Tension in the Emerging Church
- Drew Goodmanson
- Apr 1, 2004
- Series: Other
A lot of ink has spilled discussing the shape of the emerging North American church. We hear voices within the church speak of a need to re-tool the ‘modern church' to create a spiritual experience that reflects the current cultural context. It is clear that this creation requires changing the way we do church. The challenge that we must grapple with in the midst of this transition is discerning what the church should be willing to change. Today there is a tension in the emerging church between our biblical calling and the desire to be culturally relevant [i] .
If you investigate many of the church leaders who desire change, much of these changes are fueled by the cultural shift brought by postmodernism [ii] and a reaction against the modern church. Modernity brought a period of hope in man and our abilities to solve all our ills. Within this period all areas of life from medicine to spirituality could be analyzed and quantified; providing drugs and programs to make mankind a better people. Unfortunately many churches bought into these ideas and created their own carefully designed programs to reach the lost and to take steps to become better people outside of relying on the Holy Spirit. The church must not react to culture by mimicking it but learn to speak through it while we stand on solid doctrinal ground.
The church must identify where we agree with modernism and what we stand against. For example, within the modern worldview, truth was an attainable goal, albeit through man's own power, reason and technological advancements. The church should never accept solutions to man's problems beginning with man.
While there are many places the church should stand against the myths of modernity, many churches are reacting against the foundations modernity borrowed from God to stand upon. Emerging culture is willing to attack these claims of absolute truth in order to place a higher value on personal experience. While the church must reject man being able to create truth themselves, “absolute truth” is necessary for the church to claim Christ to a fallen world. Any attack on truth preaches a Christ that cannot be claimed as the risen lord and savior.
The death of truth leaves Christianity void of any encounter with the lost. To live out the honest result of rejecting modernism would be to encourage a false Christian flavored New Age movement. This would include a god constructed based on tolerance, who makes no claims for right and wrong and is reachable regardless of what path you take as long as you are spiritual. This includes the death of all doctrine. No longer would churches talk about sin or the lost being spiritually dead and in need of redemption.
It is within this new philosophical era that churches are now challenging established Christian doctrine with personal experience. Here are a few of their voices:
Postconservative theology inclines towards open theism, which describes a God who takes risks, limits himself, changes his mind, enters the pain and turmoil of human experience [iii] .
Are the New Testament words “true?” Is this the right question to ask, or is it loaded and misleading? It might be more accurate to say that the Scripture is a light to our path, and that it is given to us by God. [iv]
We are a group that doesn't have the answers but want to journey together. [v]
I am not diminishing experience; personal experience has always been part of the journey with Christ. It is from our individual experience and testimony that we pursue our understanding of God. My own testimony stands as an altar reminding me of a personal loving God who has saved me. Often it is within experience that we can learn to love our God with our heart and soul in addition to our mind. (Mat. 22:37)
The experience we seek must begin with Christ. God has provided us with experience which hinges on God redeeming us through what Christ accomplished on the cross and resurrection. Our experience needs to stem from our encounter with God's word and is only beneficial when the Holy Spirit is the source of our wisdom, revelation and enlightenment. (Eph 1:17-18) It is only when the Holy Spirit has drawn our minds and hearts into truth that our personal experience speaks with legitimacy.
Unfortunately, experience left unchecked results in a church with a healthy emphasis on the individual's feelings, interpretation and desires over difficult teachings of God's. This is a dangerous place of tension as Christianity is no longer seen in terms of black and white but about an individual's experiential interpretation.
As we journey inward into our personal experience it includes our flesh. Scripture is clear that pursuing a personal experience not founded on God's word and discerned through the Holy Spirit will be fruitless because we are a fallen people. (Jer. 17:9, Rom. 3:11 , 1 Cor. 1:18) Our experience is not built in truth when it begins with us. In an environment where there is no truth and experience is the individual focus, what has once been considered heresy now is part of the standard for being the church.
