Jim Belcher, the author of Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, and I have much in common.

We both did masters degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary.

We both have a heart for church planting.

I teach a class on the Emerging Church based on the intensive that he references in his book. (35)

We get frustrated when people talk past one another, defaulting to caricatured stereotypes rather than embracing a posture of openness.

And we both value looking for a “third way” to approach dichotomistic thinking.

He is right when he says,

It seems that every time someone criticizes the emerging church, they pick the worst-case scenario or the most extreme statements. (49)

He is also correct in noting,

It seems the emerging church, for rhetorical purposes, uses sweeping generalizations about the traditional church that are unfair. (76)

The larger Body of Christ would indeed be served well by discourse that is deeper, more specific, and marked by a sense of humble openness.  Belcher’s chapters on Deep: Truth, Evangelism, Gospel, Worship, Preaching, Ecclesiology, and Culture, are essentially his attempts  to facilitate just that – a worthwhile enterprise in my opinion.

While Belcher’s book is truly helpful in this regard, I’m not sure he really hits the mark in terms of articulating a true “third way” as a means of engaging these topics.  Very often, his conclusions in these chapters are a combination of a chastened version of the EC position he articulates and an expanded version of the traditional position he articulates (usually w/ reference to Tim Keller and his church!).  I suppose this is a kind of “third way,” maybe even precisely the one Belcher desires, but I’m not certain it’s the most helpful kind of third way for the Church to pursue.

The mistake, I believe, comes in the assumption that one can simply pit the positions of the EC against the positions of the traditional church.  The main problem here is that many in the EC camp are themselves trying to articulate and maneuver a “third way” between the modern categories of conservatism and liberalism, a feature that Belcher seems to either overlook or discount w/o comment.  An indication of this is his quick dismissal of the Anabaptist tradition from which many in the EC draw as one which is able to circumvent many of the dichotomies addressed in this book on account of its fundamentally, Christendom-rejecting, stance.  Belcher never seems to ask, “How might people in the EC camp already be searching for a third way in response to classic approaches to these issues?,” but assumes that their positions are simply reactions against the positions of traditional churches.

Belcher sets himself on this course in stating,

We need to define it [the emerging church] as a movement, particularly its theology.  The best way to do this is to look at what the emerging church movement is against – the things they are protesting and the rasons why they are calling for change. (38)

For the life of me, I can’t grasp why someone would want to define a movement by what they are against (even it it is a protest movement) rather than what they are for.  We certainly regard what the classic reformers were for as far more more important than what they were against!  But more than this, Belcher fails to identify missiology as a core motif for the EC.  For many, if not most, in the global EC movement, it is an attempt to participate with God and God’s mission in the world that is reshaping how they understand the sorts of topics that Belcher raises in his book, not vice versa.

These criticisms notwithstanding, I am glad that Jim wrote this book and don’t doubt for a second that it has an will continue to help many.

**Jim has recently decided to resign from his position as lead pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA.  You can read a letter he wrote to the congregation regarding this transition here and some additional discussion about this sort of trend here.

Last night Amy and I joined a friend for a presentation at Harvest Bible Chapel on the topic of, “What is the Emergent Church?”¹ as part of an ongoing apologetics series they are doing.

As someone who gets to teach the course, The Emerging Church in the 21st Century, once a year, I was looking forward to attending and seeing what was said and discussed; especially considering the speaker for the evening was Dr. David Finkbeiner, a professor at Moody Bible Institute.

I mean, if you want to get a balanced understanding of what the “Emergent Church” is all about, who better to ask than a professor of systematic theology at a school that officially, “does not endorse the emerging/emergent church” right?!

Harvest would have done well (though from what I could tell – would never so much as have considered it) to have invited at least one person who could have spoken as an insider to the EC discussion.

It was clear from the get-go that the tenor of the evening was going to be critical, bordering on condemnatory.  And this, even after Dr. Finkbeiner admitted that there is no simple way to define the EC as a whole.

Dr. Finkbeiner’s focus for the evening was theological method.  His premise was that what undergirds the “Emergent Church” movement is a post-conservative theological method.  His aim was to critique this theological method overagainst a more traditional conservative evangelical one.

Essentially, here’s what that meant…

1) Post-Conservatives err in their non-foundationalist approach to epistemoplogy which takes things like history, context, and culture seriously, where as conservatives rightfully embrace Scripture as the objective and sole foundation to all knowledge.

2) Post-Conservatives err in asserting that absolute truth, while real, may often times be beyond our ability to fully grasp.  Conservatives rightfully assert not only the reality of absolute truth, but affirm our ability to, “with a little hard work,” objectively know it.

3) Post-conservatives err in not championing the inerrancy of Scripture.  Conservatives rightly hinge all their hopes on Scripture having been verbally and inerrantly inspired.

