John H Armstrong

Focusing on the Church Outside the Walls

Emergent churches often receive considerable attention in the press because they offer an element of surprise to readers who know little or nothing about them. One such church, with the fairly typical emergent type name of Fusion Church, meets in a Chicago suburb about a 45-minute drive from my home. Fusion Church is in Lake Zurich (IL). It was featured in an article in our suburban paper on the Monday following Easter. Because Fusion represents many of the "trends" we find in similar "emergent" churches this story is worthy of some comment and response.

Fusion is a small, non-denominational (though connected to various ministries) congregation that is five-years old. It is a thoroughly orthodox congregation in its beliefs and ethical commitments. Fusion says, about itself:

We are a group of people from all walks of life attempting to follow Jesus. We recognize following Jesus is a 24/7 commitment, done in God's power, with the support of intimate relationships [community]. It has incredible implications on how we do life with our families, at work and among friends. We invite you to join us on this journey. You don't have to have everything figured out, you just need a willingness to learn more about Jesus and what it means to participate in His mission.

The Fusion congregation met in a local elementary school until recently. On Easter Sunday about 60 people gathered for an evening service. The "Lead Pastor" Eric Lerew (one of many insider words in this movement) said, when commenting on the church's move to a local church building, "Our main focus is on what's happening outside the walls of the church. We want to live out the gospel in the community where people live and work. What happens inside these four walls is secondary." Lerew, who is 44 years old, says words like "organic and fluid" describe their ministry model. (Again, we encounter two buzz words, that are helpful to some extent, commonly used within this movement!) Lerew rightly notes, as I have indicated in recent blogs, that there are many people who will never set foot inside a church. He then adds, "Our Sunday meetings are just a rallying point from which we go our to reach the community."He says the church is divided into what they call "villages." Members focus on starting friendships and doing service projects in particular geographic locations in and around their town of Lake Zurich.

The goal of these small villages is a "common mission." "Sometimes it's sharing meals with people, phone conversations, anything we can do to show the love of Christ." Last Christmas the people of Fusion not only dropped off gifts but spent the day with various families getting to know them. A 26-year-ld woman who attends Fusion says, "You don't have to pretend to be someone you're not. It's refreshing."

After five years Fusion remains quite small. Lerew says this is fine since attendance is not the real issue "so long as we can make a difference in [people's] lives." One cannot fault this attitude, one which is much healthier than that which often drives membership in so many local churches.

So what should we make of churches like Fusion springing up all across America?

1. Such churches are a natural, spiritual response to the intense inward, consumeristic focus that most congregations and their leaders have developed within a Christendom culture in modern America.

2. Emphasis on getting "outside the walls" of the Sunday gathering is very good. It is also clearly biblical. It feels a lot more like the ancient church than the modern church. This is clearly happening within churches like Fusion. But this missional development is much more widely spreading, even into more "traditional" churches.

3. Getting directly involved with people, where they work and live, and spending time with unbelievers in building relationships, should be a core value for any truly missional church. (Sadly, few churches make it a core value, thus the rise of churches like Fusion!) I applaud Fusion's goal profoundly. I pray that Fusion will impact many lives, in Lake Zurich and beyond, and many other churches for good.

But there is more to say than these few simple (genuine) positive responses.

1. Fusion, like so many similar churches, has chosen (so it seems) to focus intensely on one side of biblical theology and not as much on the other. Their Web site shows both side are present but the pendulum swing does seem apparent. They have chosen being missional over being institutional or developed, or sacramental and ecclesial. This dilemma was not an either/or choice in Scripture or the early church. The church that we see in the N. T. celebrated the sacraments, met regularly for prayer and teaching, catechized and baptized converts (and children) and could be identified by its various markers; e.g. the enrolling of the widows, the choice of elders and deacons, the sending of formal membership type letters to other churches, the practice of discipline. These all infer some form of membership. Fusion does not seem to have formal membership. (I could have missed this in looking over the Web site.) But Fusion's financial commitment is impressive, with a budget of over $130,000. (Impressive for such a small group.) And tithing is strongly taught on the Web site! (I always find the way this principle is presented lacking in clear biblical theology. Personally, I do not think tithing is a biblical concept. Proportionate and sacrificial giving are much closer to the norms of Scripture, which means a faithful gift can be much more than 10% but it also means it could be, and sometimes should be, less.)

2. I believe every church should intentionally seek to grow both spiritually and numerically. The goal is not numbers, for the sake of numbers, but real converts who will become identifiable disciples. The way a church grows best is by reaching the unchurched, of which there are plenty in most towns and cities in the U.S. for every existing church. There is a clear need for thousands more churches to be planted. No matter how you cut this many people will still gravitate to the "meeting" of a larger group over time. This growing group might be broken down into small groups but the fact is larger groups will inevitably develop as the gospel works powerfully within a particular community.

3. The ultimate size of the home base, or the local church, is irrelevant. I wish people would really, truly recognize this point. (I commend Fusion for grasping this clearly!) But this works both ways, in large and small congregations. I am convinced there were, and always will be, many small churches, some mid-sized ones and a few very large ones. This was also true in the ancient church and seems evident in the New Testament.

4. Fusion downplays, at least according the what I read in this Daily Herald article, the importance of the sacraments and the gathered life of a worshiping congregation. (The Web site presents a better picture of the church than the shorter news article did.) Celebration and preaching could easily be lost unless Fusion is very intentional about keeping them as high priorities. Currently these seem to be higher priorities at Fusion than in some emergent churches.

When I read articles like this in my morning newspaper I am reminded that evangelicals, if nothing else, are great at producing new models of the church. There is something profoundly good about this development (mission, outreach, etc.) and something profoundly wrong with it (the loss of discipline, markers found in the sacramental life of a church, etc.) I welcome the contribution of Fusion Church but I long to see so much more.

Just a few weeks ago I spoke to the pastor of a large (older) church in the Los Angeles area who has taken a traditional Reformed Church and turned it into a missional outreach movement that I think people at Fusion would applaud. Everything Fusion lives for is being done by this local Reformed Church. These members are in the homes of their neighbors, they are delivering meals, painting houses, serving widely across their city. The mayor has even said that this is the most vital service organization in his city. This church wants to plant 100 new churches in 10 years. Many will be small groups and most will like be in homes. Many will likely be led by non-professionally trained leaders. All will have the same DNA. They will be catholic in their theology, Reformed in their confessional life and missional in their practice and development. I would wish for thousands of similar churches, be they Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox. I think this will get us a lot closer to the biblical model without starting new trends with each new wave of evangelicalism that comes along.

