I consider myself part of the emerging movement, and would agree with David Fitch on the weakness of the emerging church. There is always plenty of deconstruction going on and an excitement about what next. yet, it hardly ever fails to travel into the "what next'.

i have wondered if my obsession with hell and salvation is due more to my upbringing and seminarian training, or more to my overly logical brain that, through techincal schooling and a career as a software engineer, has always reduced things to binary choices. certainly this is a western way of looking at things; i'm guilty primarily because i've lived in the western hemisphere all of my life.

i have always wondered how we could read romans and not see that justification was only a part - and a small part at that - of paul's view of salvation.

but if i have a set of scales in front of me, and i put justification on one side, and all the other aspects of Jesus' death on the other, and if justification means deliverance from an eternity in a burning hell, the justification side breaks the scale, as it were, and makes all the other pieces irrelevant. nothing we could do in this life not directly related to telling a friend or loved one - or even a stranger - about hell would have any meaning at all. none. zippo. nada.

which is why i had to face a binary choice a few years back: believe in an eternal hell that punishes non-Christians forever, or don't.

and through a lot of painful, emotional, spiritual wrestling, i finally managed to say, "i don't believe it anymore."

i believe most people in church today must have a brain that's more evolved than mind. they can believe something is true and not true at the same time, or that two obviously opposing ideas can coexist together. i've got last year's model - i cannot find peace in face of those dichotomies. natural selection will no doubt favor the new mutation, since those of us who can't accept the obvious logical fallacy will be driven mad.

thank God for darwin...

mike rucker
http://escroll.blogspot.com

I look forward to the next segment. Mike I understand what you are saying, this is however the fir5t time I have seen you explain some of your process. Thanks for doing that. I would love to hear more on the synonymous connection to Christ and the Kingdom from a practical perspective.

I'm with Mike. I don't like the idea that I might be guilty of "a.) an intolerant judgmental exclusivism, b.) an arrogant, even violent, certainty about what we do know, and c.) an overly-rationalized hyper-cognitive gospel that takes the mystery out of everything." I don't think I am.

On the other hand, I can't escape this thing I call reality, where A is usually not non-A. I can't believe that a dollar might mean 100 cents to me and something more or less like a dollar to some in another social context. (Sure there are exchange rates in other countries, but somebody has to be able to do real math for it all to work).

So I have to believe there is a reasonable possiblity that the words on the page of scripture mean something objective and we can approximate that meaning in our understanding. There's lots of mystery, lot's of room for grace - yet there does come a point where we say "you're out of bounds", and I guess that makes me a judgmental rationalist. So I guess in the eyes of the newfangled emergent generation, I'm out. Ironic.

Oh dear. I didn't realize I couldn't be both evangelical and emerging. I have to choose?

Is the emerging church trying to tell me who's emerging and who's not?

Interesting comments. I simply wonder when the gospel, the good news of king Jesus, stopped from being a radical calling for change, and the implication of a radical separation ... Should we as Church change the words of Jesus "But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her motherinlaw—" (Mt 10.33-35)

Here Jesus is being much more radical than we in the post-modern mentality want to be. Are we going to re-interpret this passage in a soft way so that it does not anymore challenge people for a radical Christianity? and becomes a "all welcome" interpretation?

I agree that it's not a black and white message, and that it is not at all about a piece of heaven after we die. It never was, the early believers had to go 'against' the current of the world, against what was 'socially acceptable', and work out a different and new way of being humans. They've paid a price:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”- Matthew 5:11-12

Are we still part of those blessed ones? What's finally the point of deconstructing the message? I agree with the author that deconstructing enables many challenges, but at the same time creates such confusion, since there is no more a steady reference, particularly if in our deconstruction we challenge the authority of the Bible.

Some thoughts ... wondering

Armando
http://armandoke.blogspot.com

I, as an individual partaking in the Emerging conversation, agree that we must ultimately embody the gospel rather than merely deconstruct our modern interpretations of it.

