Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, July 25, 2011

What is right and wrong with the emergent/emerging church movement?

Since the spring of this year I have been struggling with a definition of "Emergent Christianity" - what it is and what it believes - and have chosen to use the medium of this web blog to grasp practical, missiological, worship and doctrinal entry standards for this relevant Christian movement. And with this task I am including a few of my own personal beliefs and preferences that will be left open-ended for consideration but deem important to internalize on select topics and subjects.


A year ago, in 2010, Dr. Roger Olson had hit on a few of emergent areas he had personally noticed but as I am reading his piece I've noticed that they seemed generally untrue of my own emergent experience. For I have participated at Mars Hill Church under Rob Bell since its inception (1998? 1999?) and have witnessed it as "cooler" re-expression of classic evangelicalism into emergent form that has been provocative at times while at other times been very liberating.


And so, I've highlighted a few areas that I've either agreed with or think is important to know while including the sum of Roger's 2010 analysis. Coincidentally, at my first blush with Emergent Christianity many years ago, I too believed it reactionary in wishing to depose the sum total of our orthodox Christian heritage... but, as it settled down, it began to re-include our ancient heritage while expanding its understanding of theology and worship from a postmodernistic set. This then felt much more comfortable to me in our search for authenticity otherwise I had feared a re-expression of some contemporary form of Gnostic Christianity dressed up in postmodernistic dress.


Lastly, in that Roger's statement is nearly a year old, and in my more recent formal exploration of Emergent Christianity (beginning in March/April of 2011), there has been a lot of movement from within it - especially because of the severe evangelical backlash to Bell's Love Wins book (among other Emergent statements during this time). So that, somewhere between classic evangelica-lism, postconservative evangelicalism, and emergent-Christianity there is a movement afoot between all parties considered to recapture the life and faith that is within Jesus Christ and his Word.


And as such, this blog intends to participate and lend spiritual insight and resources as it can to these very relevant areas of exploration and discovery. For if I and others do not then we will have failed to lead in this newer expression of contemporary Christianity. A task which I would encourage all my readers to engage in.


- skinhead 
**********


by Roger Olson
September 24, 2010

I get asked this all the time. Especially students, but also strangers, ask me “What do you think of emergent churches?” (Here I will use “emergent” and “emerging” interchangeably even though some are trying to distinguish between them.)

I can’t claim expertise. Others have studied the phenomenon much more thoroughly than I have. But I have attended several well-known emergent churches and I am either acquainted with or count as good friends some of the movement’s leading spokesmen.

Some years ago Pastor Kyle Lake of Waco’s University Baptist Church (where David Crowder is the music minister) sought me out and we became friends. We had lunch together about once a month from the time I arrived here until his tragic death. We talked a lot about emerging churches and the movement. Through him I came to know many others involved in the movement.

I led a retreat for emerging church planters, attended conferences where most of the speakers and attendees were somehow affiliated with the emerging church movement, had lunches and dinners with leaders of the movement, read books by emerging church leaders and about the emergent church movement.

What I have been searching for is something all the self-identified emergent churches have in common. But just when I think I’ve identified one, an exception pops up!

There are some generally true, superficial similarities (family resemblances):

  • mostly young leaders and attenders (20-something to early thirties),
  • no creed or statement of faith that everyone has to affirm,
  • belief and practice of the “belong, believe, behave” philosophy of community,
  • experimentation with worship styles (especially interest in ancient forms of worship),
  • eclecticism, candles and art (almost anything except Solomon’s head of Christ picture!),
  • contemporary Christian music (usually performed by a leader or worship band than sung by the congregation),
  • and a vague, generalized dissatisfaction with traditional churches.

In some ways the movement reminds of the Jesus People movement of the early 1970s (of which I was sort of a part). But there are differences, as well. Most emerging churches tend to be a little more cerebral than the Jesus People movement which also tended to be more fundamentalist in its theology.

Below the surface is where I want to go. What’s “down there”–on the deeper level of motivation and driving concern? The one thing that stands out to me as underlying almost everything about emerging churches is a passion for authenticity. It seems to me that most of the emergent church leaders and followers are convinced that most traditional churches (at least that they are familiar with) go through motions but don’t know why–except “that’s the way we’ve always done things.” Emergent church people are turned off by anything they consider inauthentic. I know some of them would rather have an authentic atheism than an inauthentic Christianity. (Kind of like the old Pietist saying “Better a live heresy than a dead orthodoxy.)

So what do they consider inauthentic Christianity? Any form of Christianity, church life, that is just going through the motions because it’s respectable or traditional or they fear change. I respect their concern for authenticity.

One hesitation I have is that many emerging churches seem somewhat adrift doctrinally. I’m not a dogmatician or creedalist, but I would like to see a greater emphasis on Bible study and doctrine in some of the emerging churches I’ve encountered. I’d also like to see more emphasis on transformative spiritual experiences (conversion, Spirit baptism, renewal through rededication, etc.). And I worry that some emergent churches tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater in their search for authenticity. Just because something is done inauthentically doesn’t mean it is itself inauthentic. (For example, hymn singing.)

Overall, however, I applaud the emerging churches and their leaders (with a few exceptions I don’t care to mention by name). And I am turned off by the ridicule heaped on them by some self-appointed spokesmen for evangelicalism. (Go to youtube.com to see them.)

So what is the future of emerging churches? Like everything else, the movement will probably tend to go mainstream as the leaders and leading followers age and have families, etc. I hope and pray they retain their passion for authenticity. And I suspect someday their grown children will think their songs and worship styles, etc., are kind of “old school.” It’s inevitable. Alexander Pope said “We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons no doubt will think us so.”

This past Saturday evening my wife and I attended an all community hymn sing. (I mentioned this in an earlier post.) One part of it was especially striking. On stage together were Kurt Kaiser (of my generation) and David Crowder. What a contrast! Yet, Kaiser was one of the founders of “contemporary Christian music.” I think a lot of his work has enduring value. Suddenly this thought struck me: Someday the middle aged children of Crowder’s fans will come to see him perform with their parents and say “Oh, he’s so old school.” Just an observation; not a value judgment. But it’s something to keep in mind lest anyone think the music or worship styles of their own generation are the pinnacle, the apex that will last forever.


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