Some criticism of the emerging church...

I wanted to interact with a bit of criticsm I came across...
Chuck Lawless, dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary recently spoke on the emerging church movement at a conference and gave us a mixed review... Let's work through it.

'Emerging church' mixes constructive criticism with errors, Lawless says February 14, 2006 By David Roach

The emerging church movement has started a helpful conversation about the need for churches to be relevant to postmodern culture but commits fatal errors in the areas of evangelism and the authority of Scripture, said Chuck Lawless, dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Speaking at a breakout session of the sixth annual "Give Me An Answer" collegiate conference, Lawless told students that the emerging church movement, a growing movement seeking to move beyond the approach of many modern congregations, tends at times wrongly to deemphasize the necessity of a personal relationship with Christ.

"I think the emerging church movement is helpful to us when they talk about transformed lives," he said. "I think we need to hear that, that authentic Christianity ought to lead us to look like Christ. … They do not help us when they go so far as to suggest or hint at [salvation] happening apart from a personal relationship with Christ."

First thing... I'm grateful to hear someone who is gearing up to offer some criticism start off with some positives. I appreciate this approach, as it shows that the critic has actually looked in some depth at what's happening. Of course, the first real criticism offered makes me question how deeply this person is looking...

The closest thing we have to an Official Emerging Church statement (the Response to Critics by the SuperFriends) states this: "...We believe that Jesus is the crucified and risen Savior of the cosmos and no one comes to the Father except through Jesus."

But on reflection, I think I can see where this might be coming from.

It's true... If you look hard enough, you can find some people making universalistic statements. And to be honest, I'm concerned with these as well. I think at some point, we'll need to take Andrew Jones' admonition that "If there are one or two new emerging churches who have lost the plot, or never saw it clearly to begin with, and are now giving the other hundreds of emerging churches a bad name, they should be lovingly confronted with the better way of Jesus."

But I doubt that this criticism is coming from there. I have a feeling that it has more to do with Brian's statement that "I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts."

I know this raised a lot of eyebrows for people... But I think many who criticised Brian for this did so from a place of misunderstanding. I was lucky... when I read "A Generous Orthodoxy" I had recently had some good conversations with a friend who is a missionary in Egypt. He told me about the presence there of "Messianic Muslims." Those who were definitely followers of Issa (Jesus) the Messiah, who understood Him as God and followed Him as such, but who culturally remained Muslims. When they became Christ followers, they didn't change their appearance or diet (still eating hallel), but rather existed within the Muslim context as followers of Jesus. This is exactly the kind of thing McLaren was talking about, in equating the "Christian religion" with a certain Western cultural lifestyle, and advocating that many would do well to avoid it, particularly those living in places where becoming a Christ follower could get you killed. (For a more thorough explanation of this, including some words by Brian, click here)

But let's be honest... From what I can see, most emerging churches teach salvation through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Period.

Perhaps this critique comes from much of our language criticising the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus." It's true that many of us have abandoned the use of that phrase. But we've done so more in an attempt to help people see their relationship with God, not as non-personal, but as both personal and communal. Our fear has been that the overuse of the extra-biblical phrase "personal relationship with Jesus" has led people to see their relationship with God as:

1. Disconnected from community
2. Individual in some of the worst senses of the word: private, unrelated to what's happening spiritually in the people around me.

As far as I can see, there are no significant numbers of people or even significant leaders within the emerging church movement speaking of salvation "happening apart from a personal relationship with Christ."

Lawless emphasized that the movement is so new that it is difficult to define with precision who it includes or what it believes. But he listed several general characteristics of the emerging church.

· The movement displays a sense of discontent with the church as it is. Emerging church leaders argue that churches cannot reach lost people who are searching for truth because the churches have lost their own sense of excitement about walking with Jesus, Lawless said.

Well... I don't know that that is exactly it. I think we argue that new expressions are needed for new generations, that there was a disconnect between not only the style but the underlying ministry structures of established churches and the people we want to impact with the Gospel.

· The movement desires to engage culture as it is. It wants to reach a generation that is deeply spiritual but not necessarily Christian, denies absolute truth, embraces pluralism and is disconnected from the church, he said. To do this, the movement tries to identify with postmodern culture, Lawless noted.

Again, sort of... It's not so much that we are trying to design something that will prove attractive to postmoderns, but rather to do and be church in a way that makes sense to us. A lot of us woke up one day and said "This is getting increasingly frustrating" and saw that we had the ability to begin new communities with a more blank page approach. And so we did.

· The movement has a desire to be missional. Because North American culture is increasingly non-Christian, emerging churches see the church as an organization in the midst of a mission field, he said.