Another issue that I think is essential in this debate/question is the role of genre awareness. A major problem with the boomer evangelical response was that it came from a flat, one-dimensional view of Scripture. But Scripture is not only made up of numerous texts, but also numerous genres. And I think that when it comes to the Hell discussion, one must have a firm grasp on the literature of apocalypse to fully engage it. Without such an understanding I think we're like treasure hunters trying to interpret a map whose indications we don't fully understand.

Please name an emerging church. I hear a lot of talk about emerging churches. I even heard on a talk show recently that Mosaic was an emerging church...firmly disagree with that. Erwin is as far from this movement that have encountered.

it's almost as if we are firing shots without facts at something that may or may not actually be out there.

Please enlighten...thanks so much!
Richard

I think we are too much influenced by the corp / business model in our doing of church...it has become less of an organic organism and more of a functional organization that seems to be increasingly more about itself...commodifying the things of God.
I have 'friends' at church more for the jobs / functions I can perform and less for treasured comraderie and company while navigating the journey of faith...I feel like my real friends are outside the church...and that is a shame...We really need to place being / abiding over doing.
I tend to agree with Brian M....if we were doing more of the good and right things...we would not need to try so hard to convince others that we have found the way of truth and light.

Navagating this whole "new" theology has been difficult but rewarding for me. I am really tired of watching the "C"hurch make choices about who can become part of a community of faith, who can pastor churches, and waiting to see what the new next sin of the decade will be so more people will be driven from the church.

For me, one pastor who is exploring the Emerging Church, I don't see the issue being whether or not we follow Christ (that is a given...Christ is the way) but whether we walk our faith journeys as people who are called to be bearers of God's love and grace for the world, or as folks who feel we are the "gate-keepers" of heaven. From my reading of Scripture, we are told,in no uncertain terms, to not judge others. God is a big God. I have absolutely no right to tell another person that their "sin" is too great and therefore they can not become an active, 100% member of my church.

The Emerging Church movement is about acceptance of each other--all sinners, all strugglers, no matter what. There is no heirarchy of sin in the Bible, but we have sure created one in the church.

Bravo for a different way to look at the Church. I want to pastor a church that loves people and accepts people from any and all walks of life. I want to church to be truly a hospital for fellow strugglers, a place of healing and wholeness that is solely God's business.

Is Jesus the Way? Yes. Was there a bodily Resurrection? Yes. Is the Virgin Birth for real? Yes. Are we called to judge fellow pilgrims on this journey called life? No!

I'm not exactly sure what i am. But think that as I emerge and begin to ask many of the same questions that other thinkers around my age (I'm 33) are asking, i have begun to discover that our framework for encountering the various theologies we ascribe to may be fundamentally flawed (as is my evangelical tradition). I suppose that deconstructivism is necessary if our belief system proves inadequate to answer our life's most significant questions. What remains however is the necessity to reconstruct those systems - for it would seem that it is not necessarily the systemetization of our faith that is the problem - but our missing pieces - and i suppose as well our attempts to assemble the puzzle as though there were none. Take for instance the ongoing conversation regarding hell. I would suggest (and I owe Erwin McMannus for this one) that the nature of hell is not geographical or positional, but relational. God simply is too loving to force us to be with him forever if we don't want to. This same understanding applies to our view of ethics. While Stanley Grenz argued for an ethic of being instead of doing, I think that Scripture shows an ethic of relating - that sin cannot occur in a vacuum - but inbetween persons. I believe that the emergent Church is yearning for a vocabulary of relationship without divorcing entirely propositional truth. Somehow we just know that "knowledge puffs up but love edifies..."

I'm a 27-year-old who is wrestling with these very issues. I loved the post because it made me think, and not all thoughts i liked, either... I recently preached through Ephesians, and this kind of teaching is ALL THROUGH it. We have inherited a world broken and divided on all fronts - social, economic, spiritual, relationally... and God is putting it back together in Christ. (That he might gather all things together in Christ...)