A Visit to One of America's Largest Emergent Churches

Mars Hill Bible Church, in Grandville, Michigan, is one of the better known “emergent” (or “emerging”) congregations in America. Begun as a church plant through the leadership of well-known author and speaker Rob Bell, Mars Hill reflects all that is good about emergent Christianity, as well as some of the weaknesses one frequently encounters. I had the unique opportunity to be in Grand Rapids for a meeting with my publisher, Zondervan, on April 6. I came in a day early for the Monday meeting and thus had a “rest” day on April 5, Palm Sunday.With this unusual gift of time away I decided to visit Mars Hill. (I have visited several of the leading emergent churches over the past four years.) Most of what I expected was what I experienced.

The whole congregation gathers for two Sunday meetings, at 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. These meetings are actually called “Gatherings.” The service I attended lasted about 70 minutes. The first twenty minutes-plus was music. Some of it was familiar, some was new (to me). All of it was led by very good instrumentalists/singers on a large platform situated in the center of an old big-box store in the middle of an old mall. I would guess that there were about 3,000-plus people present. Above the platform was a large screen with the words on all four sides. The musicians all faced the center, thus their backs were to the congregation, an odd arrangement from my experience. (Perhaps this is to draw the congregation to focus on worship, not the musicians. I am unsure.) Anyway, we stood for a long time and listened to the music. I say “listened” because the vast majority of people, so far as I could tell, did not sing the songs. ( I tried but I felt so out of place, at least where I was standing.) This is a consistent experience that I have had in such churches and it is one that I find distressing. The center of this whole time was the people on the platform performing their songs for the crowd that was mostly watching and not singing. The music itself was of the kind that a congregation could sing together if the people chose to sing the words together. Closer to the platform (I was about six rows away) some people sang with more involvement and emotion.

Following this time of music a few announcements were made. The most important, and impressive, announcement was the story of how the church had raised $20,000 for water filtration equipment for people in Africa. It was an impressive display of kingdom ministry and concern. I was moved by this step of commitment on the part of the Mars Hill family.

The sermon was preached by a guest, Dr. Don Davis, the director of World Impact, a ministry for equipping leadership for the urban church in America. Don, a former teacher at Wheaton College when Rob Bell was there as a student (1988-1992), was a powerful preacher. His sermon deeply touched me at a point of real need. I personally thanked him for his Christ-centered word from Lamentations 5. I have visited the Web site of The Urban Ministry Institute since I was at Mars Hill. I am very impressed with the work this group does. I hope that I can get to know Don personally and thus wrote to him after we met on April 5.

Mars Hill is clearly doing a lot right. There are a load of young people in the congregation. And many of these young people have obviously influenced their families since quite a few folks around my age were also present, maybe as many as 20% could have been over 50. Mars Hill is deeply committed to reaching the unchurched. I have no doubt that they are doing this better than many churches in America but I came away with a sense that a lot of those at Mars Hill came from somewhere else, like other evangelical churches that they felt alienated from for whatever reason. (I can think of many.) I would love to know the actual data regarding the number of people at Mars Hill who are first generation disciples of Christ. I have no idea if such data is available.

Where does Mars Hill fit in terms of the Willow Creek “seeker model”? I suppose the answer depends on one’s perspective. I felt like it was a younger version of the “seeker church” when all was said and done.

Mars Hill is surrounded by older churches representing a number of Reformed denominations. Grand Rapids is also the center of a significant Baptist and fundamentalist population. One would guess that the children of many of these churches are searching for something else and Mars Hill meets some deeply felt needs. This is legitimate and I respect it. The teaching at Mars Hill, based on the courses that they offer through the week, and the sermons that I have heard in the past on audio and video, and heard from a guest on April 5, are solid.

I took the opportunity to briefly meet Rob Bell after the service. He was friendly, but seemed a bit shy. This is true of many such dynamic communicators and visionaries. He was accessible and certainly did not seem to be in a hurry to run out, something I appreciated. His skills as a both a writer and speaker are eminent. I already knew all that before attending Mars Hill. What I did not know was how much like the seeker model the Sunday gathering really would be. Maybe I was there on an atypical Sunday but I tend to think not. There was no evidence at Mars Hill of church, as such; e.g, a cross, candles, banners, biblical texts, Christian art, icons, etc. The place was as plain as an old Baptist church and there was no marking even outside that this was a church. And the Eucharist seemed to be held only irregularly, certainly not weekly.

Membership at Mars Hill is treated as a covenant relationship with other believers. This covenant is renewed annually. A clear description of what this means was available in a clearly written form. There is much to love at Mars Hill. The small groups are undoubtedly important and fill in a lot of the life of this church that I did not get to experience. I think Rob Bell is a brilliant practitioner and I admire him a great deal.

Personally, I would starve at a church like Mars Hill. I crave much more than twenty-plus minutes of pop music, an extended announcement on a mission opportunity and a good sermon, at least in public worship. The flow of liturgy, rooted in biblical theology and Christian redemption, is much deeper than this model affords if your heart hungers for deep church.

The Emerging Church: Can We Talk?

Since the late 1990s a conversation has been going on about the emergent church. Opinions and reactions range from one end of a broad spectrum to another. Personally, I have longed to see someone deal with these issues fairly from the perspective of a deep commitment to the ancient Christian faith. Now this has been done. A good friend, Dr. Jim Belcher, has written the book I will recommend to many: Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional (IVP). This fine book will be out later this year.

The late Robert Webber spent considerable time among the leaders of the emergent discussion. Many found him to be a friend to those who were seeking for new ways to relate the gospel to our time. Yet these leaders never really heard the true passion of Bob, who once said to me, "John, I fear this is a huge reaction against traditional conservative evangelicalism without a serious foundation consciously rooted in the ancient Christian faith." I believe Bob was right. Emergent has been primarily about a reaction. Unless this movement embraces "mere" Christianity very seriously it will come to very little over time.

Defining emergent Christianity is notoriously difficult. Much like the Jesus Movement in the 1960s, which touched my life powerfully, and then the Church Growth Movement in the 1970s and 1980s, a movement I studied directly under the leading voices of that time (which led me to plant a church), this new movement has representatives of all sorts. Some are moving toward theological positions that are remarkably close to old liberalism while others are still quite conservative in their theological beliefs. Postmodernism impacts all of this but few of the emergents I know are "hard" postmodernists.

