Wikipedia - The Emerging Church

Emerging church leaders are not impressed by those who defend the Christian faith by promoting definitive answers to convince those who doubt the faith. - Eddie Gibbs

Here is my final response to Dcn. Michael Cook's arguments found in Wikipedia's observation of the Emergent Church.

R.E. Slater

February 10, 2024

Related Articles Compiled Together as One

• Wikipedia - The Emerging Church

• Emergent Church Leaders: Who Are Alan Jones vs Tony Jones?

• Emerging Church leaders believe that Evangelicals should let go of the Bible and reason as their anchors

• [Are You] Still Evangelical, by Mark Labberton, Editor

• How Evangelicals Think of the Past Emergent Church, Part 2

• How Evangelicals Think of the Past Emergent Church, Part 1

• Common Sense Christian Wisdom from my friend Rance - Feb 2023

Responses to Evangelical Criticism

• Index - Emergent Church Era I

• Index - Emergent Church Era II

• Index - Evangelical Politics

• Index - Evangelicalism

• Index - Evangelicalism Today + Angst

• Index - Evangelicalism's Challenge

* * * * * *

Bruce Sanguin
Wood Lake Publishing Inc. - 224 pages

Realizing the importance of creating a practical guide for both ministers and congregations seeking to shift their congregational culture towards a progressive form of Christianity, Bruce Sanguin grounds The Emerging Church in the experience of his own congregation, Canadian Memorial United, as way to establish context and to share real-life examples. At the same time, he peppers the book with insights from leading edge science, including the science of emergence, chaos theory, quantum physics, field theory, spiral dynamics, and evolutionary science.

Download the spiral dynamics charts Spiral Dynamics Chart and Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck.

Written in language lay people can understand, The Emerging Church is filled with no-nonsense, realistic advice on the pitfalls and possibilities of following the vision of the emerging Christian way.

Nudged by an evolutionary Spirit and drawn by the love of Christ into an emerging future, the church of the loving and living Christ may be the "best kept secret of our day." In The Emerging Church, Bruce Sanguin shares "the secret" with anyone and everyone willing to listen.

* * * * * * * *

[all brackets are mine - re slater]

Emerging church

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The emerging church, sometimes [rightly or] wrongly equated with the "emergent movement" or "emergent conversation",^{[further explanation needed]} is a Christian movement of the late 20th and early 21st century. Emerging churches can be found around the globe, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. Members come from a number of Christian traditions.

Some [emergent evangelicals] attend local independent churches or house churches^[1][2][3] while others worship in traditional Christian denominations. The emerging church favors the use of simple story and narrative.

Members of the movement often place a high value on good works or social activism, including missional living [and social justice].^[4] Proponents of the movement believe it transcends labels such as "conservative" and "liberal"; it is sometimes called a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its range of standpoints, and commitment to dialogue.

Participants seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a "postmodern" society. Disillusionment with the organized and institutional church has led participants to support the deconstruction of modern Christian worship and evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community.

Definitions and terminology

Participants in the movement may be Protestant, post-Protestant, Catholic, or evangelical,^[5] post-evangelical, liberal Christian, post-liberal, conservative, and post-conservative, anabaptist, adventist,^[6] reformed, charismatic, neocharismatic, and post-charismatic.

Proponents, however, believe the movement transcends such "modernist" labels of "conservative" and "liberal," calling the movement a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints, and its commitment to dialogue.

Participants seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a "postmodern" society. What those involved in the conversation mostly agree on is [i] their disillusionment with the organized and institutional church and [ii] their support for the deconstruction of modern Christian worship, modern evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community.^[7]

Some have noted a difference between the terms emerging and Emergent. While emerging is a wider, informal, church-based, global movement, Emergent refers to a specific, structured organization, the Emergent Village, associated with Brian McLaren, and has also been called the "Emergent stream".^[8]

[my own opinion is there is no difference between emerged, emerging, emergent, etc. - re slater]

Key themes of the emerging church are couched in the language of reform, Christian praxis-oriented lifestyles, post-evangelical thought, and incorporation or acknowledgment of Christian political and postmodern Christian elements.^[9] Many of the movement's participants use terminology that originates from postmodern literary theory, social network theory, narrative theology, and other related fields.

Stuart Murray states:^[10][11]

Emerging churches are so disparate there are exceptions to any generalisations. Most are too new and too fluid to clarify, let alone assess their significance. There is no consensus yet about what language to use: 'new ways of being church'; 'emerging church'; 'fresh expressions of church'; 'future church'; 'church next'; or 'the coming church'. The terminology used here contrasts 'inherited' and 'emerging' churches.

— Murray (2004), p. 73

 

Ian Mobsby observes:^[12]

The use of the phrase 'emerging church' appears to have been used by Larson & Osborne in 1970 in the context of reframing the meaning 'church' in the latter part of the twentieth century.^[13] This book, contains a short vision of the 'emerging church' which has a profoundly contemporary feel in the early twenty-first century ... Larson & Osborne note the following themes:

- Rediscovering contextual and experimental mission in the western church.

- Forms of church that are not restrained by institutional expectations.

- Open to change and God wanting to do a new thing.

- Use of the key word ..."and". Whereas the heady polarities of our day seek to divide us into an either-or camp, the mark of the emerging Church will be its emphasis on both-and.

- For generations we have divided ourselves into camps: Protestants and Catholics, high church and low, clergy and laity, social activists and personal piety, liberals and conservatives, sacred and secular, instructional and underground.

- It will bring together the most helpful of the old and best of the new, blending the dynamic of a personal Gospel with the compassion of social concern.

- It will find its ministry being expressed by a whole people, wherein the distinction between clergy and laity will be that of function, not of status or hierarchical division.

- In the emerging Church, due emphasis will be placed on both theological rootage and contemporary experience, on celebration in worship and involvement in social concerns, on faith and feeling, reason and prayer, conversion and continuity, the personal and the conceptual.

— Mobsby (2007), pp. 20–21

Similar labels

Although some emergent thinkers such as Brian McLaren and other Christian scholars such as D. A. Carson use emerging and emergent as synonyms, a large number of participants in the emerging church movement maintain a distinction between them. The term emergent church was coined in 1981 by Catholic political theologian, Johann Baptist Metz for use in a different context.^[14] Emergent is sometimes more closely associated with Emergent Village. Those participants in the movement who assert this distinction believe "emergents" and "emergent village" to be a part of the emerging church movement but prefer to use the term emerging church to refer to the movement as a whole while using the term emergent in a more limited way, referring to Brian McLaren and Emergent Village.

Many of those within the emerging church movement who do not closely identify with emergent village tend to avoid that organization's interest in radical theological reformulation and focus more on new ways of "doing church" and expressing their spirituality. Mark Driscoll and Scot McKnight have now voiced concerns over Brian McLaren and the "emergent thread."^[15] Other evangelical leaders such as Shane Claiborne have also come to distance himself from the emerging church movement, its labels and the "emergent brand".^[16]

Some observers consider the "emergent stream" to be one major part within the larger emerging church movement. This may be attributed to the stronger voice of the 'emergent' stream found in the US which contrasts the more subtle and diverse development of the movement in the UK, Australia and New Zealand over a longer period of time. In the US, some Roman Catholics have also begun to describe themselves as being part of the emergent conversation.^[5] As a result of the above factors, the use of correct vocabulary to describe a given participant in this movement can occasionally be awkward, confusing, or controversial. Key voices in the movement have been identified with Emergent Village, thus the rise of the nomenclature emergent to describe participants in the movement.

Marcus Borg defines the term "emerging paradigm" in his 2003 book The Heart of Christianity. He writes

The emerging paradigm has been visible for well over a hundred years. In the last twenty to thirty years, it has become a major grassroots movement among both laity and clergy in "mainline" or "old mainline" Protestant denominations.

Borg provides a compact summary of this "emerging paradigm" as:^[17]

...a way of seeing the Bible (and the Christian tradition as a whole) as historical, metaphorical, and sacramental, [and] a way of seeing the Christian life as relational and transformational.

History

Although the history is little known in the US, there was a strong current of emerging churches in the UK and elsewhere that preceded the US Emergent organization. This began with Mike Riddell and Mark Pierson in New Zealand from 1989, and with a number of practitioners in the UK including Jonny Baker, Ian Mobsby, Kevin, Ana and Brian Draper, and Sue Wallace amongst others, from around 1992.^[18] The influence of the Nine O'Clock Service has is generally unacknowledged—perhaps owing to the abuse by its leader which led to the group's demise—yet much that was practised there was influential on early proponents of alternative worship.^[19] The US organization emerged in the late 1990s.

