Emerging Church: Again

Reachout trust, the Christian ministry to the cults, has weighed in on the Emerging Church debate. In their spring quarterly newsletter they present the first part of a two-part article on Emerging Church. Let me say straight away that Reachout are usually fairly circumspect in their approach, and when they offer criticism it is likely to be after careful consideration of the evidence, Biblical and otherwise, and even then they don’t take their criticisms to automatically condemn a group as sub-Christian. This seems to be the pattern with their consideration of Emerging Church, and their article expresses reservations rather than outright condemnation of EC. For these reasons I usually respect the opinions of Reachout. Reachout’s measured tone would be well emulated by some other so called “discernment ministries”, ministries that consider anything less than their own views on a subject as tantamount to blasphemy.

Reachout’s article expresses two reservations. The first is based on the observation that The Church, by definition, consists of the converted and if that is the case then what goes on within the church is primarily directed to the ecclesia (that is, converted people), and hence Church is defined as the “communion of the saints”. Thus, Reachout reasons, church should not be a “postmodern” environment for generation Xers with the consequence that services become entertainment rather than God centered services. But whilst it is true that much of what goes on in church is for those who are already convinced believers, Christains cannot operate in a cultural vacuum and will therefore use the language, styles, issues and thought forms of their surrounding culture, and will naturally communicate using the media on which they themselves have been reared and with which they feel comfortable. Moreover, a church is at liberty to use its own premises as a venue for outreach and therefore if an EC church is adept at using its immediate locale to successfully communicate the Gospel within the parameters of its culture, I fail to see why that should be interpreted as just entertainment. Although I think Reachout has a point here in that in giving attention to the means of communion one can loose site of God being the focus of that communion, I feel that as long this hazard is acknowledged then the force of Reachout’s criticism need not apply.

The other concern of Reachout is Emerging Church’s emphasis on experimentation. Clearly the creation itself has an experimental component: God’s creatures, such as ourselves, experiment: we seek, we explore, we find, we hypothesize, we essay, we select, we test, we reject, we knock on doors, we update our knowledge, and correct our knowledge; these are all legitimate activities and, for me, come under the rubric of experimental behavior. However, Reachout quotes EC pundit Michael Moynagh whom, in his book “Emerging-Church.intro”, first remarks on the created trait of experimentation but then goes onto to say:

“Some theologians would go further. They would say that the experimentation we see in the creation reflects an aspect of God himself. God is an experimenter”
This latter point takes us into very deep theological water indeed, but I have say that at the moment I share Reachout’s concern that if this concept of an “experimenting God” is applied in anything other than a metaphorical way then it does seem to conflict with traditional views on the omniscience, omnipotence, and timelessness of God.

I eagerly await the next Reachout article. For me EC is certainly an area of serious study and my own feelings are still mixed. On the one hand the function of EC has been remedial in counterbalancing, challenging, and exposing some of the unauthentic excesses of evangelicalism. Moreover, I feel that a constructive and sympathetic attitude should be taken toward EC’s interesting experiments with church and church worship. And yet on the other hand I am very much a Grand narrative man myself and consequently I fear that a too close identification of EC with Postmodernism may lead to the loss of the doctrinal shape of Christianity. That doctrine is like the exoskeleton of an organism, and acts as a protective cover and gives the Church a requisite rigidity of form. In reacting against imbalances EC may be in danger of overreacting and thereby be prone to a loss of balance itself.

Ricks Ricks Ricks Warren

My own church is currently working through Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Church”. When I heard that we were set to do this series my first thought was: “Ah! I wonder if this is going to be another formulaic presentation of Christianity, suffused with an upbeat American tone and riddled with ‘do this and you’ll get that’ remedies. Easy as ABC…!” Well, the book is nowhere near as bad as that, of course, and it does raise many interesting and important issues. But best of all is that when one looks into the Rick Warren phenomenon it opens up a window on the hot scene of American religious infighting – witness the picture of Rev Rick Warren accompanying this post, a picture I found on one lurid and hysterical web site that screamed hell and damnation to the good Rev all over my screen!

The controversy surrounding Rick Warren reached my ears sometime ago via Reachout Trust, the Richmond (England) based group that watches the cults. Much of the controversy, it seems, is sourced in America where evangelical subcultures vie with one another in a seething sea of claim and counter claim. To date my own contact with Rick Warren’s textual presence suggests that he holds fairly conservative doctrines that I do not myself find particularly disagreeable.

The American Evangelical furor over Warren seems not so much due to his doctrine as it is his association with causes hated by the American evangelical right. For example: his signing of the Global Warming Pact, his connections with the United Nations; his inviting liberal democrat Barack Obama to Saddleback to talk on AIDS, his sharing of platforms with New Age speakers, his use of suspect Bible translations, and his soft peddling of fire and brimstone preaching, have all lead critics to attempt to trace Warren’s taste for bad company back to doctrinal unorthodoxy. Out and out unorthodoxy has been difficult to pin on Warren and these critics, unable to square his apparent doctrinal conservatism with the sympathetic noises he makes to those beyond the conservative political pale, have simply thrown their hands up and accused him of “flip-flopping”. Perhaps a lot of it is down to Warren having a temperamental disposition toward inclusiveness rather than confrontation – a trait I have seen in some other Christian leaders. But whatever, for Rick its “guilt by association” in a country where the quality of one’s of faith is often measured by an expectation that the ramifications of Christianity inevitably lead to a right wing slant to one’s politics.

The following is a quote from one anti-Warren web site I visited and is evidence of just how vicious evangelical infighting can get. At the end of a garish and vulgar looking web page dedicated to rubbishing Warren it concluded with:

“Rick Warren has NO FAITH in Jesus Christ, only in his precious purpose-driven program and Peace Plan. His dirty, rotten, stinking, gnat-covered fruit is an abomination and stench to the Lord.”

These “discernment” ministries, as they usually think of themselves, tend to cancel out in a welter of mutual criticism. However, they are also in danger of canceling out true Christianity in the process. Thank God for the Open Gospel, which provides us with the conceptual framework to make sense of just why Christianity is so often plagued by fragmented squabbling factions. Most amazing of all is that God gives these screaming hysterical believers the grace that they are so unwilling to offer to their fellow Christains. Either that or Christianity is false.