The Cross is the center of the Christian faith, though it takes the entire Weekend (Good Friday and Easter Morn) to accomplish the gospel work of God. But, the Cross is often truncated into an event that deals exclusively with sin as transgression (sin is transgression, and a lot more) for the purpose of preparing people for the Celestial City (which it does, and again a lot more). I call this truncated version of the gospel the Good Friday Onliy... Read more
An interesting discussion for me is whether or not to call this Emergent “thing” a “church” or a “movement” or a “conversation.” Let me weigh in with these thoughts, and then suggest what I think is the quintessential literary form for Emergents. First, I think it can be said with a fairly robust confidence that it is not a “Church” in any significant sense of the word. At least, not as the Evangelical Covenant is a “church” or the Lutherans... Read more
To define a movement properly is to find not just what is unique to a movement, as adult baptism upon confession was to the Baptists or as the gift of prophecy was to the Vineyard, but to discover and elaborate what is “characteristic” of that movement. I think it is a mistake to define Emergent solely on the basis of its epistemology, especially when one focuses on only one of its leaders, and I think it is imperative to listen... Read more
No word is more used among the Emergent folk than the word “missional,” so I’ll use it too. Some of these churches will chuck an occasional Sunday gathering to “do something for others.” In so carrying its missional emphasis, a message is sent to the local community that what the Church is about is a mission for the good of the world. I’m not sure if NorthBridge Church in Antioch considers itself “emergent” or not, but what I do know... Read more
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... 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... 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... Read more
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