What is common to the identity of many of these emerging church projects that began in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, is that they developed with very little central planning on behalf of the established denominations.^[20] They occurred as the initiative of particular groups wanting to start new contextual church experiments, and are therefore very 'bottom up'. Murray says that these churches began in a spontaneous way, with informal relationships formed between otherwise independent groups^[21] and that many became churches as a development from their initial more modest beginnings.^[22][23]

Values and characteristics

Trinitarian-based values

Gibbs and Bolger^[24] interviewed a number of people involved in leading emerging churches and from this research have identified some core values in the emerging church, including desires to imitate the life of Jesus; transform secular society; emphasise communal living; welcome outsiders; be generous and creative; and lead without control. Ian Mobsby suggests Trinitarian ecclesiology is the basis of these shared international values.^[25]

Mobsby also suggests that the emerging church is centred on a combination of models of church and of contextual theology that draw on this Trinitarian base: the Mystical Communion and Sacramental models of church,^[26] and the Synthetic and Transcendent models of contextual theology.^[27][28]

According to Mobsby, the emerging church has reacted to the missional needs of postmodern culture and re-acquired a Trinitarian basis to its understanding of church as worship, mission and community. He argues this movement is over and against some forms of conservative evangelicalism and other reformed ecclesiologies since the Enlightenment that have neglected the Trinity, which has caused problems with certainty, judgementalism and fundamentalism and the increasing gap between the church and contemporary culture.^[29]

Post-Christendom mission and evangelism

According to Stuart Murray, Christendom is the creation and maintenance of a Christian nation by ensuring a close relationship of power between the Christian church and its host culture.^[30] Today, churches may still attempt to use this power in mission and evangelism.^[31] [31] The emerging church considers this to be unhelpful.

Murray summarizes [conservative evangelicalism = traditional] Christendom values as:

- a commitment to hierarchy and the status quo;

- the loss of lay involvement;

- institutional values rather than community focus;

- church at the centre of society rather than at the margins;

- the use of political power to bring in the Kingdom;

- religious compulsion;

- punitive rather than restorative justice;

- marginalisation of women, the poor, and dissident movements;

- inattentiveness to the criticisms of those outraged by the historic association of Christianity with patriarchy, warfare, injustice and patronage;

- partiality for respectability and top-down mission;

- attractional evangelism; assuming the Christian story is known; and a preoccupation with the rich and powerful.^[31]

---

[One of many reasons evangelical Christians left evangelicalism for a better expression of Christianity... - re slater]

---

The emerging church seeks a post-Christendom approach to being church and mission through:

+ renouncing imperialistic approaches to language and cultural imposition;

+ making 'truth claims' with humility and respect;

+ overcoming the public/private dichotomy;

+ moving church from the center to the margins;

+ moving from a place of privilege in society to one voice amongst many;

+ a transition from control to witness, maintenance to mission and institution to movement. 

+ While some Evangelicals emphasize eternal salvation, many in the emerging church emphasize the here-and-now.^[32] In the face of criticism, some in the emerging church respond that it is important to attempt a "both and" approach to redemptive and incarnational theologies. 

+ Some Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are perceived as "overly redemptive" and therefore in danger of condemning people by communicating the gospel in aggressive and angry ways.^[33] 

+ A more loving and affirming approach is proposed in the context of post-modernity where distrust may occur in response to power claims.

+ It is suggested that this can form the basis of a constructive engagement with 21st-century post-industrial western cultures.

+ According to Ian Mobsby, the suggestion that the emerging church is mainly focused on deconstruction and the rejection of current forms of church should itself be rejected.^[34]

Postmodern worldview and hermeneutics

The emerging church is a response to the perceived influence of modernism in Western Christianity.

As some sociologists commented on a cultural shift that they believed to correspond to postmodern ways of perceiving reality in the late 20th century, some Christians began to advocate changes within the church in response. These Christians saw the contemporary church as being culturally bound to modernism. They changed their practices to relate to the new cultural situation.

Emerging Christians began to challenge the modern church on issues such as: institutional structures, systematic theology, propositional teaching methods, a perceived preoccupation with buildings, an attractional understanding of mission, professional clergy, and a perceived preoccupation with the political process and unhelpful jargon ("Christianese").^[35]

As a result, some in the emerging church believe it is necessary to deconstruct modern Christian dogma. One way this happens is by engaging in dialogue, rather than proclaiming a predigested message, believing that this leads people to Jesus through the Holy Spirit on their own terms. Many in the movement embrace the missiology that drives the movement in an effort to be like Christ and make disciples by being a good example. The emerging church movement contains a great diversity in beliefs and practices, although some have adopted a preoccupation with sacred rituals, good works, and political and social activism. Much of the Emerging Church movement has also adopted the approach to evangelism which stressed peer-to-peer dialogue rather than dogmatic proclamation and proselytizing.^[36]

A plurality of Scriptural interpretations is acknowledged in the emerging church movement. Participants in the movement exhibit a particular concern for the effect of the modern reader's cultural context on the act of interpretation echoing the ideas of postmodern thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish. Therefore a narrative approach to Scripture, and history are emphasized in some emerging churches over exegetical and dogmatic approaches (such as that found in systematic theology and systematic exegesis), which are often viewed as reductionist. Others embrace a multiplicity of approaches.

Generous orthodoxy

Some emerging church leaders see interfaith dialogue as a means to share their narratives as they learn from the narratives of others.^[37] Some Emerging Church Christians believe there are radically diverse perspectives within Christianity that are valuable for humanity to progress toward truth and a better resulting relationship with God, and that these different perspectives deserve Christian charity rather than condemnation.^[38]

Centered set

The movement appropriates set theory as a means of understanding a basic change in the way the Christian church thinks about itself as a group. Set theory is a concept in mathematics that allows an understanding of what numbers belong to a group, or set. A bounded set would describe a group with clear "in" and "out" definitions of membership. The Christian church has largely organized itself as a bounded set, those who share the same beliefs and values are in the set and those who disagree are outside.^[39]

The centered set does not limit membership to pre-conceived boundaries. Instead, a centered set is conditioned on a centered point. Membership is contingent on those who are moving toward that point. Elements moving toward a particular point are part of the set, but elements moving away from that point are not. As a centered-set Christian membership would be dependent on moving toward the central point of Jesus. A Christian is then defined by their focus and movement toward Christ rather than a limited set of shared beliefs and values.^[39]

John Wimber utilized the centered-set understanding of membership in his Vineyard Churches. The centered set theory of Christian churches came largely from missional anthropologist Paul Hiebert. The centered-set understanding of membership allows for a clear vision of the focal point, the ability to move toward that point without being tied down to smaller diversions, a sense of total egalitarianism with respect for differing opinions, and an authority moved from individual members to the existing center.^[40]

Authenticity and conversation

The movement favors the sharing of experiences via testimonies, prayer, group recitation, sharing meals and other communal practices, which they believe are more personal and sincere than propositional presentations of the Gospel. Teachers in the emerging church tend to view the Bible and its stories through a lens which they believe finds significance and meaning for their community's social and personal stories rather than for the purpose of finding cross-cultural, propositional absolutes regarding salvation and conduct.^[41]

The emerging church claims they are creating a safe environment for those with opinions ordinarily rejected within modern conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Non-critical, interfaith dialog is preferred over dogmatically-driven evangelism in the movement.^[42] Story and narrative replaces the dogmatic:^[43]

The relationship between words and images has changed in contemporary culture. In a post-foundational world, it is the power of the image that takes us to the text. The bible is no longer a principal source of morality, functioning as a rulebook. The gradualism of postmodernity has transformed the text into a guide, a source of spirituality, in which the power of the story as a moral reference point has superseded the didactic. Thus the meaning of the Good Samaritan is more important than the Ten Commandments - even assuming that the latter could be remembered in any detail by anyone. Into this milieu the image speaks with power.

