What is the Emergent Church?

I have mentioned the term "Emergent Church" to several Christian friends and they are not familiar with term so I thought it's important to define it. Quite a few churches now are experimenting with some of the practices of the emergent church movement which at first come across as good ideas but can be very deceptive. You often hear people like Rick Warren say they want to change the way we "do" church. This is a good warning sign that you're about to hear some Emergent teaching mixed in with good teaching. The more liberal teachings of the emergent church I find are more deceptive, dangerous than a Marilyn Manson or Slayer because you know where they're coming from.

Definition: (from Encyclopedia) : "a label that has been used to refer to a particular subset of Christians who are rethinking Christianity against the backdrop of Postmodernism....

VOTM radio Todd Friel interviews John MacArthur about Brian McLaren's social gospel, one of the leaders of the emergent movement. MacArthur points out how the more liberal emergents believe that Jesus came to fix the world (Liberation Theology), and how they want to move away from teaching of sin. As Todd Friel has paraphrased them, "We can spend all our time making the world a better place so they can go to hell from." And another disturbing aspect to some emergents is that they do not accept the Bible as absolutely true. This is a must listen!

Recently I read an article on the web by Brian McLaren where he basically doesn't answer question posed to him on his church's stance on homosexuality and then tries to make the reader feel guilty for even wanting to know his answer. This guy is slick. When he later reveals that the couple who asked the question has a parent who is now gay and they want to know if the father and his partner can come to a wedding if they hold it there, it's almost like he's triumphant at this point attempting to make us feel guilty. You can't even tell if he answered their question from this article. He seems to imply people might come to Christ if we're wishy-washy tolerant.

Taken from that article:
"Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. In the meantime, we'll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably."

The last thing we ought to do according to this emergent guru is go to the Bible and actually see what God says. Now if McLaren went to the Bible he'd most probably pull out something like "The Message" so he can manipulate the meaning into the nothingness he's shooting for.

This is very similar to Joel Osteen - they doesn't wan to offend people. Jesus never offended anyone, did he? They put him on the cross because he tickled their ears? But they think things are different now in this crazy modern world? Their view is that we need to modify how we teach Christianity to be effective.

This is the kind of mindset many leaders of the mega-churches want to embrace as they throw old seeker sensitive methods on the dung hill and look for the next big thing. Six Flags over Jesus hasn't worked well for them. Now they turn to affirming, non threatening, kind and never state anything definite on the big questions just like a big teddy bear.

I was in a grocery store the other day and I witnessed an older white gentleman get mad at the cashier and manager because something wasn't working the way he wanted it. He stormed out and those minimum wage workers just shook their heads. And I thought you know that's bad when a Christian acts like that in public (I'm not saying this guy was or wasn't). But what I believe the emergents have allowed themselves to be formed by our postmodern society into thinking is that they don't want to be like the rude Christian in public when asked hard questions the Bible is straightforward in answering. I have no clue how it helps people to hear a sugar coated the message of the gospel, it certainly doesn't challenge them to repent, turn from their sins. And the tough questions can be answered in love without malice but there will be times that people hearing those answers will not be happy with the answer. Now McLaren in this article goes one step further by not even answering the question and then wants you to believe he's brilliant with his zen-like tolerance. Oprah would be clapping, "You, go girl!"

Here's an interesting quote from Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.
"In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network. But, I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake." – Mark Driscoll

Mark Driscoll discusses the emerging church.