10-03-2008 17:56

pastor

I guess someone is there to reply . So, this will be a long post, I hope it is helpful. 
 
I know what you mean about the Reformed tradition. We are on the same team here. I am in the tradition of Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, as well as modern men such as DA Carson, Wayne Grudem, etc. 
 
There are many within the "emerging" movement who have become cultural relativists, really have abandoned the core truths of Christianity . 
 
As to the differences between "emerging" and "emergent" and the skunk analogy, the distiction is more important than you seem to realize and a failure to make that distiction harms the kingdom and the mission of God, especially when people read your posts and draw conclusions from your opinions.  
 
The "Emergent" men and women are the ones you and I would agree are rejecting Christianity. They have formed their own website (www.emergentvillage.org) and are really trying to "re-invent" the faith, bringing everything into question, not just our orthopraxy, but our orthodoxy. However, that is a small number of people within the unbrella of "emerging". 
 
As I stated in my original comments, the real question being asked is "what does it mean to be a Kingdom people, a church, in a post-christian, postmodern world?" The cold hard facts are that in America, the church is hemmoraging members, especially the 18-29 age range. I can tell you that here in the NW (Seattle area), only 6% of this age range attends any kind of weekly church service, and that includes the liberal wacko churches, so the number is really less than that. In a region of 5 million people. This demographic represents the people who will lead our nation into the future, lead our churches and raise our kids. And they are going to be doing it without Jesus even on the radar. We believe that is because Church as it is practiced now as an institution is more irrelevant than it has ever been. So we need to ask what forms need to change without compromising the "Jude 3" core truths. Men and women, followers of Jesus, are trying to figure this out, and answers are "EMERGING" (that is where the term originated). It is not a new way of doing church like Purpose Driven/Seeker-sensitive, it is not to make things cool and edgy so young people will bring their friends. It is simply a growing number of people dissatisfied with what Chrstianity has become and want to get back to the mission Jesus gave us in Matt 28, but realizing at the same time that what worked 5-10 years ago in contextualizing the gospel does not work now, though the message is timeless. 
 
An easy way to understand this movement is to think of it in 4 "streams". You have the "emerging evangelicals" who are your basic evangelicals trying to tweak the forms of our churches to make them more cool and relevant to our culture. They generally are younger churches, or "church within and church" type things. There are maybe a few minor points of theology we would not see eye to eye on, BUT THEY ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!  
 
Then there are the "house church" types who maintain that the real model of the church was small, loose knit communities of christians on mission together and that larger churches miss the point of Kingdom people in community. They generally are very experimental with their praxis, and their forms of church generally look much different than traditional contemporary evangelical churches. While I personally disagree with some of their biblical conclusions on the nature of the primitive church, THEY ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!  
 
Another stream is what I pastor in. That is the "Reformed stream" where we hold in a closed fist the Jude 3 truths of the faith and hold in an open hand everything else as it relates to the missio dei. We focus on multi-generational, multi-ethnic gatherings, hold our forms of praxis as very flexible based on the culture God has called us to (ie ministry would look much different in a retirement community and amongst chain smoking indie rockers), and planting other churches to minister the most effectively to a society which has rejected Christianity. Again, WE ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!  
 
The final stream is the one mentioned above which has rejected the core truths of Christianity. 
 
So again, I would go back to my original thoughts and say that you really ought to understand a movement before you lump everyone in a movement based on ignorance. Especially since there are people who are reading this who will have their opinions be shaped by what you say and post. 
 
 
Since Christians seem to like to nit-pick each other over lesser things, we in our church planting network (www.a29.org), the Acts 29 Network, have concluded that you are right on in your ministry when you are shot at by both sides of Christianity. The liberal end thinks you are not doing enough to reach the culture, and the conservative end like yourselves have concluded that we are too worldly and apostate. All the while people leave the church, and God's vehicle for delivering the Gospel (the church in all its glory) becomes more and more irrelevant. Sigh. 
 
Matt

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