Emerging Conversations
Posted by tom | Oct 1, 2008When I spoke at Penn the other night, a student wondered whether I was advocating the Emergent Church Movement. Why? Because of my relationship to InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) and my passing around of The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time. As I've always understood the emerging in ESN as developing (i.e., from undergrad to grad to postdoc to faculty), I had never thought of the association. And I was passing around Tom Sine's book in relationship to a story regarding Randy Pausch's life, one in which he left a lecture by Tom Sine. This led to a brief conversation regarding the Emerging Church.
And this hasn't been my only recent conversation on the topic, so when I came across Scot McKnight's McLaren Emerging: In his last two books, Brian McLaren presents more clearly than ever his vision of the gospel, the article caught my attention and I figured that posting a link to it would be a great idea as McKnight is as close as I get to the Emerging Church (unless one starts exploring Newbigin and the missional church movement). I particularly disagree with those who claim to return to the Bible by setting aside all of God's work through his people across time/geography or seek to piece together various Church practices without any recognition/interest of their original purpose/meaning, and/or those which question the centrality of the cross in the overall Biblical story (creation, fall, Abrahamic people of God, birth/life/death/resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the Kingdom of God/people of God, new heaven/new earth). Here's a quote from the article:
McLaren then becomes thoroughly apocalyptic: the three crises we face compose a "suicide machine" that threatens the existence of the world—the prosperity system, the security system, and the equity system. Each has its own characteristic dysfunction: unhindered economic growth, unredemptive violence, and the rich/poor conflict. They are part of the reigning secular framing story—one that Western Christians subconsciously believe in. ... I wish more believers would follow McLaren's cue and think about the implications of the Bible for global and systemic issues; that Christians would return to the Bible and ask, "What, then, is the gospel?" as well as its necessary follow-up, "How do we live out the gospel today?" For far too many, the gospel preached is not leading to any serious engagement with the global crises of our time. But that doesn't mean I don't have questions about McLaren's theology.
If you're interested in the topic, I'd encourage you to read the article and consider the questions McKnight raises regarding Clarity, the Cross, Kingdom and Church. By-the-way, if you haven't already, check out McKnight's excellent blog Jesus Creed and just try to keep up with some of his posts and various respondents.
Thanks for the link to the article. Very interesting reading. Yes, I've been asked about the emerging church as well in conjunction with ESN. I come from a church tradition that claimed to "return to New Testament Christianity," only to a) assume a great deal of the content of post-Biblical councils in its theology and b) very quickly establish its own set of traditions. If McKnight's take on McLaren et al. is accurate, I'm surprised they don't realize that they aren't the first - or even the fiftieth - church movement to attempt to "reclaim" Jesus for their own.
Posted by Mike, Oct 1 2008, 13:27