Emerging/Emergent, Trait 1: On Identifying with Jesus – Sept 14
I work with the book, EMERGING CHURCHES, by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, which Emerging church leaders have called "the best book on the emerging church." It notes 9 traits of the movement. I will work one at a time.
I work with the book, EMERGING CHURCHES, by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, which Emerging church leaders have called "the best book on the emerging church." It notes 9 traits of the movement. I will work one at a time. First I will describe the trait without evaluation using the language of the categories of the book. Then I will evaluate. So here we go. Trait 1 is identifying with Jesus. Description: The focus of this trait is on the gospels, the example of the life of Jesus, and the teaching of the kingdom. "We focused on the humanity of Jesus and lost all the categories of church history." Jesus’ way of life is the model for these churches. He served, forgave others, and encouraged the early church to do likewise. Hospitality and a missional emphasis are key to the movement. The goal is to go versus have others come, to be out there, in their neighborhoods. The goal is to find where God is working and participate there. "I don’t take God into somewhere but find God and join where he is." The message is to announce the arrival of the kingdom. to call others to experience the kingdom through invitation, healing, and restoration. The cross pictures the supreme demonstration of love and the God-provided means to reconciliation. The gospel is not restricted to a message giving an individual assurance about eternal destiny. Here Dallas Willard’s DIVINE CONSPIRACY is an influential work. Community groups are where these relationships are seen. The goal is to have Christianity be a way of life in a participative gospel message, a call to live distinctively in the world with an up front missional challenge. There is a costly message versus a seeker sensitive one. "Following the mission of Jesus entails putting my whole family in the middle of the chaos in order to see the kingdom of God in operation." Jesus created an alternative social order. Paul continued this model building an international, anti-imperial, alternative society. Calling Jesus Lord dethroned the emperor. There is a kingdom focus instead of a church focus, a huge paradigm shift. Evaluation: There is much to like here. The emphasis on Jesus and the gospels is healthy, drawing on what it means to follow him, a key theme of the gospels. The values of service, hospitality, of going, of thinking about how the gospel touches life 24/7 are all good. However, to focus on the humanity of Jesus and lose all categories of church history is to say that the church of the past has little to teach us and demeans the work of the Spirit in the past (or at least risks this). This is one of many such contrastive statements that suggest God works with one form. Is that correct? Are we really forced to such either/or choices? Are there not both/ands present? Have not many people been nurtured in these other communities and found a home? Yes, we can all do better, but such contrasts are often painted too starkly. Here is another statement from a leader: "But the good news is not that he died but that the kingdom has come." Why not, the kingdom has come in and through his death? Or try another statement: "The gospel is not that we agree with some abstract propositions in order to qualify to go to heaven when we die but an invitation to live a new way of life." Now the emphasis is correct, and I am well aware that theology can be done in a way that is dry and disconnected from reality, but the role of statements, even abstractly stated ones that are biblically grounded is important to the formation of a worldview that helps the Christian to discern and mature (Eph 4:17-24). The hope here is of life everlasting in this age and in the life to come. Also is Paul really as anti-imperial as the remarks about him imply? How does that fit with a text like Romans 13:1-7? Yes, the gospel challenges with alternative values and a mission that reaches out to the fringe, the poor, and that crosses ethnic boundaries. It challenges selfishness and greed (and there is much in our world that deserves to be challenged at this level). But the way this was most effectively done was to be the community that was different and lived differently in a way that stood out. What disturbs me most is that there is sometimes a sense of "I am of Paul," "I am of Apollos," and "I am of Jesus" about some of these statements. However, we need to avoid such a contrastive emphasis. We all need to follow Christ and his example of service and outreach. We all need to walk with Paul as he imitates Jesus and reaches out to a world crossing ethnic boundaries. We all need to pursue the call of John to love our brother, especially those in the faith. We all need to follow Peter and see the church, all of it, as sacred with a calling to be believer-priests to a needy world and treat the entirety of the church as the sacred temple it is. Yes, follow Jesus and identify with him, but one way to do so is to connect with those who were closest to him.
One Comment
mskaster
09-21-2006 Response to 09-14-2006 blog
A friend of mine pointed me to Your blogs about the “Emerging Church†movement, because i am a person to whom God has given influence with a small group of people – many of whom are struggling, or at least questioning, what the EC movement is and what affect it is having on Christendom. While typically having been in very public roles in the previous years, i do not interact publicly much right now due to the LORD Jesus having restrained me in order to keep ungodly levels of influence from being pushed onto me. i tell You all of this just as an introduction and to say i am elated to find someone of Your caliber as a scholar and passion as a disciple of Christ writing and thinking about the EC movement. Thank You for Your investment into this discussion. From the brief and cursory look i have taken at Your blog, it seems some might be questioning the validity of Your dealing with these issues. Be assured there is a very large conversation happening about this subject, and, believe me, there are precious too few voices from people with any level of analytical discernment, historical grounding, or passionate relationship with Jesus.
Regarding the first entry on September 14, 2006 (Identifying with Jesus), here are my thoughts. From a meta-level, the EC movement gets much of the values-conversation correct while totally misunderstanding the motivations-conversation. This leads them to heretical and anti-Christ conclusions. i deal with this topic frequently, and i know the ramifications of the beliefs and views that the EC folks hold to every-day, real-life situations. There are a number of foundational beliefs that the EC crowd has adopted and swallowed which are fundamentally off-base – even though they have formed, cultivated, and developed those beliefs from a base of good intentions.