So, here we have a guy who is doing a masterful job of towing the line of modern conservative evangelicalism, lambasting those who dare to think, “There might be some stuff we’re missing here.”

As I listened to him describe some of the perspectives and viewpoints of post-conservative evangelicals I found it hard to believe that he wasn’t converting himself!

He quickly and coyly dismissed a broad range of the most helpful aspects of post-conservative theology…

– The idea that we need one another in the pursuit of truth because all of our perspectives are bound by a host of factors

– The notion that theology loses its character when not born out of an embodied witness

– The view that the authority of Scripture lies not primarily in its abstract character, but in its function in the life of the Church

– The insight that biblical propositional truth derives its meaning and significance from the narratives in which they’re embedded

– That post-conservative theology is, at its core, a prophetic call to revisit some of our modernistic assumptions

In each and every instance, the speaker noted that these are the hallmarks of post-conservative theology and then attempted to show why they ought to be rejected.

OK, so that was the presentation and as enlightening as it was, the Q & A time was even better.  I quote.

“Is Willowcreek an Emergent Church?  I heard they sell Brian McLaren books.”²

“Is the Emergent Church a cult?”

“I’ve heard that Urbana and InterVarsity are becoming more Emergent.  Should I keep my kids away from those groups?”

I actually had the opportunity to ask the last question of the evening…

With a little trepidation, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I teach a course on the Emerging Church at the seminary level and I need to say that I think there have been some pretty unfair characterizations of the movement here tonight.  I was hoping that before we go you might offer a positive comment about the role the EC has had in the recovery of the importance of the Missio Dei or incarnational approaches to ecclesiology.

Dr. Finkbeiner commented that, “Yes, there has been some focus in those areas, but they still are wrong in how they do theology.”  So, no, he didn’t have one positive thing to say the entire evening about the EC.

Left completely aside from the discussion of the evening was the historical evolution of the EC movement, its place in the scope of the collapse of Christendom, and the most relevant bit of information given the scope of the talk, namely, that theological method simply isn’t at the center for 90% of the people who are in any way affiliated with the movement.  For the vast majority, what is central is joining God in his mission in the world and finding ways to make the church, not culturally relevant (as too many assume), but incarnationally faithful in the pattern of Jesus.

Between the tenor of the presentation and the questions and comments of the audience, it’s little wonder that conservative evangelicals are so often characterized by fear and close-mindedness.  There are many in the EC community who are trying to carve out a way of being the church and doing theology that doesn’t fell prey to these charges.  I was really hoping to come away pleasantly surprised by the event.  Sadly, I didn’t.

1. There is no such thing as the Emergent Church. This is a classic conflation of the terms Emergent Village and Emerging Church offered by those who aren’t all that familiar with the topic
2. Someone from Harvest was quick to announce that Harvest doesn’t!

2 quick observations about the day…

1) The Emergent conversation is providing an opportunity to those whom no one else will listen (because they just don’t fit) to be heard and embraced.

2) A unifying characteristic of Emergent type people is their distrust of any version of Christian faith that leaves little or no room for complexity and paradox. They would rather be shunned than forced to conform.

With Memphis as the hosting city & St. Mary’s cathedral as a hosting venue, The Great Emergence conference is getting started.

On Saturday night at CCDA I was excited to hear from Soong-Chan Rah, a Korean-American professor at North Park University in Chicago (stinkin everybody at CCDA was from Chicago!) and he did not disappoint.

Soong’s main topic was the changing face of global Christianity. No longer a majority Western religion, Christianity is growing fastest in the global south and more than this, as the United States and other Western countries become increasingly multi-cultural, these non-Western believers are reshaping the future of the church.

What I was perhaps most interested in was Soong’s good critique of Emergent and the Emerging Church. Namely, that this group and its related conversation/movement are failing to reflect the seismic shifts of which he spoke.  This is most notable, says Soong, in that the leaders and the majority of EC supporters are white and Western educated.  Soong is right, there is little doubt about it.  However, I would be quick to respond with 2 caveats.  First, this critique is hardly limited to the EC folk.  The vast majority of the streams of western Christianity are dominated by white, western educated folks.  Second, a huge part of the EC conversation/movement has to do with pushing past forms of Christianity held captive by narrow perspectives and traditions.  What better soil could one imagine for the changes Soong himself describes?

Interestingly, I just noticed today that Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs’ book, “Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community is Postmodern Cultures,” was just translated into Korean!  Now, it may not be Asian theology, but talk about a great avenue to really get cross-cultural dialogue started.

In another shocking bit of news, Tony Jones, the national coordinator for Emergent Village announced today that he was stepping down from the position as Emergent undergoes some changes precisely to

allow more voices into the conversation and allow the network to grow in a more organic way.