"So they write about including together evangelism and social action and trying to speak while also influencing culture and being more inclusive than exclusive, that we might gain a hearing with this world."

Amen!

· The movement focuses on relationships. "For the emerging church, the small group is very important because the small group becomes the place in which you develop authentic relationships," Lawless said.

Again, sort of... I think a lot of "emerging" churches have home groups, but we certainly don't emphasize them as we did in the past, saying things like "If you are not part of a small group, you are not really a part of this church!" It seems that for us, while small groups are good for some/many, we recognize that not everyone needs to be involved in one. Rather than focusing on small groups, I think many emerging churches will focus on keeping the community as a whole small through church planting. Constant growth, yes... but manageable community sizes by means of planting other communities.

· The movement emphasizes transformed lives on earth.

Yeah, but that's not just us, right?

· The movement understands worship as a gathering rather than a service. Worship at some emerging churches is a combination of what one writer has called "charismatic exuberance at one level and quiet meditation at another," noting that services in emerging churches frequently include a multi-sensory approach to worship.

Ha! Called on our jargon! Of course, I really haven;t seen too much "charismatic exuberance" in emerging church circles, but I'm sure it's there. Maybe someone can point me where to look... Robbymac?

· The movement understands evangelism as more a process than proclamation. "It's more about dialogue and listening than it is about preaching and telling, he said.

Yeah. I think that's true. And I also understand why someone heavily involved in the very effective, very God blessed model of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association would look at some changes in how we do evangelism and live evangelistically as being negative.
Brian McLaren has written an excellent book on this called "More Ready Than You Realize" and I recommend it to anyone thinking through evangelism in the 21st century...

There are several ways in which the emerging church movement errs, but reflecting on its thinking can teach all believers valuable lessons, Lawless said. For example, the church must be relevant—as the emerging church points out—but must stand on the Bible as the inerrant Word of God—as some emerging church leaders fail to do.

This is one of the characterizations that bothers me the most. He hasn't gone as far as some in accusing the emerging church of abandoning Scripture, but the inference could be drawn. Yes- it's true that many in the emerging church have an understanding of Scripture that is different than the definition of "inerrancy" that many evangelicals held to in the late 20th century. But that doesn't mean that Scripture is not of utmost importance in the emerging church. Emerging churches tend to center themselves around Scripture in a way that I think if the critics actually looked at, they would find comforting.

"What I sense (in the emerging church) is a desire to build relationships and let those relationships become primary, and then if an opportunity comes up, then [they] may speak something," he said. "I think that's dangerous for the church. I think what has to happen is that the churches as they are today must learn relevance while also taking an absolute, undeniable, uncompromised stand on the Word of God."

This seems to me to mix two things... What does "taking a stand" have to do with relationships/friendships? The metaphor I hear most in the emerging church is that of being a spiritual friend with people. A safe person for them, a good friend to them. And of course part of that will be spiritual and of course in the process of being Jesus, the Good News of the kingdom is expressed...
And if by "taking an absolute, undeniable, uncompromised stand on the Word of God" you mean living life in the way of Jesus, then okay. But if by that you mean forcing that way on people with whom we are in relationship or not having relationships with people who do yet follow Jesus, well...

Churches must also build healthy relationships, which the emerging church advocates, but must build those relationships around biblical accountability—a tactic that is unfortunately absent from many emerging churches, Lawless said.
"The emerging church helps us to say, 'We must build relationships,'" he said. "But we've got to take that one step farther to say, 'How do we do that, and how do we build that around accountability?'"

"A tactic that is unfortunately absent from many emerging churches" Really? Or is it just that we share some different standards on some things? I have heard no emerging churches reject the concept of accountability or church discipline, so, not sure where this is coming from. Now, we don't discipline someone because they were seen with a six pack of beer in their shopping cart... but that doesn't mean we don't have biblical accountability. Most emerging churches still have elders (though by many different names) and still would/do exercise discipline when needed.

Finally, churches must be missional, as the emerging church suggests, Lawless said, but added that Christians must be more aggressive about proclaiming the message of Christ than the emerging church movement often teaches.

Huh... You know, it seems like "the message of Christ" is just about ALL we talk about. I'd be fascinated to know where this particular criticism comes from...

"We have to build relationships to gain a hearing," he said. "I'm right there. But New Testament evangelism does not say, 'I'll just wait and listen and when you ask, I'll respond.' New Testament evangelism is initiatory and it is confrontive."

Ahh... maybe that's where it comes from. Yes- I think the emerging church believes in being initiatory. No, it probably doesn't put much stock in being confrontive.