— Percy (2002), p. 165

Those in the movement do not engage in aggressive apologetics or confrontational evangelism in the traditional sense, preferring to encourage the freedom to discover truth through conversation and relationships with the Christian community.^[44]

Missional living

Further information: Missional living

Participants in this movement assert that the incarnation of Christ informs their theology. They believe that as God entered the world in human form, adherents enter (individually and communally) into the context around them and aim to transform that culture through local involvement. This holistic involvement may take many forms, including social activism, hospitality and acts of kindness. This beneficent involvement in culture is part of what is called missional living.^[45] Missional living leads to a focus on temporal and social issues, in contrast with a perceived evangelical overemphasis on salvation.^[32]

Drawing on research and models of contextual theology, Mobsby asserts that the emerging church is using different models of contextual theology than conservative evangelicals, who tend to use a "translation" model of contextual theology^[46] (which has been criticized for being colonialist and condescending toward other cultures); the emerging church tends to use a "synthetic" or "transcendent" model of contextual theology.^[47] The emerging church has charged many conservative evangelical churches with withdrawal from involvement in contextual mission and seeking the contextualization of the gospel.^[27]

Christian communities must learn to deal with the problems and possibilities posed by life in the "outside" world. Of greater importance, any attempt on the part of the church to withdraw from the world would be in effect a denial of its mission.

— Harvey (1999), p. 14^[48]

Many emerging churches have put a strong emphasis on contextualization and, therefore, contextual theology. Contextual theology has been defined as "A way of doing theology in which one takes into account: the spirit and message of the gospel; the tradition of the Christian people; the culture in which one is theologising; and social change in that culture."^[49] Emerging churches, drawing on this synthetic (or transcendent) model of contextual theology, seek to have a high view towards the Bible, the Christian people, culture, humanity and justice. It is this "both ... and" approach that distinguishes contextual theology.^[50][51]

Emerging communities participate in social action, community involvement, global justice and sacrificial hospitality in an effort to know and share God's grace. At a conference entitled "The Emerging Church Forum" in 2006, John Franke said: "The Church of Jesus Christ is not the goal of the Gospel, just the instrument of the extension of God's mission", and: "The Church has been slow to recognize that missions isn't [sic] a program the Church administers, it is the very core of the Church's reason for being."^[52] This focus on missional living and practicing radical hospitality has led many emerging churches to deepen what they are doing by developing a rhythm of life, and a vision of missional loving engagement with the world.^[53]

A mixture of emerging Churches, fresh expressions of Church and mission initiatives arising out of the charismatic traditions, have begun describing themselves as new monastic communities. They again draw on a combination of the Mystical Communion Model and Sacramental Models, with a core concern to engage with the question of how we should live. The most successful of these have experimented with a combination of churches centred on place and network, with intentional communities, cafes and centres to practice hospitality. Many also have a rhythm, or rule of life to express what it means to be Christian in a postmodern context.

— Mobsby (2009), pp. 30–31

Communitarian or egalitarian ecclesiology

Proponents of the movement communicate and interact through fluid and open networks because the movement is decentralized with little institutional coordination. Because of the participation values named earlier, being community through participation affects the governance of most emerging churches. Participants avoid power relationships, attempting to gather in ways specific to their local context. In this way some in the movement share with the house church movements a willingness to challenge traditional church structures/organizations though they also respect the different expressions of traditional Christian denominations.^[54]

International research suggests that some emerging churches are utilizing a Trinitarian basis to being church through what Avery Dulles calls 'The Mystical Communion Model of Church'.^[55]

• Not an institution but a sorority [or, family. - re slater]
• Church as interpersonal community.
• Church as a sisterhood of individual congregations (unified bride of Christ), and as a fellowship of people in family with God and with one another (brothers and sisters) in Christ.
• Connects strongly with the mystical 'body of Christ' as a communion of the spiritual life of faith, hope and charity.
• Resonates with Aquinas' notion of the Church as the principle of unity that dwells in Christ and in us, binding us together and in him.
• All the external means of grace, (sacraments, scripture, laws etc.) are secondary and subordinate; their role is simply to dispose people for an interior union with God effected by grace.^[56]

Dulles sees the strength in this approach being acceptable to both Protestant and Catholic:^[57]

In stressing the continual mercy of God and the continual need of the Church for repentance, the model picks up Protestant theology ... [and] in Roman Catholicism ... when it speaks of the church as both holy and sinful, as needing repentance and reform ...

— Dulles (1991), p. 46

The biblical notion of Koinonia, ... that God has fashioned for himself a people by freely communicating his Spirit and his gifts ... this is congenial to most Protestants and Orthodox ... [and] has an excellent foundation in the Catholic tradition.

— Dulles (1991), pp. 50–51

Creative and rediscovered spirituality

This can involve everything from expressive, neocharismatic style of worship and the use of contemporary music and films to more ancient liturgical customs and eclectic expressions of spirituality, with the goal of making the church gathering reflect the local community's tastes.

Emerging church practitioners are happy to take elements of worship from a wide variety of historic traditions, including traditions of the Catholic, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches, and Celtic Christianity. From these and other religious traditions emerging church groups take, adapt and blend various historic church practices including liturgy, prayer beads, icons, spiritual direction, the labyrinth, and lectio divina. The emerging church is also sometimes called the "Ancient-Future" church.^[58]

One of the key social drives in Western post-industrialised countries, is the rise in new-"old" forms of mysticism.^[59][60] This rise in spirituality appears to be driven by the effects of consumerism, globalisation and advances in information technology.^[61] Therefore, the emerging church is operating in a new context of postmodern spirituality, as a new form of mysticism. This capitalizes on the social shift in starting assumptions from the situation that most are regarded as materialist/atheist (the modern position), to the fact that many people now believe in - and are searching for - something more spiritual (postmodern view). This has been characterised as a major shift from religion to spirituality.^[62]

In the new world of 'spiritual tourism', the Emerging Church Movement is seeking to missionally assist people to shift from being spiritual tourists to Christian pilgrims. Many are drawing on ancient Christian resources recontextualised into the contemporary such as contemplation and contemplative forms of prayer, symbolic multi-sensory worship, story telling and many others.^[63] This again has required a change in focus as the majority of unchurched and dechurched people are seeking 'something that works' rather than something that is 'true'.^[64]

Use of new technologies

Emerging-church groups use the Internet as a medium of decentralized communication. Church websites are used as announcement boards for community activity, and they are generally a hub for more participation based new technologies such as blogs, Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, etc. The use of the blog is an especially popular and appropriate means of communication within the Emerging church. Through blogs, members converse about theology, philosophy, art, culture, politics, and social justice, both among their local congregations and across the broader Emerging community. These blogs can be seen to embrace both sacred and secular culture side-by-side as an excellent example of the church's focus on contextual theology.^{[original research?]}

Morality and justice

Drawing on a more 'missional morality' that again turns to the synoptic gospels of Christ, many emerging-church groups draw on an understanding of God seeking to restore all things back into restored relationship. This emphasises God's graceful love approach to discipleship, in following Christ who identified with the socially excluded and ill, in opposition to the Pharisees and Sadducees and their purity rules.^[65]

Under this movement, traditional Christians' emphasis on either individual salvation, end-times theology or the prosperity gospel have been challenged.^[66][67] Many people in the movement express concern for what they consider to be the practical manifestation of God's kingdom on earth, by which they mean social justice. This concern manifests itself in a variety of ways depending on the local community and in ways they believe transcend "modernist" labels of "conservative" and "liberal." This concern for justice is expressed in such things as feeding the poor, visiting the sick and prisoners, stopping contemporary slavery, critiquing systemic and coercive power structures with "postcolonial hermeneutics," and working for environmental causes.^[68]

See also

• Cafe church – Christian church model
• Contemplative prayer – Christian mystical practices
• Cultural appropriation – Inappropriate adoption of culture and cultural identity
• Ecumenism – Cooperation between Christian denominations
• Inculturation – Adaptation of Christianity to cultures
• Missio dei – theological term, the 'mission of God'
• Models of Contextual Theology – About the book by Stephen B. Bevans
• Progressive Christianity – Postmodern theological approach

References

Sources

• Bevans, Stephen B. (2002). Models of contextual theology. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. ISBN 978-1-57075-438-8.
• Dulles, Avery (1991). Models of the Church (Expanded ed.). Image Books. ISBN 978-0-385-13368-5.
  • Link to 1974 edition: Models of the church. Garden City, New York: Image Books. 1978 – via Internet Archive.
• Gibbs, Eddie; Bolger, Ryan K. (2006). Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. London: SPCK. ISBN 978-0-8010-2715-4.
• Mobsby, Ian J. (2007). Emerging and fresh expressions of church: How are they authentically Church and Anglican?. London: Moot Community Publishing. ISBN 978-0955980008.
• Mobsby, Ian (2008). The Becoming of G-d: What the Trinitarian nature of God has to do with Church and a deep spirituality for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: YTC Press UK Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4092-0078-9.
• Murray, Stuart (2004). Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (After Christendom). Carlisle: Paternoster Press. ISBN 978-1-84227-261-9.
• Taylor, Barry (2008). Entertainment Theology: Exploring Spirituality in a Digital Democracy. Grand Rapids, US: Baker Academic; Baker Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8010-3237-0.