As a final sort of corrective to this critique of the EC, I’d like to point others to Brian McLaren’s article, “Church Emerging,” (pdf) and draw attention to this quote

More importantly, though, I’ve become convinced that the conversation about modernity and postmodernity is the ‘tails’ side of the coin, and the ‘heads’ side is a related but different conversation. So I am hereby giving notice that I’m not interested in arguing with anyone about modernity and postmodernity, but I would very much like to engage in honest conversation about colonialism and postcolonialism.

As he goes on he draws from and quotes the work of Dr. Mabiala Kenzo, a Twa theologian from the Congo – a great example of one of the foremost leaders of the EC discussion seeking to listen and learn from those outside our own context in an effort to provide a corrective.

Soong was great – he made me wat to go back to school and take his courses.  More than this, his critique of the EC was a good one, but could have been levied against a larger population.  This was just the sort of talk that seemed unique to the CCDA confernece and I was glad to have been a part of it.

I just finished listening to this message/podcast by Scot McKnight (check out his blog here) entitled, “The Whole Gospel.” 

It is definitely worth a listen and I’ll be adding it to my audio page.  Incidentally, if you tend to only read my stuff through a feed reader, I have tried to catalog a number of good audio messages that you might want to check out – there’s stuff from Rob Bell, NT Wright, Mike Frost, John Piper, Brian McLaren and even (gasp!), Mark Driscoll.  The vast differences in the theologies of these presenters are perhaps surprising, and all I can do is say a hearty thanks to my professors from Malone and Fuller who have helped me become the sort of Christian who is able to pull the best from all sorts of different sources and drop the rest – thanks.

There’s one thing in particular that I’d like to humbly disagree with Scot on here.  Toward the beginning of his message he talks about the 20 million or so (says Barna in this book – my review here) believers in the United States who have chosen to live out thir Christian lives as part of house churches.  He seems to say that this is indicative of their individualistic tendencies as they have abandoned the more formal institutional form of church.  Quite the opposite, I’d venture to say that it’s specifically on account of the individualistic gospel proffered by these more formal institutional forms of church that has resulted in millions of believes seeking out smaller, more authentic and committed communities of followers of Jesus.  At least this has been the case for me and many others I know well.  Past that, Scot has a lot of great things to offer.  Enjoy and please offer your thoughts.

I just finished listening to an interview by Ingrid Schlueter of Crosstalk with Doug Pagitt.  You can find it here if you’re interested in listening.

I thought about going into detail about all the misconceptions, misunderstandings, straw men, exaggerations, false dichotomies, etc., that marked Ingrid’s assumptions and discussion with another pastor following the interview, but I just don’t want to waste my time.

Instead I just want to say sorry to Doug and others like him.  You are doing a ton of good for the body of Christ. Jesus is glorified in your life and ministry.  So much of what you stand for highlights the humility, compassion, and love that ought to mark us as followers of Christ.  Try not to let the negative sentiments of a few get you down or distract you from the course God is plotting for you.  There are plenty of us who are thrilled to be associated with what you’re trying to do.  Thanks.

It’s baseball season. I am from Northeast Ohio, so I am an Indians fan at heart, but to be quite honest I don’t follow baseball all that much. However, Tony Jones offered a good post with regard to a paper he delivered at Wheaton College, in which he likened Christian orthodoxy to an umpire calling a baseball game. His simple point is that while there is something of a strike zone which is meant to guide umpires as they make calls, really, each pitch, for all intents and purposes, becomes a strike or a ball when the umpire calls it as such. This has been the role of the people of God down through the ages – living in such a way so as to illustrate how God wants the game of life to be called.

Like Tony, I see problems with foundationalism as an epistemological system (sorry for the big words). Basically, it means that there has to be some universally agreed upon truth claim upon which all others can be built. Instead, I think we do the best we can with what we got, and for the Christian, we finally (and firstly for that matter) place our faith in God as a relational being as opposed to some propositional claim on truth.

So, there exists this dialectical tension between believers, denominations, Scripture, history & tradition, culture & context, and so on. The real matter, then, is not an emphasis on what constitutes a strike and what constitutes a ball (doctrine), important as that is as a guide, but rather an emphasis on what it means to be the people of God (formation), so we are better able “call the game.”

I just came across a great post by David Fitch on why Emerging Church people are drawn to deconstructive theology. Actually, this post is a follow up to one he wrote for The Church and Postmodern Culture. In the original post he does a great job of answering the above question and in his follow up he clarifies that in his opinion, which I share, there are a handful of Christian theologians who have been speaking to the concerns of “Emerging Church people” for quite a while, but oddly, don’t seem to get as much credit as their more atheistic counterparts – people like Hauerwas, Lindbest, Milbank, etc.) Not ironically, in my opinion, these are some of the same theologians who have been most helpful in framing how the church benefits from a narrative approach to theology and a missional approach to ecclesiology. Simply put, they understand that the church forms its theology based on its mission in the world and that the church’s mission in the world is correspondingly and simultaneously shaped by its theology (this was the thrust of my masters thesis). This is a constant ebb and flow of action <-> reflection (envision a really cool circular diagram here!).