Even the use of the term "emergent" is suspect. Who is and is not emergent? I have been called emergent by one leading conservative minister who refuses to acknowledge how broad a brush he has used to make his point. Yet I do not know one single emergent writer who would call me emergent. I am not a "conservative traditionalist" (as this one man would define it) but I am certainly not emergent. I am a mainline minister, of Reformed conviction, who holds to evangelical beliefs (in the main) and yet I would call myself, before all else, a "mere" Christian. I do this in the same spirit we saw in yesterday's post about C. S. Lewis.

All of this underscores how unhelpful labels can really be. They generally end serious conversation and lead to war. If I can label you then I can attack you and get others to agree with me. Some ministers, of my personal acquaintance, intentionally use this method because it works to build their own ministries and to raise money. (It also sells books!) I have to fight my own cynicism when I hear and see things like this. I can tell you that I have no respect for such thinking and have a serious problem with the kind of people who promote this way of thinking. It is sectarian to the extreme.

 Emergent Christianity, or emerging Christianity, are reformation movements that come out of the 1990s. The source for most of this movement is evangelicalism. Many in Gen-X found much to not like about the evangelical church. (I agree with them on this point.) They began to protest, a good Protestant response, much of what they saw. The writings of these men (they were/are mostly white men) found fault with a lot of what my generation had done in the church. These men held conferences, wrote books and sought to let their views become more widely known. In time the movement got the label: emergent.

By the early years of this decade a large scaled push-back began to emerge from more traditional evangelicals. A raft of books appeared and conferences were held to respond to these emergent writers. Some of the responses are still rolling out (blogs are filled with this) and this reality makes for a whole new set of books and events. It is like a ping-pong game. Having lived through the 1980s and 1990s, when the enemy was pragmatic evangelicalism, I can tell you that there is a kind of "fierce" (angry) evangelicalism that believes every new wind that blows along for about five years or more must be strongly opposed. This wind is seen as the new enemy of the church. This is the case now with emergent Christianity. It is endangering multitudes thus traditional conservatives have to rally the troops and sound the alarm. Much of this, from my perspective, is not new. It is the same thing I saw in my lifetime of ministry, especially when I was most active in the world of conservative Calvinism.

Conservative Calvinism knew it was "true evangelicalism" (or at least the best form). Because of this we lived on the margins, always showing what was wrong with everyone else. We produced conferences, talk shows, magazines and books. The target was often Willow Creek, or marketing and the related centers of evangelical renewal. The fact that I now talk about this makes some very unhappy with me since I was an insider to these historical events. The fact that I have acknowledged the barrenness of this approach, and my own sinfulness in embracing it, really angers a few. But my story is my story. I was there. I helped lead the charge and I now wish I had never done it.

What eventually rescued me was "mere" Christianity, or catholic, apostolic and ancient faith. I experienced the Spirit's work in creating and preserving the church in and through the creeds and the Holy Scriptures. This reality spoke to my deepest fears and an intense longing for someplace to live and love besides the "constant polemic" of the conservative Reformed world. I did not walk away from the influence of John Calvin, who I still esteem very highly even though I disagree with him on some points. I did intentionally leave the kind of Calvinism that created an "angry" God who hated sinners and loves only the elect. I did leave the kind of Calvinism that has lost all practical connection to common grace. And I did leave the kind of Calvinism that treats other Christians as the enemy.

This is why I engage the emergents with love and respect even though I am sometimes troubled by the things I read in the popular writers of this movement. Because I respect these men, and want to listen to them, I am seen as compromised. This is the problem. Theology done without the whole church always leads to deep suspicion and a lack of regard for others. I know no other theology now than "evangelical and ecumenical" theology. The discussion about God, the Bible and the core truths of Christian practice, must all be conducted within the context of listening to others who come from traditions within the church that are not my own.

The Gathering in Salem, Massachusetts

My friend Phil Wyman has served as the pastor of The Gathering in Salem, Massachusetts, for ten years now. I met Phil three years ago as a result of a front page story on him that appeared in The Wall Street Journal. We have conversed by phone and prayed for one another. Emails keep us in contact. I still hope to teach there sometime in 2009. I support Phil and believe in his outreach. If you've ever been to Salem you will understand why this kind of missional church-plant is so needed there. Here is Phil's report to praying friends from last week:

I am just now getting to telling our Halloween story for this year. The month-long experience of Halloween in

Salem is remarkable to behold for those who have never experienced it. Many visit us for a week or a weekend, but for those of us who live here, and serve throughout the month of October it has become commonplace to view Salem as Halloween Town. Like Jack the Mayor of Halloween Town in "The Nightmare Before Christmas" many people in Salem work all year toward October, and Halloween becomes a month long event with its 500,000 visitors.

We have rushed headlong into the middle of all the celebrations with the hope of being a blessing to all, and this year the event was as spectacular, and life-changing for people as any of the previous nine. Yes, this is our tenth Halloween in Salem.

Over 80 people were trained to learn how to treat Witches and Neo-Pagans as regular people. This is not something we as Christians do well. There were returning friends who helped interpret dreams from a biblical perspective, and offered spiritual advice to passing Halloween partiers. Others played music, or served free hot cocoa. Others still served food to those who came to be part of this massive outreach, or provide background support by setting up the outdoor stage, run the sound system, raise money to help support the event, or clean the carpets of the church.

We organized and ran a Children's Day event with the help of Domino's Pizza and had 3,000 attendees. We held a feast based upon experiences of Heaven and Hell, we ran 6 days of live music, gave away 3,000 cups of free hot cocoa (this number was down by 5,000 cups, because it was such a warm year!), counseled or interpreted dreams for thousands of people, gave 800 people an educational experience highlighting human slavery in the world today, and sent young men dressed as monks to offer free blessings to the people on the streets.

Each year this event grows. It seems to have legs of its own, and is moving faster than we can keep up with it. All these things are accomplished by a small church of about 45 people, and the friends and other churches who like to hang out with us.

The Associated Press (AP) called me and asked for a phone interview this year.  You can access the podcast of the short radio segment by following the link below.

http://podcast.ap.org/data/audio/20081031/20081030030600-339.mp3?amp=&iTunes=true

The number of people who spoke of being touched by the gentle presence of God's blessing are beyond the scope of our ability to count. Even the simple gesture of giving a cup of free hot cocoa can illicit a generous response. One college aged young man replied, "This is the best idea I've seen out here." There are new faces visiting the church since the October outreach - locals who were significantly touched by the "spiritual readings," dream interpretation, and blessings from our wandering monks are visiting the church on Sunday now.

