Archive for the ‘Emerging Church’ Category
Saturday, July 15th, 2006
Rhett Smith is one of the top blogs I frequent since he has an authoritative pulse on reaching and communicating to the next generation–a thing all Christians leaders should learn. His guest blogger, author Dr. Ray Anderson, is posting about his book An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches.
Click to Rhett’s blog and learn. The emerging church is a hot topic and it sounds like Dr. Anderson has some sane wisdom to dispense about the theology of the emerging church.
Here is the post: Guest Blogger: Dr. Ray Anderson on his new book, "An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches"
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Category Emerging Church, Weblogs |
Thursday, June 1st, 2006
Charles Colson is once again in Christianity Today on the topic of “knowable truth” and the Emerging Church: Emerging Confusion, Jesus is the truth whether we experience him or not.
Maybe I had been too harsh. After all, the theologian—we’ll call him Jim—argued that emerging church leaders are trying to translate the gospel for a postmodern generation. That’s a commendable goal, I agreed. Though in their effort to reach postmoderns—who question the existence and knowability of truth—I expressed fear that they are coming dangerously close to teaching that objective truth does not exist.
A lengthy e-mail exchange with Jim followed. In defense of emerging church leaders, he insisted that truth is paradoxical, simultaneously personal and propositional. It is objectively true that Jesus Christ is Lord no matter what anyone thinks, Jim wrote. But, he added, “Propositional truth is not the highest truth. Indeed, the highest truth is personal.”
A few years ago I enjoyed a conversation with a group of us artist types (At the re:create think tank in Franklin, TN) and Kurt Bruner who wrote The Divine Drama: Discovering Your Part In God’s Story. Bruner’s statement is that both “propositional” and “story” should be presented when we share the gospel. He has a terrific book that puts the gospel story in the format of a dramatic script.
I do think Colson has a point about having concern for putting “personal” truth before the “propositional” and in the need for apologetics. Indeed, truth is knowable. However, I see it as a faulty position on both sides to put propositional or personal in sequence and would think that Bruner has it right in making it a “both and”.
Is the gospel just propositional, or can it be both story and proposition?
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
Mark Driscoll has a post about author and evangelical scholar N.T. Wright’s words on the resurrection of Jesus. There are some links that are worthy reads. Is the emerging church in danger of becoming universalists in the effort to reach and connect to the culture?
HT: Mark Driscoll’s great blog The Resurgence, N. T. Wright Denies Primacy of Jesus’ Resurrection?
Thursday, April 27th, 2006
I have a problem. I am drawn so powerfully to the idea of the Kingdom of God and people like Dallas Willard who says in The Divine Conspiracy that we need to live and share a faith beyond "bar code" Christianity–where only getting to heaven is the focus. The problem is that I am not ready to become an advocate of the so-called "social gospel" where we are here to make the world a better place. In reading the book, A New Kind of Christian, one chapter deals with exclusivism. The argument is that our doctrine of hell is exclusive. I think some good points are made in that book, such as the ones about salvation being more than being saved from hell. However, exclusivity is not in us or in who is or isn’t going to hell. Our exclusivity is in the person of Jesus–only Jesus. And, since Jesus called us to more than just a waiting game until He returns, we see that the gospel is good news to the whole world.
I love reading Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog (Emerging Evangelism). His latest string of posts about evangelism and the emerging church are very thoughtful. Are we heading towards a new form of "social gospel" forged under new terms, faces and institutions? Or, are we seeing that fundamentalism rejected too much, such as the Kingdom of God being present and real? I can stomach Dallas Willard, but I am having trouble with Brian McClaren. Where they both speak about salvation being "more", McClaren seems to redefine historic Christian faith.
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