Citations

1. ^ "ReligionLink.org : Emerging Church trend expands, diversifies". religionlink.org. Retrieved 28 August 2011.
2. ^ Kreider, Larry (2001). "1: There's a New Church Emerging!". House church networks: A church for a new generation. Ephrata, Pennsylvania, US: House to House Publications. pp. 1–9. ISBN 978-1-886973-48-0.
3. ^ Pam Hogeweide (April 2005). "The 'emerging church' comes into view". Christian News Northwest. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 28 August 2011.
4. ^ McLaren, Brian (2007). Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices. Nashville, US: Thomas Nelson. Dedication page. ISBN 978-0-8499-0114-0.
5. ^ 
   Jump up to:
   ^a b Lillian Kwon (14 March 2009). "Catholics join Emerging Church conversation". Christian Today. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
6. ^ "MB524: Christian Anthropology from the Margins: Johnny Ramirez-Johnson". Fuller Online. Fuller Theological Seminary. Spring 2019.
7. ^ Carey, Jesse (12 October 2022), "The Emerging Church Explained", CBN: The Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc
8. ^ Kowalski, David (28 September 2007). "Surrender is not an Option: An Evaluation of Emergent Epistemology". Apologetics Index. Retrieved 28 August 2011.
9. ^ McKnight, S. (February 2007). "Five Streams of the Emerging Church." Christianity Today. 51(2). Retrieved 11 July 2009.
10. ^ Mobsby 2007, p. 20.
11. ^ Murray 2004, p. 73.
12. ^ Mobsby 2007, pp. 20–21.
13. ^ B. Larson, R. Osbourne (1970). The Emerging Church. London: Word Books. pp. 9–11.
14. ^ Johannes Baptist Metz (1981). The Emergent Church. New York: Crossroad.
15. ^ McKnight, Scot (26 February 2010). "Review: Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity". Christianity Today. Retrieved 4 April 2010.
16. ^ 

    • Soong-Chan Rah; Jason Mach (May 2010). "Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only?". Sojourners. With responses by Julie Clawson, Brian McLaren, and Debbie Blue. Archived from the original on 5 August 2011.
    • Claiborne, Shane (13 April 2010). "The Emerging Church Brand: The Good, the Bad, and the Messy". God's politics: Sojourners magazine. — A blog by Jim Wallis and Friends. Archived from the original on 21 October 2011.
    • Claiborne, Shane; Garrison, Becky (1 May 2010). "Further responses on diversity in the Emerging Church". Sojourners.
17. ^ Borg, Marcus J. (2003). The Heart of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper. pp. 6, 13. ISBN 0-06-073068-4.
18. ^ Collins, Steve (May 2002). "Small Fires: Alternative worship is not about youth". Ship of Fools. See article written by Steve Collins at: http://www.alternativeworship.org/definitions_awec.html
19. ^ Jones, Tony (2009). The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-470-45539-5.
20. ^ Mobsby 2007, pp. 23–24.
21. ^ Murray 2004, pp. 69–70.
22. ^ Murray 2004, p. 74.
23. ^ Mobsby 2007, p. 24.
24. ^ Gibbs & Bolger 2006, pp. 44–45.
25. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 65–82.
26. ^ Mobsby 2007, pp. 54–60.
27. ^ 
    Jump up to:
    ^a b Mobsby 2007, pp. 28–29.
28. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 98–101.
29. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 15–18, 32–35, 37–62.
30. ^ Murray 2004, pp. 83–88.
31. ^ 
    Jump up to:
    ^a b c Murray 2004, pp. 83–88, 200–202.
32. ^ 
    Jump up to:
    ^a b Kimball, Dan (2007). "The Emerging Church and Missional Theology". In Robert Webber (ed.). Listening to the beliefs of emerging churches: Five perspectives. With responses from: John Burke; Doug Pagitt; Karen M. Ward; Mark Driscoll. Grand Rapids, Mich, US: Zondervan. pp. 81–105. ISBN 978-0-310-27135-2. p. 102: Approaching the afterlife with awe and wonder
33. ^ Theology Emerging Church^{[dead link]}
34. ^ Mobsby 2007.
35. ^ Perry, Simon. "Emerging Worship".
36. ^ Perry, Simon (2003). What is So Holy About Scripture. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock.
37. ^ Sudworth, Richard (2007). Distinctly Welcoming. Oxford: Scripture Union Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84427-317-1.
38. ^ Gibbs & Bolger 2006, p. 300.
39. ^ 
    Jump up to:
    ^a b Paul Hiebert (1994). Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, Grand Rapids, MI US: Baker Books
40. ^ Phyllis Tickle (2008). The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Grand Rapids, MI, US: Baker Books.
41. ^ Frost, Michael (14 September 2007). "Michael Frost Wrap-Up at PGF 2007". YouTube. Retrieved 5 April 2008. Founding Director of Centre for Evangelism & Global Mission at Morling Theological College in Sydney, speaks to authenticity as bringing a 'living among them' type of Christianity rather than cross-cultural absolutes regarding salvation and conduct Intriguing Michael Frost video
42. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 97–111.
43. ^ M. Percy (2002). The Salt of the Earth: Religious resilience in a Secular Age. London: Continuum. p. 165.
44. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 113–132.
45. ^ Griffiths, Steve (30 January 2007). "An Incarnational Missiology for the Emerging Church". Rev Dr. Steve Griffiths speaks about the Emerging Church and how they view and approach missions. Retrieved 5 April 2008.
46. ^ Bevans 2002, pp. 3–46.
47. ^ Bevans 2002, pp. 81–96.
48. ^ B. A. Harvey (1999). Another City. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. p. 14.
49. ^ Bevans 2002, p. 1.
50. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 67–82.
51. ^ Mobsby 2007, p. 28–32.
52. ^ "Notes of John Franke at the Emerging Church Forum". 2006. Retrieved 5 April 2008.
53. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 30–31, 65–82.
54. ^ and a significant number of emerging church proponents remain in denominationally identified communities. There is also a significant presence within the movement that remains within traditional denominational structures. (Missional) "Emergent Village: Values and Practices". Retrieved 9 August 2006.
55. ^ Dulles 1991.
56. ^ Mobsby 2007, pp. 54–55.
57. ^ Dulles 1991, p. 46, 50–51.
58. ^ Webber, Robert (2007). "Appendix 2: What is the Ancient-Future Vision?". In Robert Webber (ed.). Listening to the beliefs of emerging churches: Five perspectives. Grand Rapids, Mich, US: Zondervan. pp. 213–215. ISBN 978-0-310-27135-2.
59. ^ E. Davis (2004). Techgnosis. London: Serpents Tail.
60. ^ J. Caputo (2001). On Religion, London: Routledge.
61. ^ Mobsby 2007, Chapters Two and Three.
62. ^ Taylor 2008, pp. 14–15.
63. ^ Mobsby 2008, pp. 83–96.
64. ^ Taylor 2008, pp. 96–102.
65. ^ 

    • Lum, Rebecca Rosen (6 May 2008). "'Emerging church' seeks the justice Jesus sought". Contra Costa Times. Archived from the original on 12 June 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
    • Kaufman, Napoleon (17 November 2006). "Transformation by removing the mask". East Bay Times.
66. ^ "Brian McLaren in Africa". Retrieved 26 July 2023.
67. ^ McLaren, Brian (2007). Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. Thomas Nelson Publishers. ISBN 978-0849901836.
68. ^ Brian McLaren (2007). "Church Emerging: Or, Why I Still Use the Word 'Postmodern', But with Mixed Feelings". In Doug Pagitt; Tony Jones (eds.) An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Grand Rapids, Michigan, US: Baker Books. pp. 141ff. ISBN 0801071569