In the Old Testament we find the children of Israel gathering in Jerusalem for the feasts. Passover, Pentecost, and the feast of Tabernacles brought the people together into one place to worship and celebrate. This was the manner in which they gathered for "church." Today our society is running to festivals to celebrate, party, and vacation. Haunted Happenings in Salem is one of the great festivals in U.S. culture. It has been our goal to "crash the party," and make our little festival within this larger festival called Haunted Happenings one of the "places to be." In a sense we are bringing church to the partying public, and offering gentle touches of God's grace. They effect has been dramatic. 

After ten years of serving in Salem in this manner, hundreds of Christians from near and far gather to help us serve. Thousands of people experience the ministry outreach we offer, and now are beginning to return each year to looking specifically for us. These returning people are not necessarily Christians. They come from all walks of life, and have simply recognized that there is acceptance, love, and peacefulness in our presence. This has become our way of bringing the power of the Old Testament festival life to the city of Salem, and the people who visit us from around the world.

For those of you who have supported the large efforts of this little church financially or in prayer - thank you. You are at the base of our ability to continue in the footsteps of our gracious Savior on these cobble-stoned streets of Salem, Massachusetts.

For those who would like to help support the work of The Gathering in our location at The Vault you can donate to the causes we serve on our website at http://www.salemgathering.com

The Vault is a spiritual development center, and the home of The Gathering.  The Gathering is a community of people pursuing spiritual development through following the examples and teachings of Jesus the Nazarene.  We are interdenominational, and welcoming to all people of all religious, as well as non-religious backgrounds.  Our church services meet at 10 am & 6 pm each Sunday.

Located at:  217 Essex Street in Salem, MA  Near the corner of Washington and Essex, next door to Rockafella's, and across the street from Salem Five Cent Savings Bank.

 Contact The Gathering, and The Vault at 978-744-8444

 

How the Modern Generation Lost Its Way Morally and Socially

Time and time again David Gelernter, a national fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and professor of computer science at Yale, speaks precisely to something that I have been thinking about for some time. It was David Gelernter who argued, in the pages of The Weekly Standard about three years ago, that America needed another great awakening on the college campus and that it just might actually happen. He spoke of the typical campus as “biblically illiterate” and thus a veritable “tinder-box” for a spiritual fire if the Bible were to become relevant again to students. I pray daily that he is right and I work to this end with all that is inside of me.

Well, David Gelernter did it again in a recent (October 6) article in The Weekly Standard. In an article titled: “Obama in Leftland,” Gelernter writes:

"Barack Obama is America’s first major party candidate to have come of age after the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 70s. Americans who reached adulthood before or during the Cultural Revolution often differ over the big events of recent history. Americans who came of age afterward, on the other hand, don’t necessarily know any recent history. And what they do know is often wrong [emphasis mine]."

This is the very same point that I have attempted to make on this blog several times in recent weeks. I last made this point regarding the agenda of planned parenthood and the issue of abortion. I referred to how little clarity the younger generation possesses about the history of this ethical and moral issue.

Let me be clear about this. I am not saying that younger Christians do not have moral convictions. Nor am I saying that they do not care about life and death ethical issues. I think they care, and in some ways, they care far more than my generation cared, at least in terms of deeply held feelings about issues and causes. (Their numbers are considerably smaller, and this means that whatever their views are on such issues they will have less cultural and political impact in the end.)

What I am saying is this—this is the first generation entirely shaped by my generation, the one that lived through the Cultural Revolution (CR) of the late 1960s and 70s.

David Gelernter says that we knew what to expect in generation CR. If you grew up in families with strong moral values and a grasp of tradition, patriotism and reality, you held to moral and ethical absolutes. But if not then you tended to have very fuzzy views of history.  Thus these new adults:

"[Have an] unconditional belief in tolerance and diplomacy, and contempt for the military and war-making. Their patriotism (such as it is) tends to focus on the 'global community' or 'the planet' or some other large, meaningless object. (Beyond a certain point, patriotic devotion spread too thin simply evaporates—which is a good way to get rid of it if you are, say, an English intellectual trusting to the European Union to eradicate this primitive emotion.)"

Consider what makes Barack Obama so much like previous leaders in the CR generation that I came of age in when I was in college. Senator George McGovern, who had rock star status with the far-left in the CR, was an affable, moral, sincere and well-spoken gentleman. I can still recall attending one of his campaign stops in 1972 when he spoke at Edman Chapel at Wheaton College. The atmosphere was electric and many young evangelicals swooned, much as they do at Obama rallies today. Like Obama, Senator McGovern also opposed an unpopular war and saw how government could solve major generational issues.

And like George McGovern, Barack Obama is not at all sure where the military fits into our future. In July he listed several past crises that America had faced and referred to “the bomb (sic) that fell on Pearl Harbor.” He spoke also of our “constantly evolving danger” but never of our “enemies.” This, notes David Gelernter, is “a prime specimen of gen-CR thinking.” I think he nails it.

Obama’s announcement that he would met Mahmoud Ahmadinejab without preconditions shows exactly why a president must not merely know history, but have a decently nuanced view of the same. Was it right for Chamberlain to meet with Hitler? Or was it right for John F. Kennedy to meet with Khrushchev? No. I submit history shows that it was not right because the meetings were used to promote anything but peace. Was it right for Begin to meet with Sadat and for Churchill to make long and dangerous journeys to meet with Stalin? I submit that it was, given the nuance of the issues and the historical sensibilities of the moment.

Senator Joe Biden, speaking about Obama’s international notions, said during the primary season: “World leaders should not meet with other world leaders unless they know that the agenda is, so you don’t end up being used.” The point is clear—do not invest American prestige and energy in meeting with culture-leaders who misrepresent history and tell us things like the Holocaust never happened or that they wish to destroy Israel and the United States.

Members of the CR generation who bought into the ideology were trained well, since they had no deep roots to protect them. The majority of teachers from the 1970s onward proudly acknowledged their deep political bias against America and its ideals. They were to the left and they happily admitted it. This is a simple truth. But what makes today’s new left so different is that they do not even know how far left they have actually moved. Gelernter rightly concludes: “As far as they know their ideas are innocuous and mainstream—just like the New York Times!”

Think about the resignation of Harvard’s president Lawrence Summers in 2006. What was his crime? He said that the fact that there were a greater number of male scientists females might have something to do with gender differences. After numerous apologies his administration was finished, and he still resigned. (And Lawrence Summers is no conservative!) Gelernter notes that “In the gen-CR now approaching, such embarrassing accidents will no longer happen. Forbidden ideas simply won’t occur to the Harvard presidents of the future.” Bulls-eye!

