No, this is not about American politics: the Emergent movement, in many of its local shapes and variations, often (though not uniform) will have a sense that the Church is a body and that it only functions best when it is thoroughly democratic, and that term means “governed by the people.” In more theological terms, the movement tends to be congregational and it is low church.This is emphatic at Solomon’s Porch and it won’t surprise to learn that it embodies… Read more

This generation of Christians, for a vareity of reasons, including an awareness of the social and physical sciences, contends that the gospel addresses the “whole” of the human condition — heart, soul, mind, body, community, society, and environment. One of the features of Doug Pagitt’s Reimagining Spiritual Formation is an attention to holism. Again, holism is not just an “individual” being completely restored by the gospel but the whole human condition. I found the intergenerational “thing” of the Sunday gatherings… Read more

One of the most important elements of the Emergent movement, an element that DA Carson unfortunately didn’t address, is that many of these folks think the gospel has to be worked out at a local level and in a particular place. DA Carson’s book focuses on the epistemology of Brian McLaren but, in so doing, misses what I think is foundational (dare I use that word in another sense?) to the entire movement: its ecclesiology. These last few blogs have… Read more

One of the biggest surprises I had in reading Doug Pagitt’s Reimagining Spiritual Formation was the emphasis at Solomon’s Porch on Scripture and on Spirit, even if for some there may be some blurry edges for those who come at things looking for specific doctrines to be expressed. (I’m not sure why I was surprised, but I must admit that I was.)Here is a statement that is one of those edgy Emergent statements which, because it is intended both to… Read more

One of the most interesting and provocative and challenging features of Solomon’s Porch, at least to me, is the interest in and working out of “embodiment” of the gospel in that local gathering of Christians. So, I’m grateful to Doug Pagitt for setting out this theme so clearly in his book, Reimagining Spiritual Formation.What do I mean? |inline Read more

No Evangelical or post-Evangelical group believes more in the Church than does the Emergent movement, though there will be plenty who would like to resist this claim. And I do not mean at all to suggest that anyone else doesn’t believe in the Church.All I mean by this is that Solomon’s Porch puts its entire reputation on the line, the entire reputation of their reworking of the basics of Christianity, in what everyone can see and believe and experience as… Read more

I’d like to suggest in this blog one of the underlying themes to Solomon’s Porch, and perhaps to the Emergent movement ecclesiology in many of its shapes and forms, and this first theme (there’ll be about ten) can be seen in these three terms:Reaction to perceived weaknesses and problems and shortcomings. I read Doug Pagitt and Solomon Porch to be intentionally being post-evangelical rather than anti-evangelical. (But there are always “anti”s whenever there are “post”s, but Doug Pagitt makes it… Read more