External links

• Postmodernity and the Emerging Church Movement: Reading Room: Extensive online resources on the Emerging Church Movement (Tyndale Seminary)
• The Emerging Church, Part One 8 July 2005, PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Retrieved 29 July 2005.
• The Emerging Church, Part Two 15 July 2005, PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Retrieved 29 July 2005.
• What is the Emerging Church? - 2006 guest lecture by Dr. Scot McKnight at Westminster Theological Seminary
• Five Streams of the Emerging Church - Christianity Today article by Scot McKnight
• The Emergent Mystique - Christianity Today feature by Andy Crouch
• What Should We Think of the Emerging Church? Part One - Christian Post column by Albert Mohler
• What Should We Think of the Emerging Church? Part Two - Christian Post column by Albert Mohler
• An Interview with Tony Jones, National Coordinator of Emergent Village
• Emergent Village website

Emerging Church leaders believe that Evangelicals should let go of the Bible and reason as their anchors

In this article the issue at the heart of postmodernal evangelicalism, aka, emergent evangelicalism boils down to the kind of cosmological metaphysic one builds a foundation upon. Herein, I discovered that I didn't need a new hermeneutic of the bible or a different "economic era" ala modernity or postmodernity (passed a few years ago) or even metamodernity (today) but a non-Platonic philosophical foundation upon which to build a more complete and comprehensive Christian theology. As I discovered seven years into my investigation it was that of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy he termed the the metaphysic of organism. John Cobb built upon Whitehead and directed it towards a process-based, non-Platonic, theology to wit I and others have been working on together. Thus, the new basis for the Christian faith... as well as all religious faiths... is that of process. When down we will have a commonality of agreement around simple things such as love, global cooperation, relational being which is becoming and so forth. More can be found on this subject in the Index files on the right.

R.E. Slater

February 10, 2024

Related Articles Compiled Together as One

• Wikipedia - The Emerging Church

• Emergent Church Leaders: Who Are Alan Jones vs Tony Jones?

• Emerging Church leaders believe that Evangelicals should let go of the Bible and reason as their anchors

• [Are You] Still Evangelical, by Mark Labberton, Editor

• How Evangelicals Think of the Past Emergent Church, Part 2

• How Evangelicals Think of the Past Emergent Church, Part 1

• Common Sense Christian Wisdom from my friend Rance - Feb 2023

Responses to Evangelical Criticism

• Index - Emergent Church Era I

• Index - Emergent Church Era II

• Index - Evangelical Politics

• Index - Evangelicalism

• Index - Evangelicalism Today + Angst

• Index - Evangelicalism's Challenge

* * * * * * *

Emerging Church leaders believe that Evangelicals should let go of the Bible and reason as their anchors

Fernando Canale

During the last part of the 20th century, American Evangelicalism experienced rapid changes in worship and ministerial styles in a desperate effort to reach an increasingly secularized culture. On the surface, the Emerging Church movement appears to be a new passing fad in youth ministry. Parallel to these seemingly superficial changes in ministerial style, however, the old liberal/conservative controversy was simmering across denominational lines, creating conflicts at ministerial and grassroots levels. The inerrancy of Scripture and the apologetic efforts of previous Evangelical generations were not enough to produce an Evangelical unity within denominations.

With the passing of time, an increasing number of Evangelical leaders began to realize “that this conflict was not your average, everyday schism, but a paradigm shift of seismic proportions.”1 This conviction led Emergent leaders to re-examine critically their denominations’ “assumptions of what it means to be church. Some suggest that this ‘Great Emergence’ is part of a cyclical pattern of upheavals in the church, on a par with the ‘Great Schism’ or the ‘Great Reformation.’”2

For many observers, something epochal is underway. Phyllis Tickle has suggested that Brian McLaren is the new Luther and his book A Generous Orthodoxy is the equivalent to Luther’s 95 theses.3 According to Tickle’s socio-historical interpretation, a new form of Christianity is being born and will be added to the old forms.

This seems to suggest that the Emerging Church movement may be unleashing deep paradigmatic changes not only in American Evangelicalism but also in Protestantism and Christianity as a whole. Something inside and outside Christianity must be at work, making such a change desirable and even necessary.

Dissatisfaction

Growing discontent seems to have been brewing within the broad Evangelical coalition for a long time. Causes of dissatisfaction are many and as varied as Evangelicalism. Some are dissatisfied with the way ministers and the churches conduct their everyday business. Others feel frustrated when they see churches playing an institutional game voided of spiritual meaning. Many, probably overstating their case, believe “modern” Evangelical churches are dead.

But dissatisfaction runs even deeper. Numerous believers experience a growing confusion about Christian doctrines as presented by the fragmented views of the Evangelical community. “On the front end of analysis one could argue that the ECM [Emerging Church Movement] is merely reacting to a perception of dead religiosity, hoping to breathe life into the body of Christ. But a closer analysis shows that its reaction to established ministry and typical church life (what some of them call the ‘modern church’) involve deep theological issues and metaphysical challenges. Its response entails systemic issues much more than mere aesthetic preferences.”4

According to Emerging Church leaders, this crisis can be traced to Evangelical responses to modern philosophy. Not without reason they blame the rise of the liberal/conservative controversy that divides Evangelicals on the Fundamentalist response to modernity. Liberals responded to modernity by constructing their theological project “upon the foundation of an unassailable religious experience while conservatives look to an error-free Bible as the incontrovertible foundation.”5

This suggests that both Evangelical and Emerging Church leaders fail to realize that at a deeper level, the crisis they confront stems from the underdevelopment and limitations of Protestant thought and the failure to produce an alternate synthesis of Christian theology and practice based on Scripture alone. The very existence of the “Evangelical coalition” flows from and witnesses to this fact. “American religion,” says Phyllis Tickle, “had never had a center before, primarily because it was basically Protestant in its Christianity; and Protestantism, with its hallmark characteristic of divisiveness, has never had a center.”6

What Protestant leadership was unable to produce, laity sought to find on their own around the so-called water-cooler conversations during the 1980s. Tickle argues that out of these informal conversations taking place in the context of cultural epochal change, a center was emerging. “But what was emerging was no longer Protestant. It was no longer any ‘thing,’ actually. It was simply itself, a mélange of ‘things’ cherry-picked from each quadrant and put together—some would say cobbled together—without any original intention and certainly with no design beyond that of conversation.”7 In the process, dissatisfaction with the inherited church grew strong. For many, the “inherited church was that from which they had come and to which they, literally, now had no means of returning, let alone any desire at all to do so.”8

Not surprisingly, by the end of the 20th century, the Evangelical coalition was no longer able to contain the deep theological, ecumenical, and cultural divisions present in both the leadership and laity of American Protestantism. “Evangelical leaders became highly concerned about the future of the evangelical movement. Evangelicals began to look for clarity and unity of focus in the midst of what appeared to be an unwieldy diversity. Questions such as ‘What is evangelicalism?’ ‘Where is its center?’ and ‘Where are we going?’ began to emerge.”9

The inner spiritual, theological, and hermeneutical crisis brewing in Evangelicalism during the past two centuries can explain the need and even possibility for epochal change yet, by itself, it cannot explain its generation. Something more was needed to generate an epochal mutation in Evangelical Christianity. Arguably the advent of postmodernity provided the trigger to the rise of the Emerging Church.

Postmodernity

Prior to the growing spiritual and theological dissatisfaction in the Evangelical movement in the last two decades [80s and 90s] of the 20th century, Postmodernism was effecting epochal changes at the very core and foundations of Western civilization. Like the “Emerging Church” label, the “postmodern” label is also an umbrella designation, involving various issues and levels. For this reason, Emerging Church leaders share a growing sense that the world as we knew it is changing, and they also understand postmodernity in various ways.

Evaluation of the Emerging Church movement raises the need to “identify and understand the underlying ideas and assumptions of what has come to be called the ‘modern’ worldview, which has dominated Western culture for the past few hundred years.”10 It is also important to become familiar with “the postmodern ideas, which have become dominant in the early twenty-first century.”11 And two main levels are involved in the epochal changes that Emerging Church leaders identify as postmodernity: cultural and philosophical.

Sociologically, postmodernity names the cultural mores of Western civilization at the turn of the 21st century. For instance, the term postmodern, according to Leonard Sweet, denotes “a 40-year transition from an Information Age to a Bionomic Age that will begin no later than 2020.”12 Although he likens the force these cultural events unleash to a tsunami, like a tsunami, they are of short duration and will be replaced by others in the future.