But I don't think the discontent in me and in many other "emerging" people is so much against the clear statements about salvation, heaven and hell that exist in evangelicalism... it's the lack of realizing the full implications of those things and actively living them out in the world around us! We needn't look back that far to see a Methodist revival that resulted in an INCREDIBLE merger of personal holiness and social holiness.

The problem of too many evangelicals is they don't stick closely enough to either one. There's too little ethic of Kingdom-centered stewardship of TIME...

* time used in personal holiness as Christ did in prayer...

* time used in social holiness as Christ did in healing and feeding...

Instead, we want to BE someone; to make a political or ecclesiological impact;

Let's attack that... the theology is not our problem.

The Bible is not one sided, it gives us a balance of truth and grace. Just because one does not believe that hell exist doesn't negate its existence no more than a person who has cancer that wants to believe it doesn't exist. Christianity is not a pick and choose religion. John 3:16 indidicates we have a need for a Redeemer. There must be something we need redeeming from.
Take your chances if you want but I believe the whole Word of God including the parts I wish were not there.

Rationalism need not lead to to the many sins the author points out as in regards to the Evangelical Movement. True rationalism, and intellectual purusit for that matter, should lead us to a quick realization of how feeble we are, but to go to the extent of many within the Emergent Movement who want to jettison truth, that is going way too far. We give far too much away if we jettison the idea of Truth because our faith is based on historical facts and spiritual realities, but that doesn't mean we will know it in the present or that it will be obvious. I believe that the Emergent Movement just caters to the lazy agnostic and in many cases, the lazy Emergent, who doesn't want to use their brains. Harry Blamires probably said it best his book, The Christian Mind,
"There is nothing so articulate as doubt"

James

Hmmm...I'm with you Dan. I consider myself evangelical and emerging and also converging. I don't think I (or anyone) have to choose one over the other. We just have to "be" or be "becoming". It's part of being changed "from glory to glory" and being made in "his likeness."
It's interesting how we coin phrases...
someone once said that the old move always persecutes the new move but it seems too that if we are not careful the new will throw out the baby with the bath water and that would be a shame.

While I agree that we cannot proclaim a truncated gospel that focuses ONLY on justification by faith; it is a very strange "gospel" that seems to almost cast scorn on this freeing, liberating, life-changing truth. Oooops! Did I just say truth?
It would seem to me that some of the discussion that I am encountering from folks in the "emergent church" has a lot more to do with cultural infuences than a desire to embrace the radical Jesus we see in scripture.
I've explored some emergent church websites.
I've seen candles, symbols, fellowship meals, but a noteworthy absence of bible studies or sermons. Also "missional" seems to refer to humanitarian aid (hey, I'm all for it!) but no reference to reaching Unreached People Groups with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hmmm...at what point can one of us "judgemental, violent, fundamentalists" go ahead and use the term heresy?

Quite frankly, it seems a lot of the "emerging movement" is simply a lot of rich, white people dealing with their uncomfortability with what the Bible says. It would be interesting to have a dialogue about this stuff with one of the "untouchable caste" children who daily try to sell little trinkets in front of the Taj Mahal in India so they and their family don't starve. Or perhaps one of young girls in the sex slave industry in S.E. Asia. I am sure they would be very impressed with issues of "genre" or Soteriology. I wonder if the occupants of Treblinka or Dachau thought that the "black and white" of it was over done? There have been billions of people who have lived on this planet, and are still living, in which the reality of Heaven and Hell is the only life that they will ever have to look forward. While I agree, eternal life can start on this earth, as Paul says, "If only for this life we have hope, we are to be pitied more than all men."

Steve:

It sounds like you're pretty new to the conversation. In your post you made several generalizations that tend to miss the mark in defining the emerging movement:

1. Sermons: please understand that sermons can be "biblical", or completely unrooted in Scripture. Please don't assume that a sermon, therefore, is necessarily a good thing. Even when a sermon is biblically rooted, it often is NOT the most catalytic way for Christians to really comprehend the truth of the Kingdom. Two-way conversations, and lived out Kingdom experiences tend to be much more fruitful in this regard.