Thus Barack Obama is the perfect role-model for this generation. He would make a great Harvard president. He looks back at the nation’s history and sees things very differently than I do. He is sincere, honest and shaped by a different worldview. What makes him even more appealing to young Christians is that he has faith and speaks of his relationship with Christ, a relationship I have never questioned (to the chagrin of my more conservative friends). He knows how to approach issues from several angles and how to see various shades of opinion. (There is much here to like in contrast to hard-nosed, opinionated wing-nuts on the right!)

Gelernter concludes: “America’s future has been intellectually housebroken.” Yes, it surely has. What is tragic is that intellectual and moral turpitude has become mainstream in the modern church. The results are nothing less than catastrophic when it comes to moral clarity and our collective future. I am much more concerned for the church than for America. (The church is to act as salt, and if we lose our saltiness we have no proper role remaining in the wider culture.) I think we have lost our nerve and the consequences call for a massive reformation of morals and doctrine inside the typical American church.

Younger Christians move me, to my depths, with their commitment to missional thinking and practice. But many of them miss the historical realities of how we got here and where we should be going, as a result of learning their lessons from teachers who were shaped by my CR generation.

We do need a “new kind of Christian” but the one we need looks a lot more like a mix between the missional present, which I celebrate, and the moral and social past, which saw truth as truth and historical facts as facts. 

The Truth War and the Emergent Church

A young friend, who reads my material regularly and has established a personal relationship with me via the Internet, informed me yesterday of an emergent site where there is an interesting discussion going on re: John MacArthur's book, The Truth War. Since I am the subject of a great deal of John's criticism in chapter one of this book my friend thought I would enjoy reading this online debate. I did find it helpful, even though I agree with neither John nor everything that I read on this emergent site.

This site is a blog called Vanguard Church. When I visited the site I found the dialog interesting and useful. If this debate interests you too check it out yourself. Listening to the dialog in this manner can contribute to removing erroneous understanding.

It is imperative that anyone who seeks to enter this whole "emergent church" conversation realizes that there is a very wide gulf between various types of emergent writers and leaders. One emergent leader put it this way, in a private conversation. There are three ways of thinking about Christ, tradition and the Church.

1. A boundary-set way of thinking

2. A center-set way of thinking

3. A relationship-set way of thinking

Emergent writers represent all three of these if I understand the movement correctly. The boundary-set approach highly values putting up boundaries (fences or walls), believing that these will keep people within the important truths needed to preserve and protect biblical Christianity. Fundamentalism is a radical example of this kind of thinking. Softer versions have fewer boundaries but they still insist that some issues are essential to keeping certain people and ideas out of the Church; e.g., a strong complimentarian view of the role of women, a very tightly defined view of inerrancy, specific views of eschatology, tightly defined views about the nature of God at certain points (precise definitions of impassibility come to mind), etc.

Center-set thinkers, of which I consider myself to be one, are content with less. We believe that Christ is really and truly the center of theology and the life of faith. The earliest creeds of the Church help push us into the center and also keep us focused on Christ as Lord over all. Truth is not just what we discover in the present age and collective experience with one another but rather a historical process that values the early church and classical theology very deeply, the reformers and renewalists down through the ages who have applied biblical truths in specific historic contexts, the insights of skilled exegetes and commentators in our own time, etc.

A great center-set analogy is offered by two leaders in the emergent world who live in Australia. They speak of digging deeper wells so that the water will be cleaner and purer. These wells draw the animals back again and again to the center. Australian ranchers cannot put up boundaries on large open lands, in the huge open spaces they face, but they can dig deeper wells that will keep the animals (always) within a day's journey of the central well. That analogy will stay with me for a long time because I like it a great deal. The center in my heart and mind is the living Christ, the divine Logos. Boundaries often take people away from Christ, putting the stress in their lives and churches upon various and sundry issues that have little, or nothing at all, to do with the real center of living faith.

Relationship-set thinkers believe that truth is revealed in relationships where power is minimalized. The stress is on community, which is in itself biblical. But here the whole group gets to contribute to the corporate understanding of the truth in a kind of democractic (no votes are taken from what I can tell) process. This concept gets a lot closer to the ideals of postmodernism and is about much more than the methods of preaching and worshiping that are debated endlessly. There is something to commend this view since power plays have been a part of Church history. But this view of how the creeds were composed and acepted virtually ignores the role of the Spirit in history while it argues for the Spirit's vital role in the present in a local church group. (There is also an odd sectarian feel about this thinking, at least in the way I heard it explained.) And the approach has nothing to govern its ultimate conclusions about what is the vital center since in the end truth is what our group makes of it as we grow and listen together. It ends up sounding a lot like early Quakerism, at least to my mind, but I am still willing to keep thinking about this conclusion.

John MacArthur is very clearly a boundary-set thinker. His lifetime of work demonstrates this quite clearly. I belie ve that he would agree with me if he were given these three categories. He would insist that we must have very clear and strong boundaries or people will not remain strongly committed to the gospel for long. In his theological system boundaries are made a vital part of the center. Without them there can really be no center, or so it would seem.

In contrast, I am a center-set thinker, believing in catholicty and central truth claims that are historically rooted in the Bible's witness to Christ (kerygma) and in the earliest creeds and markers that point us to the Christ who is both divine and human. The Trinitarian foundation of all this is vital to this center as well. This is why I think the recovery of a strong Trinitarianism among evangelicals bodes well for the future. For my thought process we need to allow a wider latitude of views while we seek to remain focused upon Christ alone. We need a Trinitarian renewal in every possible way. This means, as my late friend Bob Webber always put it, "The future will always go through the past." Relationship-set thinkers do not seem to grasp this point adequately, at least as I listen to them and read their material.

Some of my emergent friends feel that even my views will fail me in the end because they do not address this tendency to "power plays" that will always exist in the human heart. Preachers will use their power to control churches, creeds will become "paper popes" to condemn and hinder the ongoing work of the Spirit, and groups will condemn other groups so long as they believe that they are closest to the (perfect) center. I do not agree, so long as the center is really the center. This is why we need to go through the past before we can understand the present, something often missing in emergent conversations. I reject strict subscriptionism to certain creedal conclusions, especially those parts of more recent creeds that are not central to gospel faith. But I also reject the spirit and practice of anti-creedalism as well.