Stanley Grenz identifies informatics (Computer Age), centerlessness, pluralism, multivalence, impurity, juxtaposition, eclecticism, the refusal to place “high” art above “pop” art, and, belief in the supernatural and extra-terrestials as some of the characteristic traits of postmodern culture.13 These values are embraced, embodied, and disseminated through television, the Internet, and rock music. At the sociological level, then, Postmodernism describes Western society at the turn of the 21st century.

Philosophically, Postmodernism names changes in the area of epistemology. Epistemology is the philosophical discipline that studies the way human beings know what they know, especially in the field of scientific research. These changes that were a long time in the making involve the demise of Foundationalism and the impossibility that human beings could experience “objective” and “universal” knowledge. Thus, postmodernists think that “the world is not simply an objective given that is ‘out there,’ waiting to be discovered and known; reality is relative, indeterminate, and participatory.”14 Consequently, postmodernists “contend that the work of scientists, like that of any other human beings, is historically and culturally conditioned and that our knowledge is always incomplete.”15

Clearly, this conviction leaves Postmodernism without a foundation for universal knowledge, that is, a knowledge that is valid and true for all human beings. To avoid the total fragmentation of society, postmodernists resort to the “community” or “society” as the basis (foundation) for rational agreement and the definition of values. Of course, by definition, society changes, and so will reason and values. Consequently, to achieve some stability, communities need to stand on their own respective traditions. In this way, “regional” truth replaces “universal” truth. Philosophically, then, Postmodernism names the switch from objective and universal reason to a communitarian and traditional reason.

But postmodernity involves an even more radical change at the metaphysical level few Emerging Church leaders have considered. Metaphysics is the philosophical discipline that interprets the nature of reality as a whole. As such it includes general and regional interpretations on the nature of existence, the former dealing with the general characteristics of any and all things real, and the latter with the general characteristics of specific entities, notably, God, humans, and the world. Finally, metaphysics also includes the interpretation of the interrelation among all things real (the system of reality as a whole).

Metaphysics provides the necessary context for understanding anything and everything. As a matter of fact, philosophical, theological, and natural sciences always assume a general interpretation of the nature of the reality or realities they interpret. More specifically, metaphysics provides the ground for theological and biblical hermeneutics. A minor change in metaphysical concepts may generate broad hermeneutical changes that will reverberate across the sciences and the culture they generate.

The rethinking of metaphysics came to full expression and articulation in the work of Martin Heidegger, one of the leading postmodern philosophers. Heidegger confirmed and further articulated Nietzsche’s “overturning of Platonism,” which has been the ruling metaphysical view since the beginnings of Western civilization. Heidegger calls this the “destruction” and “overcoming” of metaphysics.16 The “destruction” of metaphysics means the criticism and abandonment of the traditional approach to philosophy and theology, and the “overcoming” means a new interpretation of metaphysics that Heidegger advanced throughout his many works.

To put it briefly, the new metaphysics of postmodernity abandons the notion that real or ultimate reality is timeless and replaces it with the view that real or ultimate reality is temporal and historical. [Actually, the word "relational" is a better term to use than temporal and historical, ala Whitehead's process philosophy. Relationality is supra-temporal, supra-experiential, and supra-panpsychic. - re slater]. Heidegger understood the magnitude of the changes involved in his metaphysical investigation into the history and nature of metaphysics and expressed it in a series of poignant rhetorical questions. “Do we stand in the very twilight of the most monstrous transformation our planet has ever undergone, the twilight of that epoch in which earth itself hangs suspended? Do we confront the evening of a night which heralds another day? Are we ‘precursors of the day of an altogether different age’?”17

Even though postmodernity brought about epochal changes in the areas of culture, epistemology, and metaphysics, Emerging Church leaders and their Evangelical critics have been able so far to relate only to the cultural and epistemological levels, seemingly impervious to the deep metaphysical change postmodernity has brought about. [ahem, both groups never consider the metaphysical. - re slater]

Embracing Postmodernity?

Christians have always experienced the gospel within their diverse and always changing cultural, philosophical, and scientific settings. Why, then, have Evangelicals changed their relation to culture from rejection to embrace? Why are Emerging Church leaders more positive about cultural trends, philosophical doctrines, and scientific views than their predecessors? Why do Emerging Church leaders embrace postmodern culture as part of their Christian experience?

At the practical level, Emerging Church leaders embrace postmodern culture to shape the forms of liturgy and attract believers to the worship services. An obvious internal motivation for the “turn to culture” is the low attendance at church services. According to Philip Clayton, “Mainline churches are simply not attracting significant proportions of the younger population in America and there are no signs that this pattern is about to change. If for some reason all the persons in mainline churches today who are over the age of sixty-five were to disappear, two thirds of current church attendees would be gone.”18 This indicates that the secularization of Western culture that emptied churches in Europe during the 20th century has finally arrived in America. The pragmatic motivation to fill the churches, however, may be the trigger but not the ground for the Emerging Church’s turn to culture.

The primary reason for the Emerging Church’s embrace of postmodern culture is the emergence of charismatic belief and practice in Protestantism during the second half of the 20th century. A term has been coined for this process: “Charismatization.” It is used to speak of the “Pentecostalization” of Christian worship during the second part of the 20th century. Pentecostalism adapted to culture with ease. Attracting large numbers to worship services, it became a model for Evangelicals and Catholics alike who eventually adopted and followed the Pentecostal liturgical model, producing a Charismatic renewal. Not surprisingly, Charismatism has led mainline churches to adopt “new and informal worship styles, an explosion in ‘worship songs,’ a new concern for the dynamics of worship, and an increasing dislike of the traditionalism of formal liturgical worship.”19

The central claim of Pentecostalism is that “it is possible to encounter God directly and personally through the power of the Holy Spirit. God is to be known immediately and directly, not indirectly through study of a text.”20 The direct communication of the transcendent God facilitates cultural accommodation because at best it neglects and at worst rejects the principle of divine incarnation in the cultural forms of the words and the human body of Jesus Christ. When the cultural forms of divine revelation presented in Scripture are neglected or rejected, cultural accommodation not only ceases to be a problem and becomes an essential part of Christian experience.

Charismatism stands on the conviction that God relates to humans outside the realm of history and culture. Consequently, culture does not belong to the worship encounter with God but to the doxological and liturgical expressions it generates. This explains why the Emerging Church movement welcomes all cultural forms of liturgical expression as acceptable forms of Christian worship. Its openness to postmodern culture does not flow from the specific characteristics of postmodern culture but from the Charismatic openness to human culture.

Readers familiar with modern theology cannot miss the basic coincidence between the Pentecostal conception of worship as encounter and Schleiermacher’s theological interpretation of Christian experience. This coincidence is the reason that Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Emerging Christians share the same pluralistic/eclectic approach to biblical interpretation, liturgy, and spirituality; hence, the great resonance that the Emerging Church movement has achieved in a very short time.

A possible reason that Emerging Church leaders embrace postmodern relativism may be that this help to justify their rejection of modernity and dismissal of biblical inerrancy and doctrinal authority. Simultaneously, postmodern relativism helps Emergents to justify the existence of theological disagreements and doctrinal pluralism. In a way, the relativistic version of postmodernity helps to account for the fragmentation of Protestantism through the centuries. It also shows that Evangelical pluralism and eclecticism were unavoidable. Seen in this light, the Emerging Church may be the best expression of the Evangelical experience.

Yet Emerging Church leaders may be inclined to reject the postmodern view of the nature of existence because it challenges tradition. To accept this view implies not only that the metaphysical assumptions of Christian tradition are wrong but also that we should replace them with new ones. To do so unavoidably questions the reliability of tradition and the nature of the Charismatic experience of God as trustworthy foundations for Christian theology and worship.

Additionally, the limited capabilities of postmodern reason seem to indicate that a universal metaphysics might be unreachable. As Emerging Church leaders, together with their Roman Catholic and Evangelical colleagues, build on the “Grand Tradition,” they implicitly assume the classical metaphysical framework embraced by the church fathers. This fact may help to understand their failure to accept the postmodern idea of the nature of existence.

Methodological Change

Changes in method produce modifications in the way we do things. Changes in the nature of knowledge alter the way in which we understand the origin and nature of the sources on which we base our beliefs. Changes in the nature of existence affect our understanding of the basic ideas we assume to understand the sources of our beliefs. Consequently, in Christian theology, changes in method affect ministry, mission, and liturgy. Changes in the nature of knowledge impact mainly the area of doctrines. Changes in the nature of existence touch mainly the area of understanding and meaning.