2. Missional: For the emerging church this is not only humanitarian aid (though that's a major part of it), and neither is it merely an admonition to "get into the Word" or to get people to say a prayer for salvation. It is a lifestyle movement where the goal is to embody a holistic Christlike existence. If we can do that, the prayers for salvation and all that will follow.

dfb offered,
"Quite frankly, it seems a lot of the 'emerging movement' is simply a lot of rich, white people dealing with their uncomfortability with what the Bible says."

do we really need to go there? that yet something else is a racial issue?

if anything, i see emergent as a *rebuke* of what seems to have become a lot of comfortable mega-churces where everyone gathers and raises prayer requests for safe travel on vacations to hilton head, while apparently busying God so much that he misses the fact that five thousand kids die of hunger every day in africa. i heard a self-identified agnostic call into a local radio program sunday night complaining about his Christian friends who pray that they'll make the right choice for insurance during open enrollment, but somehow God wasn't bothered by a bus crash where a number of kids were killed.

a recent comments debate on another blog had people going back and forth about whether john macauthur showed enough emotion during the worship song segment at a recent conference.

i hate judgmental attitudes, though i've often played one on tv...

mike rucker
http://escroll.blogspot.com

I think in post modern times - the community aspects of the gosple would make it more attractive to people. And that we have tended to become more programme-oriented rather than people oriented in the way we understand church. Most people tend to equate church with Sunday church service rather than the people who constitute the church. And I think that the idea of embodying the gospel becomes more concrete in the context of the small church patterns. I am part of a small chruch in Hyderabad, India, and our concern has always been to challenge the members to make the Greatest Commandment the main agenda rather than the Great Commission. Our approach has been to understand the Great Commission in the light of the Greatest Commandment

Looking for that which speaks timelessly, I turned to reading "Unspoken Sermons" earlier in the year. MacDonald faced much the same types of deadening religious club-ism in 19th century Scotland, and eloquently addresses its aspects in turn, which read like an indictment of our modern/postmodern churchianity, but with the grace, good humor and optimism that befitted him. He also noted that, according to Matt. 2:21, Jesus came to save us - not from hell, a byproduct of sin - but from our sins themselves. Sin, rather than hell, is the killing cancer within us. If we take the Gospel to heart in that light, and if we let our light so shine before men, rather than resorting to gimmicks and means and fear, perhaps our neighbors would note a remarkable difference that would redeem the church from its own press and point them to Jesus.

Pastor Fitch, with all due respect,

Two things; You have mischaracterized the evangelical church and Your definition os justice is unbiblical.

The message of the gospel is not, "We're in. You're out." It is, "I'm alive, you're dead. But you can be alive too." When you make general broad brush characterizations of the Bride of Christ, I wonder if it is out of a sense of competition or a lack of confidence in God's Word and the Holy Spirit or what. Regardless, you come across as a false teacher.

Justice is getting what you deserve. The last thing you or I really want is justice. God's justice requires His wrath to be unleashed. His justice was performed on the cross, for those who believe.

The human pursuit of "justice" is a product of human arogance. It is no more valid among adults than it is for a 3-year-old. What is justice to a three-year-old? It is, "I want that cooky, especially if my big sister is about to grab it." The three- year-old who does not get the cooky says, "That's not fair!" Justice to a three year old is based on self-centeredness. Its based on covetousness. That is the basis ofthe pursuit of "social justice" in the church as well. The pursiut of social justice as a political enterprise, as some in the church are currently engaged in, is simply the implementation of covetousness as a body-wide attitude.

What we need and what Christ makes available is mercy. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Grace is getting something wonderful you don't deserve. When the Church engages in works of charity, it is in the Grace business. Not justice. I have been on the giving and receiving end of grace far too often to take your broad characterizations of the Church seriously.