Ambiguity

Tonight I’ll be attending for the 1st time one of my church’s “Young Adults” small groups.  I’ve graduated and now am too old for our University fellowship, Aletheia.  Our small groups are doing a book study of Brian McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy“, and tonite we’ll be discussing the chapter on “Why I am Liberal/Conservative”.

Let me 1st off by saying that I would be very offended if ever somebody were to call me “liberal” in my orthodoxy/orthopraxy.  I would agree with John Frame, however, in that “we must be both more conservative and more liberal than most students of Christian worship: conservative in holding exclusively to God’s commands in Scripture as our rule of worship, and liberal in defending the liberty of those who apply those.”  I affirm the tenants of the Reformation, including the 5 solas and the Doctrines of Grace… and hold very strongly to the sufficiency of Scripture and Biblical inerrancy–sola scriptura.  this is however the main thing that most emergent’s do not affirm.

2ndly, I was very hesistant at first in purchasing this book by Brian McLaren.  It is generally known as THE textbook of the emerging church movement (ECM).  I hate how I have to pay money and thus support financially this theological pacifist in order to have a good knowledgeable understanding of what to object to.  From reading so much about it from well-respected evangelical pastors/theologians, I think I know enough to have a position about it, and it is definitely NOT in agreement with its principles. And so, I am kinda itching to burn this book after reading it, or sell it to you for an extremely ridiculous price.  In brief, the “orthodoxy bears no resemblance to biblical orthodoxy. Avoid this one!” (Discerning Reader)

Anyways, I found this recent post @ Pulpit Live by Phil Johnson, and found it to be very insightful.  I think I’ve read it before, from Phil’s own blog, but here’s an excerpt:

On top of that, this is a movement that hates formal structure, so it has been resistant to any kind of definition or careful boundaries that would make its shape easy to discern or describe. It’s a movement that is purposely foggy and amorphous, fluid and diverse—and most in the movement want to keep it that way.

That ambiguity is a major aspect of the emerging subculture’s love affair with all things postmodern. The lack of clarity and the absence of any clear consensus in the movement is also the main strategy for self-defense against critics. No matter what you criticize within the movement, practically the first response you are going to hear is that “not everyone in the movement holds that opinion.” And in most cases, that’s probably true. It’s a movement that loves ambiguity and diversity and despises clarity and organization.

Nonetheless, last year Brian Mclaren and a few other leading emergent figures banded together to form an actual organization called, simply, “Emergent”—also known as “Emergent Village,” or (as you find it on their website) “Emergent-US.” So the terminology becomes even more difficult.

Emergent—the organization, is actually different from the “emerging church movement.” Until last summer, you could use the word emergent as a kind of shorthand term to signify the phenomenon itself, but now that’s the name of an actual organization. And at times there even seems to be a bit of tension between Emergent, the organization, and the “emerging church movement.”

I find it really funny how they have a photo of David Crowder in this article.  Apparently, some evangelicals find Crowder and his church, University Baptist Church, in Waco, TX to be emergent.  I find that hard to believe…coz if it were so, ECM that is, then we could almost categorize the Passion Movement as ECM.  However, of course–thank God–Louie and Piper have spoken out against it being emerging, and thus, I am still an avid supporter of Passion.