Some teachings from the emerging church movement "do not fit Christian orthodoxy," Lawless warned.

Now, this here is the most disturbing thing. That's a huge statement with incredible implications that needs to be backed up. I'd love to know what, if any, evidence was presented to bolster this point during the actual talk itself.

"Read very, very cautiously. Hear the positive. Then pray that God would help us to work on our own churches to take those positives and to become more relational, to become more authentic, to become more vulnerable as needed, but without ever compromising the truth of the Gospel."

Can't argue with that...

I think I'd like to post this on EmergentNo, but before I do, how else could we respond to this? What did I miss? Get wrong? Need to add/subtract?

Comments

[Tom Lips]

A lot of us woke up one day and said "This is getting increasingly frustrating" and saw that we had the ability to begin new communities with a more blank page approach. And so we did.

Hey Bob you know a bit about where I'm coming from so I'm sure you can picture the smile that came over my face as I read the above quote. It seems like a real fair responce to me. In fact a friend of ours emailed Chuck Lawless article to Tina this morning and she responded by sending an email with a link to your blog this afternoon. Tom

[bill]

Bob,

Good critique. But I have a wrench to throw in the works. There's a whole nother group that these ECM critics don't even know about yet because we've left their domains never to return.

Some of us are not church people. That is, we don't work for a church. We don't answer to a synod or convention. We have other jobs and we've been Christians for several decades and we're just fed up with church as usual.

For us, doing church the way we think best is the only way left and the only way we'll stay in the game. When we study church history and theology we find a bunch of crap that one power group or another has been shoving down people's throats for millennia. We find liars and cheats in powerful positions in local churches, governing organizations, universities, tax exempt “ministries” and on TV. We read criticisms in journals and on web sites by people who can't well explain why they hold to their own agreed upon theories, much less put forth a valid argument for rejecting someone else's. In other words, we can't easily find integrity in the current system, consequently give little credence to their criticisms and no longer care what they say.

And we're not young whipper snappers. We may be postmodern but we're not young, naïve and impressionable. Many of us are well educated, well read, traveled, and experienced in business and in getting along in the world. We've spent decades working within churches and watching program after stupid program fail. We're old enough to know better and old enough to recognize smoke and mirrors ecclesiology when we see it. We don't really care about titles, names and terms and who likes it and who doesn't. We've given up on church as usual, we're not going back and our numbers are increasing. See George Barna's latest book, Revolution, for cold hard modernistic data.

I appreciate how ECM professionals like yourself, Andrew Jones, Brian McLaren and such, are trying to get along with the playground bullies. But in final analysis, there is a growing number of us who are just going to do the best we can in spite of the critique from the failed ecclesiastiologists and theologians. They had they're century and they blew it. We “Revolutionaries,” as Barna calls us, have fired the church-as-usual group, we're not putting anymore money into their building programs and their Willow Hill, Mars Creek, Purpose Driven Crazy programs.

So, let the debate go on. But an increasing number of us—and my own mission is to find these like minded folk and get them talking with one another—are just going on with what we find best regardless of what the church industry says.

Sorry for taking up your blog space with my rant. It's not about you. I feel for you and your compadres who must give an answer to these smug critics. I just wanted you to know that some of us feel that it's the critics who are obliged to answer for their monumental failures and that they have no business criticizing something that's working while they bleed more each passing year.

Peace.

bill

[Clint Walker]

nice post

[Mark Stephenson]

Bob,
You are a breath of fresh air for me. Thank you for your post here. I read the critics and I get frustrated. I read how emergent folks in the blogosphere respond to those critics and I get even more frustrated.

Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your example. Thank you for your well thought out and kind response.

I have this sense that we as the emergent church (whatever that is) are less important than we think we are. Yet, I believe we are involved in something (the Kingdom) which is bigger and more important than we even realize.

[Bob]

I appreciate the response to the criticisms, but I really am just starting to look at what the "Emerging Church" is supposed to be.

Right now I'm with Bill's view. I was saved in the 70's "Jesus Movement", have been through a variety of churches: fundamental, pentecostal, charismatic, "Word" churches, and the prophetic movement. I've been a deacon and worked with church leaders, taught Sunday school, bible studies, led home groups, started a correspondence Bible school that I taught at, and 99.9% of the time we heard about how whichever church we were at was the church with the truth, and the pastor was pretty much infallible and questions should never be asked. (and of course God's a Republican...)
I now go off and on to a Methodist church and warm a pew. I've had enough of superstars and man centered religion.
All the best on the Emergent church...