Emerging vs. Emergent Churches

Reflections on the emerging and emergent church

 

While I would never offer a blanket endorsement of all things “emerging”, the evangelically inclined emerging church movement can generally be viewed as a positive force within the church.  Wherever we find emerging churches remaining faithful to the authority and truths of Scripture, the wider evangelical community should embrace and support them as co-laborers for the Kingdom.  The goal of spreading the gospel to the entire world, including the postmodern world, is a clear biblical mandate and the emerging church movement is helping to carryout this task.

 

The church must recognize that throughout history the tactics we’ve used in communicating the gospel message have regularly changed.  The medium for delivering the message, as long as it does not clearly violate biblical norms, should not be our primary concern.  Rather, the advancement of the message of the gospel should be paramount.  When sharing this goal, the emerging church movement can be viewed as an ally of traditional evangelicalism.

 

The emergent church movement, on the other hand, has given traditional evangelicals more cause for concern.  As I have observed the evolution of the emergent church over the past few years, I have noticed an increasing trend towards theological revisionism, theological liberalism, and an open embrace of postmodern philosophy.

 

The emergent church has moved beyond the practice of simply adapting the methods we use in order to reach the postmodern world for Jesus Christ.  By and large the emergent church has adopted an uncritical embrace of the postmodern worldview.  And postmodernism is a worldview that in many regards is antithetical to biblical Christianity. Prominent leaders within the emergent church are on record denying objective truth, promoting relativism, and questioning a number of the core doctrines of biblical Christianity. All of these facts greatly disturb me and should concern all discerning believers. 

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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF DIALOGUE IN THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF DIALOGUE IN

THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

Ecclesiology Bibliography 


SJ Samartha on Globalization and its cultural consequences 

A Wisdom Archive on Ecclesiology

Archaeological digs on sites where Martin Luther lived.

The dirt on is out

Kate Connolly
Scientists trawl through his household waste

The ex-monk’s claim of poverty stand dismissed

Berlin: German scientists have reconstructed an extraordinarily detailed picture of the domestic life of Martin Luther, the 16th-century reformer and father of Protestantism. This they did by trawling through his household waste uncovered during archaeological digs

Beer tankards, grains of corn, cooking pots, even his toilet are among the finds dug up during the five-year project in the three places in Germany he spent his life. The items include his wife’s golden wedding band, a collection of 250 silver coins and the medicines used to treat his various ailments from angina to constipation.

Some of the finds have upset the Protestant church in Wittenberg where the ex-monk lived with his wife, the ex-nun Katharina von Bora, and their six children. It has termed “religiously irrelevant” evidence that the family used to throw dead cats into the rubbish bin and that the nails Luther used to secure his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, which led to his ex-communication from the Catholic Church and launched the Reformation, were in fact drawing pins.

Protestants from around the world are expected to flock to an exhibition at the history museum in Halle, where some of the discoveries will go on display.

Despite the widespread belief that Luther lived in poverty, evidence suggests he was a well-fed man weighing in at a hefty 150 kg when he died in 1546 at the age of 63. A search through the kitchen waste offers proof that the family ate well. There are clues that they regularly dined on roast goose and the tender meat of piglets, while during fasting periods they tucked into expensive fish including herring, cod, and plaice. Partridge and song-birds often graced the Luthers’ dinner table.

The claim by historians which will arguably be most upsetting for followers is the recently uncovered written evidence that it was not, as thought, a lightning bolt which led to the then 21-year-old’s spontaneous declaration he wanted to become a monk. Rather, it was his desperation to escape an impending arranged marriage. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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The Birth of Modern Missions

David Brainerd was born on April 20, 1718, in Haddam, Connecticut, 43 years before William Carey was born in Paulerspury, England. Brainerd became a missionary to the Indians in New England but died at the age of 29. He spent the last 19 weeks of his life in the home of the great Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Edwards was so deeply moved by the missionary labor and faith and courage of young Brainerd that he edited and published his Life and Diary in 1749. Forty years later a young English pastor, William Carey, was stung by the story of Brainerd's sacrifices as a young missionary.

When he was 31 years old, Carey published a little book entitled, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens. Repeatedly in this book he refers to the great example of Brainerd. A year later, as he sailed to India in 1793 on the Kron Princess Maria, Carey wrote in his journal about how the sermons of Jonathan Edwards were giving him strength. For example: June 24, 1793—"Saw a number of flying-fish. Have begun to write Bengali, and read Edwards' Sermons and Cowper's Poems. Mind tranquil and serene . . . "

Carey's book, plus his own amazing 40-year career in India have immortalized him as the "father of modern missions." And the reason that I point out his connection with Edwards and Brainerd is to show that the great era of modern missions was born in the soil of sovereign grace. It was born in the hearts of men and women who believed in the doctrines of unconditional election and predestination and effectual calling and definite atonement and the perseverance of the saints—the great truths that we have been teaching for the past four weeks from Romans 8:28-30.

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ECCLESIOLOGY
INTRODUCTION

The Doctrine of Ecclesiology is the Doctrine of the Church. It is the study of its origin, its nature, its constitution, its ordinances and its activities. We shall confine our consideration to four topics. The origin of the church, the organism of the church, the organization of the church and the ordinances of the church. There is always in the popular mind the hazy conception of the church as a club, a mutual society of kindred minds and a continual confusing of the church with the kingdom of Heaven. How often is the aim of the church stated as, "Advancing the kingdom" and "bringing in the kingdom," "establishing the kingdom." Many times making the church a political thing. Men lose sight of the primary nature of the church as a "called out" body of people "for His name", a heavenly people, one body separate from all other men of the world as a unique heavenly bride of Christ. Ignorance of its true nature is also displayed in classifying all the saved of all the ages as "members of the church." And some would even out all the sinners who, like the "mixed multitude" which followed Israel, fasten themselves for one reason or another like parasites to the church, as bonified members of the church. We must always see the distinctive nature of the church both as to dispensations and as to its membership as containing only the born-again. Not an earthly organization but a heavenly organism


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