For example, just as with most deception, the most powerful addictions are to things that are somewhat or mostly true – not to things that are hardly or barely true. In Your summary of the authors’ points about identifying with Jesus, You lay out a series of statements that have good substance to them: service & forgiveness as foundational elements of Jesus’ example to us, hospitality & mission as key descriptions of the EC movement, participating with God in what He is doing rather than asking Him to bless what we are doing, annunciating the arrival of God’s Kingdom, etc. These are all accurate points of theology. The problem is that the EC crowd wants Christians to believe that these particular (and many other) points are not being given priority today within Christendom. They want us to believe that they – and they alone – are the ones resurrecting these ingredients and applying them for the first time in centuries. This is simply not true at any level – much less an important one.
Also, the business about Paul being anti-imperial shows a lack of relational groundedness in the EC crowd’s understanding of Paul’s theology, the Truth of Scripture, the testimony of the Holy Spirit, the teachings of Jesus, and the essence of godly relationships. i make this statement as one who loves the EC movement and has many friends at the forefront of it. When people criticize Paul, they don’t realize that they are criticizing Christ simultaneously. This is not to say that Paul was divine and couldn’t make mistakes or have idiosyncrasies through which he had to work, but it is to say that none other than the LORD Jesus anointed and guided Paul as one of His own apostles. The EC crowd would do well to understand Paul first and then learn from what Jesus chose to share with us through Paul, rather than misunderstanding Paul, subsequently taking him out of context, and then blaming him for not getting it right due to their faulty interpretations.
Paul had a godly understanding of authority – which i will concede very few people today have. However, that lack of understanding does not give an interpreter of Paul the right to assert that he was “anti-imperial.†Nothing could be farther from the Truth (Jesus). One of the EC crowd’s misapplications is to focus too much on the earthly circumstances created by the forces in power. Their obsession and over-emphasis on subjects like social justice betray their good intentions and show their true colors as people reacting to a largely American and almost completely Western culture (for the EC simply doesn’t exist outside the developed countries in any appreciable way). The EC is driven by politically-minded, left-leaning Christians. They have looked around the political landscape and rightly abhorred the confiscation of the majority of Christians by the Republican party and the Religious Right. In an effort to establish a counter-balance, they have concocted this latest version of catholicism labeled the EC movement (or “conversation†as they would claim). This means that their agenda (and, yes, they do have one despite their claims to the contrary) is filtered through and comprised of politically left-leaning ideas and values.
Now, i’m not against the counter-balance, but just present it for what it is. Don’t offer a politically calculated, agenda-driven, niche-carving counter-balance to the extant weight that You think is wrong and then try to pass it off as an objective, radical, and newly inspired proper interpretation of Jesus’ teachings and Lifestyle. The reason that is so offensive to me is that it leads one to make asinine statements like the assertion that Paul was “anti-imperial.†Paul couldn’t have cared less about the Roman empire or its thrust, except that God had ordained him to be a citizen of Rome and, to that extent, Paul counted it important to be a member of it in good standing. Paul understood that God the Father gave all authority to Jesus, and that the Holy Spirit, as the post-resurrection delegate of Jesus, issues partial grants of that all-encompassing “all authority†block to various people for various purposes. Fathers, businesspeople, artists, etc. – everyone has only the authority that is given to them by Jesus through the Holy Spirit. This includes the Roman government and all government officials today. That is the foundational belief behind Romans 13, which You correctly brought up as a hole in their argument. However, the political leanings of the EC crowd and the over-emphasis on the current circumstances have led the EC folks to declare that Hugo Chavez could not possibly be in power legitimately with God’s approval, so they have to find some way in to injure Paul’s true belief about authority. This is problematic in the sense that if You injure Paul’s belief regarding Nero, You also injure the belief regarding being the father of a family, the pastor of a spiritual community belonging to Christ, or the leader such as Joseph or Daniel.
How a group of people (the EC crowd) can have their intentions so right and their conclusions so wrong is a mystery to many, but it is simply a matter of deception by degree. To assert that “[T]he good news is not that [Jesus] died, but that the Kingdom has come,†is to simply not understand that the Kingdom coming is based upon sons of God following the pattern of Jesus as the first son – including the example of dying to Himself for the glory of the Father and for the benefit of God’s people. Dying is essential to the founding and continuing of the Kingdom of God. This is Jesus’ entire thrust when He spoke of the kernel of wheat. You are right, Dr. Bock, to speak of both/and instead of either/or. Now here is a mystery: how can the supposedly postmodern EC crowd be so either/or and so completely not both/and when both/and has been so successfully labeled and confined to postmodern status?
The bottom line is that none of the things the EC offers are new – they are all currently available (and being exercised frequently, i might add) in the Kingdom of God. The fact that most Baptist, Catholic, or other well-known spiritual groups so rarely participate in what God is doing does not mean that He is not at work with many sons who are laboring in His vineyards. Thanks for Your blog, and i hope You can see the need for Your participation in this conversation the Body is having.
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