These categories are not entirely new to me but I do find them helpful. I wish people on all sides would seek to listen better as we pursue richer understanding of what it is some people are really trying to say. Doesn't charity demand as much?

A Weekend Emergent Village Experience

This weekend's Midwest Emergent Gathering, held July 20-21 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, was an event that I enjoyed participating in immensely. I was invited, by my friend Mike Clawson of up/rooted (Chicago), to answer several questions in a plenary session. I was billed as a friendly “outsider.” We laughed about this designation since many of my critics now assume that I am a “heretical insider” to Emergent. The truth is that neither is totally true. I am not so much a part of this movement, at least not in any recognizable or formal way, as I am a real friend of all things missional that sincerely address the basic questions that I feel very strongly must be faced by Christians within Western culture.

It is a basic fact that the church regularly reduces the gospel, to something less or other than than the gospel, in its various attempts to translate the good news into a faithful witness within any culture. This is true in Asia, Latin America and Africa as well. (Witness the cover story of the current Christianity Today on the impact of the prosperity gospel in Africa, where the greatest church growth is also taking place.) This does not mean the church is no longer the church. It does mean reformation is always necessary, thus the faithful church must be semper reformanda, always reforming. This realization grows out of a sober view of the humanity of the church. (The church is a divine organism with the life of Christ in it but it is also very human at the same time.) But many conservative Christians, especially if they are over forty, tend to think serious criticism of the church, or questioning the ways Christians think and believe (epistemology), is tantamount to arrogance and undermining the faith itself. Because I want to open a wide discussion of epistemology (i.e., the ways that we know what is true and not true) I am routinely questioned about whether I still believe in truth at all. When I say that I clearly and strongly do believe in the truth then I am then called a liar, or given some similar flattering insightful response.

I am reminded at this point of Paul’s response to the Corinthians in the first century. He thanked God for their witness, and never doubted that they were real Christians in a very real church, while he also developed an epistolary response around a series of problems. All of these various problems threatened the living witness of the church itself but Paul doesn't treat these church people as enemies. There is a narrow path to be carefully navigated here. both Emergents and non-Emergents can both miss it. We must love the church enough to affirm that where Christ is named and witness to him is maintained the church is God’s household, even if it is in dire straights. On the other hand, churches that prosper numerically and financially in the present context tend to think there is no criticism needed for them since they are knowing success first-hand. (I find few listeners to my concerns in such settings, very few.) I am reminded of theologian Douglas John Hall’s statement that the way Western Christians have told their story, since the time of Constantine, is primarily as a “success story.” With Emergents I think it is time we stop telling our story in this way and find ways that are faithful to the cross.

This Midwest Emergent Gathering featured well-known speakers and authors such as Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Denise Van Eck, Will Samson, Spencer Burke and even the friendly e-Bay atheist, Hemant Mehta, who has written a book every Christian should read: I Sold My Soul on e-Bay. If you want to understand how non-believers really “see” the church check him out. I was particularly pleased to share lunch with Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, both from Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis. Two more delightful brothers I have not met recently. Yes, these men are subversive for sure, but then so was Jesus. They raise lots of questions that are disturbing, and maybe at times they overstate themselves a bit, which I rather like much of the time. But they are not professional hucksters for a new fad at all. They clearly love the gospel, love people, and care profoundly about the mission of Christ.

Tony Jones, the national coordinator of Emergent Village, shared considerable private discussion time with me. I discovered in him a wide range of insight, a warm heart for Christ and his kingdom, and a true honest-to-goodness disciple-learner. He is a doctoral fellow and senior research fellow in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and has a very good mind for things related to both mission and theology. He is the author of the excellent book, The Sacred Way. Doug Pagitt, the pastor of Solomon’s Porch, which is a missional and holistic community in Minneapolis, has a quick wit, an engaging style of speaking and a deep love for real ministry in a unique place in the urban community. He is the author of Church Re-Imagined, Preaching Re-Imagined and Body Prayer. If you only know these men from these books you will only know their ideas, or at least the way they’ve written some of those ideas for church-wide discussion. In person, you will soon discover that they are not “rock stars” or interested in any kind of self-promotion. For a product of the boomer generation like me I smell this “self-promotion” stuff (and the phony piety that often attends it) miles away. Thus I was delighted to see that these brothers are what you really see and hear. They treated me with Christian respect and a genuine interest to get to know me, again a rare commodity in the world that I have moved in for past thirty-five years.

There are several books you could get into if you really wanted to learn more. Go to Emersion Books and check out An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, edited by Tony and Doug. Then take a look at Joseph R. Myers book, Organic Community, and Kester Brewin’s brand new book, Signs of Emergence. They are both well worth looking into for the curious and the serious. Will Samson’s new book, Justice in the Burbs, will soon be available from the same source (Baker). I met Will and enjoyed his imaginative gifts and kind spirit. He is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky and his wife, Lisa, is a fiction writer whose work attracts me based upon the conversation I had with Will.

One of the freshest voices in the room came from a person much closer to me in age, a grandmother no less. Her name was Denise Van Eck and she has previously been the community life pastor of the famous Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan. She is an author, Leadership 101, and a mother, grandmother, speaker and writer. She specializes in team building and leadership development. When I came into the room on Friday morning and found the only seat at the back that I could see open I ended up next to Denise. What a delightful and alive woman. And her presentation was both fresh and very helpful. She addressed the problem of building community in one of the largest mega-churches in North America. She had no formulas, no programs and no power points, just a heart that overflowed with grace and wisdom. She said things that I have thought for years but never heard anyone say so graciously and wisely. Again I was encouraged by the fact that a woman speaker was part of a plenary session. Denise shared rich insights about relationships, rooted powerfully in a moving story she told about her teenage son and his being forced to conform to expected social norms in high school. She made him get a haircut, because of the pressures placed upon him and her by peers, and then tearfully regretted that she had damaged the core of her son’s artistic soul by misusing parental pressure and authority. I could identify with her story and found her telling of this account deeply moving. You can find Denise via Emergent Village as well.

I found a lot to like about Emergent. Yes, I raised some questions about their patterns and movement tendencies and regarding some issues that leave me both concerned and hopeful. It seems to me that this movement needs to connect a more robust theology with its deep missiology. I will be attempting to learn more from these lovely Christians who care deeply about the future of the church in the West. I want to see many elements of classical and confessional theology discussed and worked out in this new mission context but I came away from the weekend meeting believing that these men and women desire the same. I also came away wondering why  so few in my generation ever invited a friendly outsider to address their audience and to offer criticisms.  This quality also endears me to these brothers and sisters deeply. 

