I just finished reading an interesting article that Mark Driscoll wrote called Navigating the Emerging Church Highway. It’s an interesting critique and analysis of the emerging church movement. From his perspective he divides this movement into four main theological “lanes.”
1. Emerging Evangelicals. Those in this lane will tweak things like worship style or preaching in order to seem more relevant. They won’t be very invested in “social justice” type issues.
2. House Church Evangelicals. In this lane are Christians who believe that the house church is the best way to reach people. In this lane are those such as George Barna, Neil Cole, and Shane Clairborne. He mentions that a common critique of this movement is that they’re filled with disgruntled Christians.
3. Emerging Reformers.
He says:
In addition to evangelical beliefs, Emerging Reformers have a commitment to the Reformed theological tradition as shaped by such historical figures as Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, along with such broadly recognized evangelical leaders as Billy Graham, J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and John Stott. Emerging Reformers look to contemporary men such as John Piper, D. A. Carson, and Wayne Grudem for theology, along with Tim Keller and Ed Stetzer for missiology. They also look to church planting pastors such as Matt Chandler, Darrin Patrick, and me.
4. Emergent Liberals. This lane is characterized by the writings of Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and others.
He says:
Emergent Liberals range from the theological fringe of orthodoxy to heresy that crosses the line by critiquing key evangelical doctrines, such as the Bible as authoritative divine revelation, God as Trinity, the sinfulness of human nature, the deity of Jesus Christ, Jesus’ death in our place to pay the penalty for our sins on the cross, the exclusivity of Jesus for salvation, the sinfulness of homosexuality and other sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and the conscious, eternal torments of hell. Some emerging house churches are also Emergent Liberal in their doctrine.
So why is all of this noteworthy or significant?
I think what’s really important is that it shows the great diversity of ideas and theologies within this “emergent” church movement. There is a tendency to paint broad strokes when referring to these theologies. So I think it’s important to understand that this is a still developing and complex system of ideas.
I know I, for one, wasn’t aware of some of the things he mentions concerning Rob Bell’s doctrinal ambiguity. I knew that he was more reformed leaning, but wasn’t quite sure how far.
Thanks for sharing. I never heard of this movement, but in the last couple of days this is the second article I have seen on it. Your article was much easier to understand than what I had previously read.
Glad to hear 😉
If it’s not clear it’s of no use.
Thanks for the post. Sometimes its tempting to paint all movements as a homogeneous theology. When you really begin to dive and look under the surface, you begin to see a wide scope of belief. You see this in just about ever denomination and movement.
I think this is one reason why when we have conversations with others, we need to define some of the terms we use. If we don’t one side can assume one meaning and the other side assume another meaning and it will shape and alter the conversation. Then we are really talking at one another instead of talking to.
What you pointed out is one reason why I am even hesitant at this point to use the emergent church term as it implies something that only a really only applies to a small group.
Yeah, there’s so many terms these days which are used very ambiguously: emergent, postmodern, secular, spiritual. There’s tons others. And like you’re sensing, in a lot of circles the term “emergent” is one that many are very suspicious of.
After reading this i came across this Interesting article, by Fernando Canale.
You may have read it already Rodlie! Have a excellent sabbath!
https://www.adventistreview.org/issue.php?issue=2010-1516&page=16
Thanks, Joshua. I hadn’t read it yet, actually, but thanks for sharing!
thanks for sharing this with us. mark driscoll’s original article is an insteresting read. its amazing to read about how far out some “christians” are. they’re so far out there, it’s really hard to call them “christian” in the technical sense. they’re more like “spiritual” leaders. i wonder how it is that people get so far out? what is the road they take? what kinds of theological/authoritative/paradigmatic detours have they chosen? from christian to spiritual.
Yeah that’s the main question I suppose, huh? In the article it mentions concerning Rob Bell that he had been reading from another author which seemed to influence his thinking quite a bit. I think there’s a lesson there, of course, that we can easily be influenced by things that we read.