Earnestly Contending has two great quotes which I will reproduce and some helpful commentary of his own: H. Richard Niebuhr once described the modern gospel as consisting of ‘A God without wrath bringing people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.'” .C. Ryle said this as part of a dissertaion on the essentials of a biblical faith: “The first leading feature of Evangelical Religion is the absolute supremacy it assigns to Holy Scripture, as... Read more
Just noticed my pastors sermon responding to the Tsunamis is now online. I remember that one criticism of some churches after 9/11 was that they did not respond to the disaster appropriately. I was quite surprised to note on a couple of church websites that put their audio sermons online that some preachers do not appear to have modified their preaching plans following 26/12. I would find it hard to believe that any churches failed to mark the event in... Read more
In the second foreword to Dan Kimballs book about the Emergent church Brian McLaren writes Our understandings of the gospel constantly change as we engage in mission in our complex dynamic world, as we discover that the gospel has a rich kalaidoscope of meaning to offer, yielding unexplored layers of depth, revealing uncounted facets of insight and relevance. No doubt as we look back and see ways in which our modern understandings of the gospel were limited or flawed I... Read more
Rick Warren wrote one of two forwards in Dan Kimball’s book Emerging Church-vintage Christianity for New Generations. I am sure that Dan wouldn’t mind me repeating that he believed he was at the more more conservative end of the theological spectrum of the Emergent Church. So perhaps he isn’t a neo-liberal at all. Anyway, I intend to read his book and blog about it (although I suspect that if Nancy Pearcey’s arrives before I finished it I may go onto... Read more
Jolly Bogger has an excelent post answering these questions – My blogging partner, Adrian Warnock has taken up a series of posts on what he calls “neo-liberalism.” It took me a little looking to figure out exactly what he was talking about, but it appeared that he is dealing with the UK’s version of the emerging church movement. In a private e-mail he confirmed that he is defining neo-liberalism as an attempt to accomodate the gospel to post-modernism, whereas liberalism... Read more
Well so far, we have begun to discuss some individual points with some people. Perhaps not surprisingly I have had a number of people respond stating that “neo-liberal” is a good description of a rather nebulous movement in the church. What is interesting is that I have also had a number of people from the emergent movement state “I am not a liberal” but no one has said “yes you are right Adrian, the term neo-liberal is one I will... Read more
The 21st Century Reformation weighed into the emegent discussion a couple of days ago here and then since them here and here focussing mainly on the valid point the emergents make on the need to move beyond being individualistic to being a community- sadly I missed it all till now! I have now added him to the aggregator so hopefully I wont miss it again (thats if the blogspot atom convertor does its job for me) Do email me if... Read more
A surge of Complainants are being noticed. With its 8,283 swear words (it has officially the highest swear-word count of any show, though chorus members are counted individually and account for much of that total) and characters who include a diaper fetishist, a she-male and an f-word fuelled fight between God, Jesus and Satan, the prospect of the show being broadcast complete on BBC 2 has outraged hundreds of viewers. Hundreds may not sound like many, but the most-complained about... Read more
The whole of Europe will be observing a three minute silence at noon today (GMT) The rest of the world are welcome to join us! In the UK busses will pull over to the side of the road, TV broadcasts will stop, and in our office the fire bell will sound the start and the end of the silence. This is an unprecedented response to a disaster far from our shores but which has touched so many of us. There... Read more
The BBC is cynically dealing out a stock email which reads as follows to anyone who complains- Jerry Springer The Opera was written as a theatrical entertainment show and as a fun, opera-musical-comedy piece based on the talk show phenomenon. It is not to be taken literally. Those who watch it will see that it is obviously a larger than life parody of the confessional TV genre and the culture presented to us in these real-life programmes (which themselves go... Read more
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