Kevin Miller, Executive Editor of Preaching Today.com and editor-at-large of Leadership Journal in response to his experiences at Emerging Church conferences which discuss the postmodern church aptly states,
Evangelical conviction (is the baby being thrown out with the bathwater with the postmodern movement). In order to avoid the hubris that often comes from the evangelical church, many folks are now getting squishy on things they should not be squishy about, including the authority of Scripture, the uniqueness of Christ, and the value of the Bible's sexual ethic. If we lose those, we lose the Gospel. [vi]
We must recognize in an age of pluralism the church is at risk of losing the Gospel. Barna Research Group recently conducted research to learn more about what those who consider themselves “born again Christians” believe. Research conducted found that 15% believe “the Bible is NOT totally accurate in all of its teachings.” And almost half of born again Christians (45%) believe that Satan is “not a living being but is a symbol of evil.” About one-third of born agains (34%) believe that if a person is good enough they can earn a place in Heaven. 28% of born agains agree that “while he lived on earth, Jesus committed sins, like other people,” 15% of born again Christians claim that “after He was crucified and died, Jesus Christ did not return to life physically.” About one out of four (26%) born again Christians believe that it doesn't matter what faith you follow. [vii]
My hope is that most of us reject all of these stances as not valid in the Christian context. But what happens if we move up the slippery slope and consider issues that are less ‘black and white'? One leader of the postmodern church movement wrote:
Admit your uncertainty about homosexuality as a Biblically-condemned sin. …is it really so heretical to think that the evangelical church may just be wrong about homosexuality as well? [viii]
Are we becoming “squishy on things we should not be squishy” on? It is important that the church defines and believes in ‘right and wrong', ‘black and white' or else we will slide more and more away from a stance of truth beginning with God.
History shows us that Christians that have fallen into the trap of perverting the gospel under the weight of being ‘cultural relevant' for the postmoderns or ‘seeker-sensitive' for the moderns. During the Enlightenment, Thomas Aquinas did the same when he borrowed secular philosophy as the starting point to prove God. During the era of modernism Christians minimized the metaphysical, rejected biblical authority outside that which could fit within the “scientifically provable” model society created.
Changing the church's message to make it more palatable to the world is clearly forbidden by Scripture ( 2 Tim. 4:3 . The way of the Cross is not easily adjusted to fit consumer preference. It is those who desire to deliver a message based on cultural preferences that end up becoming the culture they are evangelizing to.
advancement|church beyond
It is important that as the church our critical thought isn't a reaction against what modernity or postmodernity brought forth. Deconstruction of modernism provides no solutions and as Brian McLaren, an author and leader in postmodern ministry writes that he has "a desire to move beyond a critique of modern ministry”. The church must stop reacting against modernity and speak to the culture using modernity and postmodernity starting with God's truth at our foundation. [ix]
We can agree with Modernism which allows us to communicate with a standard of truth. We can experience the beauty of postmodernity as a renewed freedom from moralism and legalism. The church should re-discover art, literature and film where we can speak through experiences because we start with God's view of mankind.
We have the liberty to foster a worship experience based on new reflections within culture. We have the freedom in Christ to recognize the pulpit, pews, and corporate church is a method of experience created in response to a particular culture. Your preferences may say out with the fluorescent lighting and in with candles, out with traditional Church buildings and in with old theatres but these changes are never at the expense of changing God's word & truth.
As the church we need to recognize we are dealing with a God of love and power, who has given us a Scripture that calls us to a place of change. ( Rom. 12) This change is not driven by the culture surrounding us but through the Holy Spirit. It is from the vantage place of seeing through the filter of the gospel that we can truly engage our culture and enter valid dialogue based in our claim of truth.
Endnotes:
[i] This pursuit of relevance is the Churches alone, God and His Word is always relevant, but part of the mission of the church is understanding how to speak this truth in a language that the current culture understands. As a Church we need to continually re-focus on our mission as a community sent by Christ (John 20:19 -21) to participate in this world. This participation needs to be done in a way that is honest with God's word and His gospel, but also it must be done free from the chains the Church has put on itself (moralism, working to entertain worshipers versus calling them to participate, consumerism, individualism, etc). We must work to contextualize God's message and be the light in this world we are called to.
[ii] Defining postmodernism is impossible. Postmodernism is primarily a reaction to the ideals of modernism. These ideals are hope in a better world through advancement of man, truth discovered through science and rational thought and the ability to make the world a better place starting from mankind.
[iii] Overview of Theological Content , Andrew Perriman - Open Source Theology
[iv] Authority, Community and Truth in the Postmodern World by Len Hjalmarson at Next-Wave - http://www.next-wave.org
[v] A church website.
[vi] Kevin Miller, Executive Editor of Preaching Today.com and editor-at-large of Leadership Journal , interview at Next-Wave - http://www.next-wave.org
[vii] Barna Research Group – Born Again Christian Statistics
[viii] Spencer Burke Editor & Founder, TheOoze- http://www.theooze.com
[ix] Recommended reading The Defense of the Faith by Cornelius Van Til a great thinker on presuppositional apologetics
0 Comments | Login to Post Comments