Emerging Church

Confronting Evangelical Accommodation

I just began reading a book that I bought earlier this year but had not had the time or religious-academic fervor to read. It is “Reclaiming the Center“, edited by Erickson, Helseth and Taylor, published by Crossway. As the subtitle reads, the book is a collection of scholarly articles about “confronting evangelical accommodation in postmodern times“.

For many of you reading my post here, you’re probably thinking–”what in the world are you talking about?” I’m talking about the confrontation between people within the church as we know it, and how there’s a significant shift taking place today in some segments of evangelicalism. These people within these segments of Christianity are trying to reach our postmodern culture with the the Message of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God–which is a good and Biblical mission that we should all have. However, in the process of doing so, they are accommodating (/changing/reforming) the entire message itself to suit the times and culture; they have tried to contextualize the Gospel message to be appealing to seekers but have gone so far as compromising truth itself.

My post here isn’t intended to be too in-depth, but just to tell you about the struggle I am facing as a Christian and as one who has been called on by God to “fight the good fight of the faith” and to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints“. I feel very alone in this fight here in Toronto where I live out my faith… I feel like very few people actually know what I am talking about, or even see the shift in the way church is being done; most brothers and sisters in Christ I know don’t even care about such issues (of ecclesiology, missiology, and epistemology). (As you can see, using big church words like I just did quickly puts people off! LOL)

Why do I care so much about this stuff? I don’t know exactly, but from what I can tell, it’s all the Holy Spirit’s working. Over the years from serving in church and fellowship, leading worship… I’ve developed an intensive and extensive passion for the glory of God, and how worship is the fuel for mission’s flame and the heart of its aim. I care because God cares, and He wants me to care… Christ suffered, and bled and died and gave Himself up for the church, and thus it is the most precious thing on this earth. As Christ loves the church and calls me to be an imitator of Him, so too I must love and care for it as He does.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…” (Isaiah 61:1, ESV)

On most days, I wake up not wanting to care about all these issues… because it is such a huge burden to think and wrestle about. To just be a regular Joe who follows Christ and to deal with this stuff day in and day out is one thing; to be called to do something about it (& help others in this) is a complete massively mind numbing thing altogether.

Nevertheless, the fact is, things are changing… the goal is honourable, but what’s being done to get there is, quite frankly, apostasy. We can put many labels on these people who are pushing for change in the postmodern church: postconservatives, postfundamentalists, postfoundationalists, postpropositionalists, postevangelicals, post-everythings, reformists…or the more popularily known “emerging church“. Whatever the label, they all have some common characteristics about how to re-do church and become a new kind of Christian. Christianity is being seen as more a narrative rather than doctrines/principles or propositions of truth; tradition, culture and the contemporary experience is being seen as the source of theology rather than just the Bible itself. As Justin Taylor writes, these people are “self-professed evangelicals seeking to revision theology, renew the center, and transform the worshipping community of evangelicalism, cognizant of the postmodern global context within which we live.”

The pastor of this shift in evangelicalism, Brian McLaren, is pushing for freedom from the bondage of modern categories… advocating dialogue over debate, community over individualism, and experience over proof. As can be seen in his numerous books, McLaren argues that Christianity should be focused around Jesus’ message about God’s kingdom which relates to us in our place and time–not just about whether individual souls get to heaven when they die. Hence, this Emergent leader calls for this kingdom emphasis in the community not just individuality, and all of creation not just individual souls. Furthermore, the shift is towards an spirituality-based experience of God, instead of a creed-based one; and how this spiritual formation should be done is to look to Richard Foster and Dallas Willard for methods that stem from Roman Catholicism and eastern mysticism.

What’s been happening in my little corner of Christianity was that we began to read more and more postmodern literature, as encouraged by my church & pastor. (I don’t wanna point fingers here; I’m just telling ya of how my thinkings came about). It started with my pastor being a crazy fan of Erwin McManus–which is for the most part fine, except that McManus is known to be quite emergent-esque; for a while sermons at church were laced with McManus quotations. We have also used Rob Bell’s Nooma videos for fellowship (and even Sunday Service once), the church having purchased many of them dvds, and thus supporting Bell’s ministry financially. Then we started reading McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy” in the young adults small group, for the most part without directly and purposely measuring the book against Scripture. And in more recent days, I hear quotes from Dallas Willard way too often during Sunday Service and even find them on the back our bulletins. If this isn’t enough, the push in our english congregation is towards MISSIONAL. Yes, there I’ve said it… what every emerging church is these days: missional. (I’m not against being missional, I’m all for it; it’s just the emerging/Emergent flavour that I find really sour and quite detrimental to evangelicalism.) And of course, you can also throw into this mix “authentic community“, and “holistic“–2 very popular concepts in the neo-liberal emerging church (again, both of which aren’t necessarily bad… just the emerging twist of it may not be Biblical sound).

All in all, “gulity by association” can very much be said to be occuring around me. (I should also mention that we also went through a “Purpose Driven Life” phase where we did go through the book; thankfully our eldership found the Purpose Driven Church model garbage & we don’t follow it).