For Emerging Church leaders, change in ministerial and liturgical methodology centers on “recovering the gospel from the clutches of a consumer culture” by using postmodern deconstructionist methodologies.21 At this level, changes in the church take place in the areas of ministry, liturgy, and mission. In these activities, Emerging Church leaders want to distance themselves and overcome the practices of the traditional and pragmatic evangelicals of the 20th century. This level closely relates to the cultural level of postmodern change described above.

The equivalent rubrics “Vintage Christianity” and “Ancient-Future” capture the essence of the methodological level of change in the Emerging Church movement. These terms name the method by which Emerging leaders face the future with the resources of ancient church traditions. In this sense the Emerging Church movement is conservative even while embracing methodological change. Its application brings the past into the future by “drawing on the wisdom of the ages for the current work of the kingdom.”22 Emerging church leaders and even some Evangelical leaders believe postmodern times require them to make deep changes in the method of ministry especially in relation to spirituality and discipleship.

Although one may assume that changes at the methodological level are disconnected with theology and doctrine, Robert Webber’s summary of the main components involved in the Emerging Church movement reminds us that such disconnection is impossible. According to him, the main components of Emerging Church change at the methodological level are: (1) a missiological understanding of the church, (2) spiritual formation, (3) cultural awareness, and, (4) theological reflection. By explaining that these components are interdependent and mutually condition one another, Webber makes clear that any attempt to isolate the methodological level from theological reflection naively ignores reality. He correctly links methodological change with theological change. On the one hand, then, the actual content that new methodological views on ministry and liturgy may bring into the church is directly conditioned by the theological ideas that pastors assume. On the other hand, to make methodological changes at the ministerial and liturgical levels without simultaneously making changes at the doctrinal-theological level is impossible.

Emerging Church writers assume theology to be “a communal reflection on God’s mission that arises out of God’s people as they seek to discern God’s work in history and his present actions in the life of the community.”23 According to them, it is not the Bible but the deep past of Christian tradition that should open the future of Evangelical Christianity.

Additionally, because “the practice of ministry is already theology—theology in action,”24 Emerging leaders are able to articulate the inner link between classical and modern theological traditions, on one side, and the experiential nature of Charismatic Christianity on the other. They see this combination to be pregnant with possibilities and ecumenical promise.

Theological Change

The theological and doctrinal level of change in the Emerging Church centers on the role of Scripture in the understanding of Christian belief and practice. At this level changes take place mainly as reinterpretation of the role of Scripture and the teachings of the church. In this area, Emerging Church leaders want to distance themselves from the theological approach of American Evangelicalism during the past two centuries based on the inerrancy of Scripture advanced by the Old Princetonian theologians. This level is deeper than the methodological one and consequently produces a more significant mutation in the Evangelical community.

A notable characteristic of the Emerging Church often missed by both their Evangelical detractors and emulators is the focus on theological reflection at the grassroots level. An increasingly educated and sophisticated society wants to know what they believe. They want to know the basis on which pastors teach them what is truth.

Emergent leaders are getting the message and responding to the challenge. Most of them, however, are working at great disadvantage because their Evangelical denominations have not prepared them for such a task, neither spiritually nor theologically. Besides, many have experienced Christianity as part of their own denominational culture rather than from serious theological and philosophical reflection on biblical teachings. Doctrines are part of their cultural and religious “inheritance” but not of their thinking and spiritual patterns.

As Emerging Church leaders attempt to explain their beliefs to others, they discover the obvious inconsistencies of their own biblical and doctrinal understandings, as well as the theological divisions existing within the Evangelical community. Moreover, they realize the need to link doctrines, biblical understanding, and experience into a unified net or system of meaning and experience. In their personal and ministerial search for theological meaning they are not prepared to accept without question or explanation dogmatic answers from their mentors or denominations. Instead, they are learning for the first time the exhilarating feeling theological discoveries bring to themselves and the community.

Not surprisingly, at times their theological writings resemble a diary of their theological pilgrimage. Brian McLaren’s writings give testimony to this “testimonial” or “conversational” method of doing theology. Such a procedure is more than a way to communicate truth. It is a path leading to the discovery of truths other Christians before them had embraced. Through this conversational methodology, Emerging Church leaders are reaching conclusions on doctrinal issues like the atonement, justification by faith, the kingdom of God, and hell that their Evangelical peers regard as heretical and therefore unacceptable.

Doctrinal change in the Emerging Church movement, however, goes deeper than mere doctrinal divergence. It involves a paradigmatic shift in the role Scripture plays in the construction of Christian teachings. Phyllis Tickle correctly estimates that at the center of all paradigmatic shifts lies the perennial question of authority. In the Protestant Reformation, authority shifted from the Pope to the sola Scriptura principle. But Scripture required interpretation that led to denominational and theological fragmentation. And theological fragmentation eventually generated theological and spiritual dissatisfaction.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, a number of interrelated factors contributed to a progressive questioning of the viability of the sola Scriptura principle among Evangelicals. They caused many of the most diehard Protestants to grow suspicious of the Scripture-and-Scripture-only principle. Besides, in an ecumenical age, Evangelicals are weary of the perennial theological fragmentation of Protestantism and are becoming convinced that Christianity cannot stand on Scripture alone.

An important factor accelerating the shift from the Protestant sola Scriptura as principle of authority to the Roman Catholic spiritual experience guided by tradition principle advanced by the Emerging Church movement is the rise of Pentecostalism. Remarkably, Evangelical responses to the Emerging Church ignore this factor. However, Phyllis Tickle explains that Pentecostalism directly contradicts the sola Scriptura principle of the Reformation, thereby providing Emerging Church leaders with a strong religious base to question and dismiss the sola Scriptura principle.

This experiential base fits well with the sheer frustration growing out of centuries of theological fragmentation in Protestant theology and practice. To Emerging Church leaders, this fact unavoidably indicates that a genuine theology from Scripture alone is impossible.

Consequently, to overcome theological and ministerial fragmentation, a new comprehensive way to do theology had to be found. To this end, Pentecostalism became instrumental because by fitting well with the Evangelical experience, modern and postmodern epistemologies, and Roman Catholic theological tradition, it naturally emerged as the efficient cause, bringing them together in a new synthesis for a new age.

In this context, postmodernity’s criticism of reason and the non-foundationalist epistemology became scholarly tools for Emerging Church leaders to reject the Evangelical belief in an inerrant Scripture as authority. The same tools point them to the community and its tradition as the new locus of authority for the church.

By accepting tradition and community as the principle of authority, the Emerging Church is embracing the same as that on which the Roman Catholic Church stands. This seems to indicate that, at the theological level, the Emerging Church movement heralds the end of the Protestant Reformation.

Initial Evangelical reactions to the Emerging Church movement indicate its strongest opposition focuses precisely on the role of Scripture in theological construction. However, Tickle thinks history is on the side of the Emerging Church movement away from the sola Scriptura principle and predicts its eventual demise and the emergence of a new principle of authority. Yet, when we realize that the alternative to the sola Scripturaprinciple is tradition and community, it is difficult to envision them as “new.” Instead, it seems that the “old” Roman Catholic principle from which the Reformation emerged is carrying the day after five centuries of controversy. But, even if the Emerging Church may come to define the new Evangelical center from tradition instead of from Scripture, thereby bringing the Protestant Reformation to an end, would a remnant of biblical Protestantism survive?

Hermeneutical Change

The hermeneutical level of change in the Emerging Church centers on the role that philosophy plays in the interpretation of Scripture and the understanding of Christian beliefs and practices. At this level, changes take place mainly as reinterpretation that exegetes, theologians, and ministers assume when they engage in their respective trades. In this area, Emerging Church leaders seek for the interpretive perspective they need to construct their theological and ministerial views.

Robert Webber testifies to the existence of an anti-philosophical bias in American Fundamentalism, the “all you need is the Bible” appropriation of the sola Scriptura principle in Evangelical seminaries. Neo-Evangelical pragmatism did not do much to reverse this state of affairs. Emerging Church leaders, then, react against the Evangelical neglect of the philosophical foundations of their faith. By so doing they grant a positive role to philosophy that contradicts the sola Scriptura principle on which Evangelicalism stands.