I think folks like Derrida, Focult, and other deconstructionists (Tony Jones would have me inform you that “Derridaian decontruction does not mean ‘to tear down’ but ‘to break through.’”) have good things to offer and ought not to be dismissed out of hand, but when push comes to shove, we ought to give more credence to those authors who seek to submit their lives and work to Jesus as Lord and the church as their family.

Here’s what I really wanted to say – when we understand it rightly, it is easy to conclude that Jesus was a theological deconstructionist. He took commonly held theological assumptions and practices and “broke through” the ways in which people misunderstood and misappropriated them in order to refreame them rightly. That’s the rub. Deconstruction, for the Christian, can never stop at merely exposing weaknesses and fallacies. Rather, to be truly Christian, there must also be a rebuilding, a restoration, a movement forward into a better, more faithful way; such is the nature of the Trinity and God’s mission in the world.

A Christian is not one who simply acts in unknowing, this is an agnostic. Neither is a Christian one who acts without any reason or cause, this would be a retreat in to fidesm. Instead, a Christian is one who lives and acts in accordance with their faith and reason, but always in humility and with a reverence for the mystery of God. This enables the Christian to invite others into a future with no sure, fixed foundation, yet centered around a God who desires relationship as opposed to one who remains largely unknowable (which I think is the alternative offered by at least one stream of “Christian” deconstructionist theology).

The people of God, through the story of Scripture, have gone through countless cycles of orientation (when all was well), disorientation (when things began to unravel), and reorientation (when God worked to restore and recreate). The church in Western culture, I would say, finds itself in the throws of disorientation. I am not advocating that we race through that phase as we grasp for some sort of reorientation, but I am saying that we need to look toward and expect it.

I have people ask me pretty frequently to explain to them what the Emerging Church is and what it is all about. A few others are into the discussion enough to confuse the Emerging Church movement and the group known as Emergent.The other day I came across a paper delivered by Scot McKnight at Westminster Theological Seminary entitled, “What is the Emerging Church?” The paper was originally hosted on Mark Traphagen’s site, Sacred Journey, but I am hosting it as well.

Except for the book, “Emerging Churches,” by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, 2 of my professors at Fuller, which investigates actual emerging churches, their practices and hallmarks, this is the best treatment of the movement that I have read. Scot also spends some time helping people understand the difference between “Emerging” and “Emergent,” which is much needed.
If you care about the church in Western culture at all, I really want to encourage you to read this paper (30 double-spaced pages). But, if you just can’t manage, I will provide some highlights.

- Let the emerging folk define themselves, not others who think they get it (like D.A Carson)

- There is no such thing as “The Emerging Church” (this would be in effect another denomination and thereby discredit the very essence of emerging)

- It is a theological movement, but theological by virtue of ecclesiology and missiology as opposed to doctrinal statements

- The emerging movement is protestant (a protest) movement, it is not the same old stuff in new and improved packaging

- 4 rivers flow into the lake of the emerging movement

1. Postmodernism – as a denial of our ability to have purely objective truth or that this is what is most important for the Christian faith. Scot discusses the differences in ministering to, with, or as postmoderns
2. Praxis – involving worship, orthopraxy (right living), social justice, and being missional; also, admitting the way praxis shapes theology and theology shapes praxis
3. Post-evangelical – post-Bible study piety (certainly not post-Bible or post-Bible study), post-systematic theology, post-in/out way of thinking
4. Political – with no alignment to any one political party, but vitally concerned with any and all political issues, not separating those things typically considered sacred and secular

All four of these rivers are in contrast to typical evangelicalism which…

1. fears and shuns postmodernity as trendy at best or comletely relativistic at worst
2. tends to define worship as that which happens in a palce on Sunday morning, emphasizes believing the right things as what really matters, understands justice as secondary to and not intertwined with salvation, reconciliation, and restoration, and because of their theology, typically exists as attractional, wanting people to come and hear, rather than missional, wanting God’s people to go, tell, and live
3. is evanglical and exists in the realms described above
4. typically allies itself with the republican party and their ideologies

- the emerging church movement, increasingly finding expression in local churches arcoss denominational and confessional lines, is an ecclesiologial movement as opposed to a theological confession or an epistemological movement

Hopefully that summary helps, but again I strongly commend the paper to you. You can also try and listen to the audio of the presentation here. It is not the best quality, but you can do it. I found the audio here in wma format and converted it to mp3 to make it more universally available. If you want audio of better quality, you can purchase it here. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.