• Archive of "emergent" Category

    Doug Pagitt is a Good Guy

    May 19, 2007 // No Comments »

    Doug PagittI 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.

    Posted in emergent, Jesus, love

    Strikes, Balls, and Dialectical Tension

    April 24, 2007 // No Comments »

    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.”

    Posted in bible, community, emergent

    Jesus – A Theological Deconstructionist

    April 9, 2007 // 1 Comment »

    deconstructionI 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.

    Posted in church, culture, emergent, Jesus, missional, narrative theology, postmodernity, theology, western culture

    Scot McKnight – What is the Emerging Church?

    November 7, 2006 // No Comments »

    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.

    Posted in emergent, emerging church, evangelicalism

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