As of late, the contemplative spirituality thing has been infiltrating the minds of some friends and my parents too. Richard Foster and the spiritual disciplines that this famous writer promotes is really seeping into the Christian circles. I am finding that sooner or later, many of the good’ ole Christian pastors/writers we read so much of could very well be contemplative too. Like recently, finding out that a book I got for Christmas from a friend, Max Lucado’s “Cure for the Common Life”, has been found to have very contemplative messages and theologies. I won’t say too much about this, except that if God really had a way for us to really experience Him better in life–don’t you think He would have mentioned it in the Bible? If we’re seeking to hear God speak to us through experience, personal revelation, and listen for it…. …. shhhhhhh…. SILENCE–is God’s Word given to us in the Holy Bible not enough for faith and life?

In essence, 3 big things are happening too close to home in this emerging kind of Christianity. This movement/conversation in the church is fostering contempt for authority, breeding doubt about the clarity of Scripture, and sowing confusion about the mission of the church. These trends are very much widespread: God’s word is thought to be profitable but not authoritative, these people who read it deny that they can know any truth there in with any certainty/assurance/strong conviction believing rather that they are too humble to be certain about anything–‘who am I to interpret what it really means? Everything can be interpreted differently by different people.‘ Scripture isn’t clear enough for us to believe any of it with confidence, these peeps think… which then leads us to change the missional missiology found in Scripture to one that aims to adapt church to our culture, with very little if any regard for our duty as the church and as Christians to proclaim the Gospel message of Christ’s substitutionary atonement and our need for repentance and faith.

With all that is happening, we evangelicals must fight to defend the Truth and reclaim the center of Christendom. Christ came to save sinners. If we leave out the message of salvation through Christ which includes both propitiation and expiation–we leave out the very thing that saves sinners. We can help people with getting food, shelter, a nicely run home and stable financial situation…but without the one thing that they really need (to be saved, by Jesus) they will still spend an eternity without God.

Taking a look at the Book of Jude, you can find that this is the only book in the New Testament that is strictly devoted to confronting apostasy… that is defection from true, Biblical faith. Reading through this short letter a few times and digging a bit deeper via the MacArthur Bible Commentary, I’ve found that Jude (Christ’s half-brother) wrote to condemn the apostates and to urge believers to fight for the faith against false teachers & false teachings. He called on the church for discernment and a rigorous defense of Biblical truth. Jude described the apostates in terms of their character and unconscionable activities, but he never specifically mentioned the content of the false teachings. We can, however, find that the degenerate personal lives and fruitless ministries showed that they were masquerading their teaching of error as if it were truth. What Jude emphasizes is the common theme of personal curruption within all false teachers, thus calling Christians to look beyond their false spiritual fronts of clever, subtle, deceptive, enticing methods & methodology… and to see the wicked truth of their lives that is behind the fake gospel they preach.

3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Jude 1:3-4, ESV

Reading this letter, I feel like God is speaking directly to me about what is happening in our churches today, and the spiritual warfare that is happening beyond what our human eyes can see. Jude lived in a time about 25 years before the full-blown Gnosticism that the apostle John wrote about in his epistles; Christianity in Jude’s time was under severe political attack from Rome and aggressive spiritual infiltration from apsostates and libertines who sowed lots of seed for a gigantic harvest of doctrinal error. Where Jude begged the church in this letter to fight for the truth in the midst of intense spiritual warfare, I feel the Spirit of God calling upon me to do the same, here and now, in my place and time in history. These false teachers of today–hollow men of what is known as the Ecumenical Church of Deceit–preach and live a counterfeit gospel, consequently misleading an unknowing, unsaved people, who need to hear the true gospel. Just like it was in Jude’s time before the 1st century A.D., God calls us to wage war against error in all forms and to fight strenuously for the truth, like a soldier who has been entrusted with the task of guarding a holy treasure.

This truth and message of faith & salvation that we are to defend is found in God’s Word: we must know the sound principles/doctrines within, to discern truth from error, and to confront and attack error. In our times, we must understand that the fight is being put on by so-called, self-proclaimed Christians against us who have a high view of the perspecuity, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture. (These emerging Christians aren’t waging war against those who deny Biblical truth but rather making friends with them, along with all the traditions of Christianity.) As soldiers who are dead to sin and alive to God, we have been given the responsibility to study God’s Word, to preach/share it with un/believers, and to fight for its preservation! This is what it means to contend for our faith.

And so the question remains, will we do it? Will I take up this responsibility, this massive task. The way I see it, I don’t have much of a choice; to not put up a fight is not an option. To give up and live in this garbage that is seeping into our churches is to die in the aftermath of open theism, universalism and paganism. It won’t get any better with time but only worse and worse. As Paul wrote in the chapter 3 of his 2nd letter to Timothy, this is the danger of the last days he mentions: people who have the appearance of godliness but deny its power, “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim 3:7, ESV) The time has come when people don’t endure sound teaching, accumulating for themselves teachers to suit their own passions–because that’s what their itching ears want to hear… hence, wandering into myths and turn away from listening to the truth. Their unhealthy craving for controversy and quarelling about words produce nothing edifying to believers or glorifying to God, except godlessness. We must avoid irreverent bable, twisted and unbiblical authors and their books, flee youthful passions and instead pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

In this day, as in Jude and Timothy’s days… God calls us to confront evangelical accommodation, to live a humble orthodoxy. May we live a life worthy, then, of His calling.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

-SDG

© 2006-2008 Cruciformity ✙ by Alex S. Leung. All rights reserved.