The Emergent Church – Perhaps you’ve heard that phrase thrown around your Bible College, the foyer of your church, on radio talk shows or you may have no idea what I’m talking about because you’ve never heard of it before. That’s okay, neither had I until a few months ago when one of my professors briefly vented about the evils of the Emergent church. I’m pretty sure no one in class knew what he was talking about, most were probably still half asleep – I think I was...
Fast forward a few months to last week...
Mom tells me dad is reading a new book, I see it on the coffee table and it looks cool so I ask him about it. (Yeah, yeah, you should never judge a book by its cover, I know. But I have a terrible habit of picking up books that look cool and then reading them just because I like how they look. Oddly enough, many of them turn out to be marriage books…I’m not married??) Dad and I start talking about this book and he tells me a little about it and so I decide to steal it from him and read it myself.
What IS the Emergent church? What is the church emerging from? I’ve not found this stated anywhere specifically but I assume that this generation is moving from the traditional church and emerging into something new and different. That’s what the emergent church is all about. In Why We’re Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck they have a list of things that might let you know if you are emergently minded or not. For example;
“If you listen to U2, Moby or Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu; if you don’t like George W. Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage; if you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business and no one may be there anyway; if you are into bohemian, goth, rave, or indie; if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic; if you’ve ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths, candles, Play-Doh, chalk-drawings, couches or beanbags (your youth group doesn’t count); if you loathe words like linear, propositional, rational, machine, and hierarchy and use words like ancient-future, jazz, mosaic, matrix, missional, vintage, and dance; if you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naïve, and rigid; if you want to be the church and not just go to the church; if you believe that doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus – if all or most of this torturously long sentence describes you, then you might be an emergent Christian.”
(And I edited that list; it’s actually about two and a half pages long.)
I was surprised to find that a lot of things in their long list did apply to me. I didn’t know I was leaning toward the emergent bent, but apparently I am. Then I kept reading….
I did not much enjoy reading the chapters written by Pastor Kevin DeYoung as they read more like a Bible College text book; chocked full of big words with simple meanings and quotations from dead reformists. (There are more endnotes for just ONE of his chapters than for one of my term papers). In fact, even with one year of Bible College under my belt, I had a hard time understanding or deriving a direct meaning from his chapters. I agree with some of the foundational things that DeYoung has to say but it was hard to retain much respect for him, or even any interest, due to his content and constant belittling, and mockery of the emergent church, (this after stating he didn’t want to bash his Christian brothers) and many shaky quotations of Rob Bell (a favorite author of mine).
That was my first impression…. But as I kept reading and slowly let go of my biases and prejudice against a man I had predetermined not to like, I discovered that DeYoung is just like me, willing to stand up and fight/defend what he believes is the TRUTH. He doesn’t believe that the Emergent church has the Truth, and I think he may be right.
Ted Kluck’s chapters were more enjoyable and easier to understand. He writes like a blogger which is something this generation has become comfortable with. I personally like that style best in non-fiction books because it’s more like talking with the person.
Again, what IS the Emergent church? According to this book it’s a movement that the leaders-who-don’t-want-to-be-known-as-leaders, call a “conversation”. They say that they are redefining how they “do church” and everyone is welcome to contribute to the conversation about how it should be done. In reality there’s a lot of soft squishiness about the movement and not much that’s solid and easily grabbed on to. But they do have some really good ideas.
The Emergent church wants to move away from the traditional but while doing so they seem to focus more on shock value and self-help theology than anything else. I believe that they are right in realizing that many churches today are not meeting the needs of people (Christian’s are some of the most miserable people I’ve met), and this fact is reinforced by how quickly people are flocking to places like Mosaic church in LA and Rob Bell’s own Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Personally I like the whole lets-redo-church idea and I tend to lean towards the Emergent ideals of more love, color, change, creativity, refreshing, difference and celebration but if gaining those things goes hand in hand with kicking out doctrinal truths like the evils of abortion, the wrongs of homosexual orientation, the blurring of lines between truth and feeling… if it’s all about a spiritual journey and not the ultimate destination then the Emergent church is not something that I want to support.
As with most things in life, I believe it all comes down to motives. Are people running to the Emergent churches because they are angry, hurt or bored with their former congregations? Or are they going there because they see new ways to reach people that weren’t effectively reached before? Or are they just more entertained?