Left or Right?

It seems to me that there are two dangers, at least ideologically, for the contemporary Church. One is on the Right, the other is on the Left. I offer a very simple (simplistic?) way for describing these two dangers and a possible middle way.

When younger people move toward the postmodern paradigm, which I think is warranted in several important philosophical ways, this usually brings with it a leftward political and social stance. Few that I meet among those who are deeply interested in this postmodern shift, and who embrace it with an openness to learn from it in truly Christian ways, seem able to escape this liberal tilt. They are not so liberal theologically, at least not in the classic sense of liberal theology. They are often accused of this but the accusation is not helpful or generally accurate if you really know liberal theology and then read these modern writers critically and in proper context. But among evangelical postmoderns, or so-called Emergents, this tendency to pull toward the left politically and socially is quite apparent. I have sensed that this tendency is so strong that most younger evangelicals who move in the Emergent conversation speak and write as if anyone who agrees with their basic agenda should also follow them in their political and social solutions. An example of my point can be seen in the global warming debate. Emergents have the tendency to accept as orthodoxy some version of the "apocalyptic" scenario that is promoted by people like Al Gore in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth." While I agree that there is such a thing as global warming I do not agree with the models employed for explaining the causes and effects. I do not agree with most of the solutions being offered for solving this problem from the Left, especially when we are not even sure what causes the problem and what we can really do to solve it. The tendency to talk about this type of issue in these terms is so common in postmodern circles that any other view is seen as out of touch, or worse, stupid and uncaring for God's creation.

On the Christian Right, which is generally represented by older adults and the massive baby boom generation, the opposite  tendencies are generally exhibited. This generation leans toward the political and social Right and generally does so in rigid and moralistic ways. The agenda that this large group offers generally reflects an uncritical acceptance of a few special issues that are seen as the gold standard for fidelity in public policy and political thought. This group doesn't do well with verbal and intellectual nuance and often reacts very harshly to anyone who doesn't agree with a sacred check-list of "Christian" issues. This approach is very often bred by anger, a profoundly modernistic form of certitude, and the deep fear that we are losing our culture and thus our sacred past. The past is always seen as better than the present and the future. (There has always been this tendency among older adults in one very obvious sense.) People in this world often major on strong negative responses to issues. But they only appear to be real conservatives. In reality they do not know the theological and philosophical reasons for a healthy and informed conservatism that is realistic and well-argued. Frankly, the Christian Right generally gives the name conservative a terribly bad connotation in our present social climate. Though I agree with  the Christian Right about marriage and abortion, to name two hot-button issues, I find myself increasingly running away from the ways in which they contend for these issues within our culture.

I find myself drawn to learn much more from my postmodern and Emergent brothers and sisters. I feel I am in the middle of their important conversation without being a part of their church world. They have such incredible insight into people and the present social context of real mission. I also find myself agreeing with the Christian Right about marriage, the sanctity of life and the general coarsening of our culture. But I find neither side is very willing to analyze their own presuppositions critically.  At this moment I have more hope for the younger people precisely because they demonstrate a willingness to still think and listen.  I would love to see  more dialog on both sides of this growing divide. Since I do not fit comfortably on either side it would prove salutary to me personally to provoke such a dialog in a truly respectful and Christian form. Is this too much to ask?

What About the Millennial Generation?

Some call them "Gen Y" because they are younger than "Gen X." Others call them the Millennials, or even the post-9/11 generation. They are Millennials because they came of age in 2000. They are one of the most discussed and debated generation since the Boomers came along. Whether you like the discussion, or find it boring and pointless, it continues. Who are these young adults, between the age of 18 and 24?

This generation should be considered socially, politically and spiritually. I am most interested in the latter but all three categories interest me. Here is what we do know about Millennials. They worry a lot more about Iraq than older adults. They think America is on the wrong track but they are not generally sure why or how to fix it. They are liberal, but not always or consistently. They most likely come from broken homes thus they are longing for deeper relationships that can help them cope with the world. But they do not marry as previous generations and they are not having many children at all. They are spiritually hungry, religiously clueless, and simply do not learn and process information as we did.

How will this group vote in 2008? Democrats court them because they believe they can make a difference to their party. But polling is very uncertain since many in this generation are reachable only by cell phones. But they can be reached on the Internet and they do respond via this medium. Democrats have presumed that this generation belongs to them for some years now even though there is only slight evidence that they really do and that they will make any real difference in forthcoming elections. In the 2004 election this group share of the total electorate was 17%, unchanged from 2000. They voted at a 47% rate, up from 36% in 2000. The youth vote is just not there in the large numbers that many hoped for in courting them politically. Might this change in 2008? For whatever reasons (apathy, lack of sensing the importance of voting, etc.) the youth vote has generally not been that important in the outcome of elections. (The female vote is very important, in contrast. This bodes well, many believe, for Hillary Clinton's candidacy.)

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows an apparent lack of political and social knowledge among Millennials. The 18-29 year old group did far worse in understanding important public issues than any other group. (So much for a college education actually educating people.) Only 15% of this generation had a "high knowledge" of current affairs, while 59% had "low knowledge." The other 29% were in the middle. And the survey had no trick questions at all. For example, only 26% of those surveyed knew that the Sunnis were one of the two main branches of Islam. In fact, on all questions that remotely touched on religion this generation showed a remarkable lack of knowledge, thus my earlier comment about being "religiously clueless."

Only 15% of this group of adults 18-29 read a daily newspaper and  26% get their news from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" or the "Colbert Report." Only 17% listen to NPR. A Harvard Institute of Politics study found that 35% of this age group identified themselves as Democrats, while 25% were Republicans and 40% were neither. This tells me that the distrust and disinterest in the major political parties is pretty high among the Millennials.

More interesting, at least to my mind, was the fact that 61% felt health insurance was a basic right. This is the generation that will be required to bear the burden created by mine thus I wonder how long this will last? Only 23% of this age group want religious values to play a strong role in government. (This number is higher than I actually thought it would be based upon anecdotal research of my own. Only about 5% of this generation attends church, thus most think religious values have no place in public life.)

As Froma Harrop, a syndicated columnist, put it: "The Millennials sound liberal but feel independent. If push comes to shove, they would probably be Democratic voters, were they to vote."

