leaders of this movement that I have seen tend to be baby boomers and don't represent me, nor most of the Xer's I know.

Joseph Botwinick

[ March 30, 2005, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: Joseph_Botwinick ]