One of my biggest concerns now is how many people may wander to the Emergent church because their own church is too stuck in a rut, stuck in the past, or stuck on tradition to see that there ARE things that could be different, changes that could be made. There’s a lot of cool stuff out there and the Emergent church has discovered and embraced that. While they might have thrown away absolute truth (since they may never find it if they keep taking these life-long journeys towards finding it when they aren’t sure if it even exists), they do have some things right. Things like unconditional love and acceptance. But the thing about love is - if you love someone you can accept them, but if you really love them, then you love them too much to let them stay in their sin. I hope that people would love me that much. God did.
This is where another problem comes is, Freedom in Christ is something the Emergent church is big on. They claim their freedom to do what they want because they are set free by Jesus. That’s a wonderful idea but not when you run wild with it. I am not opposed to alcoholic beverages consumed responsibly (as in; you are of age, you don’t get drunk, you don’t drink and drive… etc.) and smoking is not a sin, just a really bad idea. But when your church movement is known for coolness, beer, espresso, cigarettes, ambiguity, tolerance, experience and love… you have to wonder if it’s a good idea. Or if it’s just a remake of the 1970’s.
My good friend Jack, with whom I mainly discuss philosophical aspects of life, books and Christianity, told me that he thinks this emergent church trend will die off in twenty years or so. I believe that I highly agree with him. Can something so insubstantial last very long? If it does disappear, I hope that we hold on to the best of it. That we learn from it and incorporate the best of its parts into some of our dying churches that cling to hellfire and brimstone, strict hymnal usage and the unwritten no-jeans in church rule.
In conclusion, I’ve begun to wonder if the Emergent church is this generation’s rebellion disguised as deeper spirituality. As was mentioned in the long list of you-might-be-emergent-if, many of us grew up in very conservative Christian homes and once we got to college or out in the world those beginnings seemed legalistic, naïve, and rigid to us. Is this our way of trying to provide a different beginning for our kids? Our friends? Ourselves…? But at what cost? You may think it’s overdramatic but how many people will go to hell because we (or the Emergent church) told them that sin doesn’t matter, it’s all about being who you are and living a good life. It seems to me that the Emergent church’s biggest message is “if you just live well, trying to be like Jesus, then you’ll probably make it to heaven.” When was the “if you’re a good enough person God will love you enough to let you into heaven” message EVER an accepted form of evangelism??? And show me where it’s advocated in the Bible.
I love the friends I have whom I believe are involved with the Emergent church, I also love Rob Bell’s books and Donald Miller. These are creative, innovative people with a dream they are trying to make into a lifestyle. But Truth has to fit in there somewhere. You cannot just float along in life on a cloud, drifting from one spiritual “experience” to another. There comes a time when you have to look around and see if your “experiences” and “journeys” are really getting you anywhere. Or, are you still in the same place you’ve always been? Kluck makes a good point in one of his chapters about the difference between experience and fruit. You can have as many spiritual experiences as you want, there’s nothing wrong with that, but if there is no fruit in your life, in my life, then there is no point. And we’ve been told that trees that bear no fruit will be cut down and burned.
In the Epilogue the author states: “I realized a number of years ago that it didn’t matter if I was against all the things I should be against, if I wasn’t for anything.” I love that statement because I have recently come to the same conclusion. I can rant about communion, proclaim my freedom in Christ to do what I want and I can sit in church and make sarcastic comments about every point of the service. But if I’m not FOR anything, then what is the point of my existence? The other day I wondered what had happened to my passion, the kind of passion that drives your life. I realized that it was gone and I’d replaced it with this second-rate kind of life where I wondered around with no purpose but just generally had a good time. I’m tired of that. I’m not suddenly going to get involved with three youth groups, volunteer at soup kitchens every weekend and spend all night studying the Bible, (That’s just too radical for me; plus, I’ve tried that, it’s like the other extreme. Extremes are not always good.), but I want to change. I want to combine who I am, who I was and who I should be all into one. It’s a life long process but I don’t need to wait to start it, I can start now. And it has a destination at the end of the journey; Christ-likeness.
Other than reading this book and a few others by Emergent leaders, I’ve only talked with my Dad and Jack about the emergent church. I’d like to hear what you think/know. I may be wrong about some of this, but as I stated above, it’s just my opinion. Opinions should be subject to change if better and truer information is presented.
So, let me know… what do you think? And what do you know?