In the hermeneutical analysis, a fateful inconsistency in Evangelicalism comes to view. On one side, a large number of Evangelicals appear to believe that their doctrines and hermeneutical principles stand on the basis of Scripture alone. Wayne Grudem, an often-quoted representative of this approach, maintains that “systematic theology involves collecting and understanding all the relevant passages in the Bible on various topics and then summarizing their teachings clearly so that we know what to believe about each topic.”25 Within his methodological matrix, the role of philosophy in systematic theology is minimal. “Philosophical study helps us understand right and wrong thought forms common in our culture and others.”26 On the other side, a large sector of leading Evangelical theologians believes that their understanding of Christian doctrines stand on a multiplicity of theological sources among which philosophy and science play important hermeneutical roles.

Interestingly, both Emerging Church and neo-Evangelicals leaders agree in their disapproval of Grudem’s approach. According to Bolt, “Evangelical theological method should not be restricted to summarizing biblical doctrine. Such an understanding of the theological task today fails as claim to truth about God, a universal claim desperately needed today.”27

These confronted positions beg the question about whether neo-evangelicals embrace the sola Scriptura principle as the principle of authority in doctrinal and practical matters. If they do, then, we are facing the existence of different views of understanding the same principle. We cannot dismiss either position by using slogans and labels. They require careful reflection, especially for Evangelicals facing epochal change in this generation.

The agreement between neo-Evangelicals and Emerging Church leaders about the multiplicity of theological sources is momentous and has a long history. Arguably, the Evangelical theological synthesis articulated by Luther and Calvin never stood on the sola Scriptura principle but rather implicitly on the multiplicity-of-sources matrix. As they drew heavily on Augustine, their theological synthesis unintentionally assumed principles of Neo-Platonism, a reality neo-Evangelicals tend to deny strongly.

Perhaps the so-called Radical Reformation came closer to building on the sola Scriptura principle, yet, it never generated a philosophical and theological synthesis. However, the continuity of Protestant theology with medieval Roman Catholic Theology transpired soon after the reformation during the period of Protestant Orthodoxy (1560-1620).These simple historical facts cast suspicion over the neo-Evangelical claim that its doctrines spring from the sola Scriptura principle. Perhaps neo-Evangelicalism owes more to the Radical Reformation than to the Magisterial Reformers such as Luther and Calvin. Yet they are also dependent on the latter for their main doctrinal trusts.

Conclusion

The changes that American Evangelicalism is experiencing at the beginning of the 21st century are not superficial but deep and paradigmatic, touching its nature and destiny. These changes stem from deep grass-roots dissatisfaction with the spiritual, doctrinal, and ministerial status of Evangelical denominations. Because Evangelical theology and ministry are not reaching young generations of churchgoers, growing dissatisfaction goes far beyond aesthetic issues to include theological, metaphysical, and systemic topics. This situation uncovers a long crisis of theological and ministerial leadership that can be traced back at least to the failure to produce a theological synthesis of biblical philosophy and theology that could answer the questions and challenges presented by classical philosophies and modern science.

While the Evangelical experience is slowly but surely cracking under the pressure of inner spiritual, theological, and hermeneutical crises, the world around it is crumbling under the pressure of philosophical, scientific, and technological changes. Without inner or external anchors to guide its destiny and mission, rapid changes threaten to further fragment the never cohesive existence of the Evangelical movement.

To save Protestantism and advance its mission, Emerging Church leaders believe, unlike their predecessors, that Evangelicals should let go of the Bible and reason as their anchors and embrace postmodern social, epistemological changes. In their minds this amounts to the postmodern reformation of the church, even the next reformation. In this process, the Protestant Reformation based on Scripture appears to be vanishing before our eyes.

 

Fernando Canale, Ph.D., is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

 

Notes and References

1. Ken Howard, “A New Middle Way? Surviving and Thriving in the Coming Religious Realignment,” Anglican Theological Review 92:1 (Summer 2010):104.

 

2. Ibid.

 

3. Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2012).

 

4 Mark Liederbach and Alvin L. Reid, The Convergent Church: Missional Worshipers in and Emerging Culture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 2009), p. 21.

 

5. John R. Franke, “Generous Orthodoxy and a Changing World: Foreword to A Generous Orthodoxy,” in Brian McClaren, ed., A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2004), p. 11.

 

6. Tickle, The Great Emergence, op. cit., p. 134.

 

7. Ibid.

 

8. Ibid., p. 136.

 

9. Ibid. pp. 40, 41.

 

10. Ibid., p. 34.

 

11. Ibid.

 

12. Leonard Sweet, Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim in the New Millennium Culture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1999), p. 17.

 

13. Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996), pp. 8, 9, 19-33.

 

14. Ibid., p. 7.

 

15. Ibid., p. 8.

 

16. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 41-49.

 

17. __________, Early Greek Thinking, Daved Farell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi, trans. (San Francisco: Harper, 1975), p. 17.

 

18. Philip Clayton, Transforming Christian Theology for Church and Society (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), p. 46.

 

19. Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution—A History From the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 420.

 

20. Ibid., p. 431.

 

21. Ed Stetzer, “The Emergent/Emerging Church: A Missiological Perspective,” The Journal of Baptist Theology and Ministry 5:2 (2007):56.

 

22. Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2002), p. 240.

 

23. Ibid., p. 241.

 

24. Ibid.

 

25. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester, U.K.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1995), p. 21.

 

26. Ibid.

 

27. John Bolt, “Sola Scriptura as an Evangelical Theological Method?” in Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald L. Gleason, eds., Reforming or Conforming: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), p. 89.

[Are You] Still Evangelical, by Mark Labberton, Editor

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Still Evangelical?: Insiders Reconsider

Political, Social, and Theological Meaning

Written by Mark Labberton

Narrated by Bob Souer

Audiobook - 5 hrs

About this audiobook

Evangelicalism in America has cracked, split on the shoals of the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, leaving many wondering if they want to be in or out of the evangelical tribe.

The contentiousness brought to the fore surrounds what it means to affirm and demonstrate evangelical Christian faith amidst the messy and polarized realities gripping our country and world.

Who or what is defining the evangelical social and political vision? Is it the gospel or is it culture? For a movement that has been about the primacy of Christian faith, this is a crisis.

This collection of essays was gathered by Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, who provides an introduction to the volume. What follows is a diverse and provocative set of perspectives and reflections from evangelical insiders who wrestle with their responses to the question of what it means to be evangelical in light of their convictions.

Contributors include:

• Shane Claiborne, Red Letter Christians

• Jim Daly, Focus on the Family

• Mark Galli, Christianity Today

• Lisa Sharon Harper, FreedomRoad.us

• Tom Lin, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

• Karen Swallow Prior, Liberty University

• Soong-Chan Rah, North Park University

• Robert Chao Romero, UCLA

• Sandra Maria Van Opstal, Grace and Peace Community

• Allen Yeh, Biola University

• Mark Young, Denver Seminary

Referring to oneself as evangelical cannot be merely a congratulatory self-description. It must instead be a commitment and aspiration guided by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

What now are Christ's followers called to do in response to this identity crisis?

https://www.everand.com/book/682932909/Still-Evangelical-Insiders-Reconsider-Political-Social-and-Theological-Meaning

Allen Yeh: Still Evangelical [The Biola Hour]

Biola University   |   Mar 21, 2018

Dr. Allen Yeh - missiologist, professor of intercultural studies, author of Polycentric Missiology, and contributor to Still Evangelical? - joins us to discuss the term Evangelical and its PR problem. His expertise in global Christianity helps frame the conversation and mirror what we might lack in Western Christianity. Continue the conversation and find more episodes of The Biola Hour at https://www.biola.edu/spiritual-devel...

 

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Related Articles Compiled Together as One

• Wikipedia - The Emerging Church

• Emergent Church Leaders: Who Are Alan Jones vs Tony Jones?

• Emerging Church leaders believe that Evangelicals should let go of the Bible and reason as their anchors

• [Are You] Still Evangelical, by Mark Labberton, Editor

• How Evangelicals Think of the Past Emergent Church, Part 2

• How Evangelicals Think of the Past Emergent Church, Part 1

• Common Sense Christian Wisdom from my friend Rance - Feb 2023

Responses to Evangelical Criticism

• Index - Emergent Church Era I

• Index - Emergent Church Era II

• Index - Evangelical Politics

• Index - Evangelicalism

• Index - Evangelicalism Today + Angst

• Index - Evangelicalism's Challenge