Will the Boomers still drive the future? Not for ever since they will decrease in size in the coming decades. Will this generation become the next leaders? Yes, for sure. But what can we expect? History tells us that their knowledge will increase for sure. But optimism is not high that this will be the generation that counters the consumptive, self-centered lifestyle of my own. There is an idealism among the young that appeals to me. My generation had it too in the 1960s but Vietnam drove it out of many of us. Iraq may do the same for the Millennials, only time will tell. I rather think the one "wild-card" here is the spiritual make-up of this generation. This is why I welcome the input of all the strands of the Emergent movement and Christians of all types who care deeply about the Church at all. These Emergent Christians understand the people they are talking to much better than I do. I respect this knowledge very deeply. My primary concern is that the spiritual leaders in the Emergent group will turn away from the input of those of us who are much older and who also deeply care, with them, about the Church, the gospel and its real impact on America and beyond.

When older ministers and authors write attack books against these Emergent writers and speakers they not only fail the love test but they also fail the missional test. We must begin by cultivating a respectful dialog that treats others as our brothers and sisters, equally loved by Christ. Sadly, the considerable heat against this rising generation is increasing every day. This only serves to drive Millennials further away from the gifts of both older and younger Christians. I have my own concerns about Emergent books and churches. I, however, sincerely believe that this rising generation will grow in knowledge, love and wisdom. My confidence is rooted in the faithfulness of God to lead his own people, even through mistakes. The Lord knows I made lots of them. We can do better by listening to the Millennials and by showing them personal respect. I believe that they would do better if they sought out some of us older men and women who went before them and who now want to spread the good news with them. We are brothers and sisters and the world needs us to demonstrate this in powerful and creative ways.

A Fair Critique of Emergent

I have followed the Emergent Church (EC) phenomenon for several years now. I have not read all the books that are coming out with popular EC themes and titles but I have read several of them carefully. I have also used one or two of these books in my classes and openly shared in dialog with writers such as Brian McLaren, who is often seen as the leader of this movement by outsiders. Insiders respect Brian a great deal but they understand that the depth of leadership, and the varied important voices in this movement, is much wider than Brian. One of the most popular writers in EC circles, as one example, is Scot McKnight. Scot is anything but a young gun for a modern "cool" movement.

I have recently taken my own public hits for being "too emergent" yet I am not deeply involved in this, or any other, movement in any meaningful sense. I am certainly not an apologist for the EC movement nor do I intend to write emergent books. (I do count many emergent leaders as friends and desire to listen to them and learn from them as much as possible.) I think the general response to EC from the Christian right and the Christian left is generally wrong and often grossly unfair. There are some holes in the foundation of EC, at least among some, but these can be repaired. There are some speakers and writers in the EC blogosphere that would do well to study the ancient church much more carefully and thus they might get a much fuller grasp on historical/biblical theology. But again, this can be fixed in time and within relationships. Attacks will fix nothing!

One thing clearly characterizes much of the emergent literature and the speakers that I have heard. They are all suspicious of modernity and of Enlightenment projects that privilege certain types of systematic theology and church life. This suspicion is one I share and thus there are some people on the Christian right who think I am emergent.

Jason Byassee, a wonderful writer and editor for the Christian Century, and a solid orthodox theologian from the Methodist Church, has done as much to fairly critique emergent material and spokespersons as anyone that I know presently. Jason and I had lunch last week and discussed these, and other, items of personal interest. He also gave a sterling paper at the Wheaton Theology Conference titled: "Emerging From What, Going Where?" (You can secure an audio of this address by contacting Wheaton College who sells an MP3 of the whole event for only $15.00. Contact their AV department via the Web or by telephone.) Jason gave a simple overview of the movement's very brief history and then offered some insightful critique.

He showed how this movement began as a younger generation of church planters sought to engage the post-modern culture and were met with outright rejection from most of the evangelical establishment. Emergent writers can and do make outrageous claims, and some are much worse at this than others, but this widely announced rejection is often hostile and grossly distorted. Some merely mock these younger leaders as fostering a kind of cool Christianity with candles and hip clothes and weird hair styles. Mainliners, on the other hand, see EC as the newest gimmick from the right. Some now embrace it as a way to stop mainline decline.  Byassee writes that the emergent movement "is trying to bring the wealth of the church's ancient traditions---often neglected by evangelicals---into creative collaboration with the insights of post-modern culture for the sake of fruitful interaction and Christian faithfulness." I could not agree more!

Is this movement a cultural flash-in-the pan or could it be an example of fruitful ancient-future interaction that many more of us should consider? Byassee leans to the second response and so do I. Brian McLaren and Tony Jones, among others, have found a wide vein of disaffection among younger evangelicals. They have spoken to it with a growing measure of effective skill. Most of these writers (with Tony Jones being a very clear exception) are not deeply trained in theology and biblical studies but all of them are immersed in culture and understand the kinds of questions their peers are really asking. They also understand the missional context of what is happening in a post-Christendom America and this insight alone makes the EC movement important for all of us who love the church and want to reach people. Byassee concludes that: "Their work should not be treated as theological treatises to be picked apart at conferences." Like him I see these emergent voices as the word of an activist movement of church planters who desire to see "new forms" of church life, forms that may well help us reach unreached people.

There is much to criticize in this movement but those who want to speak to the next generation had best take these men and women seriously and with more Christian love and respect. (Women, thankfully, do have a prominent role in emergent, a role they were clearly not given in much of conservative evangelicalism until very recently and even then it remains quite limited.)

Two articles are worth reading on emergent: "Five Streams of Emerging Church," by Scot McKnight (Christianity Today, February 2007) and "Emerging Model: A Visit to Jacob's Well," Jason Byassee (Christian Century, September 19, 2006). I also recommend the new book: An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (Baker, 2007), edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. It may infuriate you at points but at least by reading it you will get the main ideas of EC. If you are going to critique this movement these are good starting points. Most of the critics on the right have not bothered to read this movement carefully and thus these critics level massive broadsides against something that is still quite small and young. I prefer to interact, to listen and to give these friends time. The broadside approach looks and feels like old fundamentalism dressed in modernist epistemology. The more open approach, that wants to listen and learn, gets labeled as "liberal" by people of fear and personal suspicion who react to all new forms that do not fit their notion of how things ought to be.

Any church historian worth their salt knows movements come and go but major changes, the kinds of deep changes that shape the church to be more faithful and effective in new contexts, must be carefully studied before they draw sharp conclusions. We have made major gains in biblical and theological studies. We have creeds we can and should study and use. We also have the Spirit to lead his people. People on a journey in grace understand that the world is very messy and that sin inside the church means that we will never get it just right in any time and age.