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Monday, October 09, 2006

The Emerging Church

Hi!

I have recently become facinated by something known as the emerging church. It facinates me because much of what I am learning about this new move within Christianity aligns with the work I felt God calling me to over the past couple of years.

I am challenged - I am a little apprehensive - I am definitely excited and want to learn, learn, learn about new ways of reaching out into my community and growing the Kingdom of God.

I am concerned, by a level of hypocracy that I sense in some quarters of the EC, and by what I perceive to be a move away from biblical orthodoxy within the EC.

I am amused by the obvious cultural rebellion I see in some parts of the EC - particularly in the US (where I am not) and interested in the ways the new/next generation of Christians in Australia (where I am) will rebel against Australian cultural Christianity (if such a thing exists!).

I look forward to exploring these and many other topics with all who happen by this blog.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Andrew, your comments are interesting, but it would be great if you pointed to the resources that you have found so I can see what you read to come to your conclusions.

One of the problems that I have found is that there is little definitive online writing on the subject.

This is probably because of the nature of the 'conversation', but hopefully this will change.

What do you mean by 'hypocrisy', is there something you are specifically refering to?

The Creature said...

Hi David,

Thanks for dropping by.

Here are some links to e.g.s of what I am talking about - I am a fan of Jim Henderson and in particular his "Lost Interviews" (have you seen them?) but I see this
as perhaps an example of hypocrisy.

I've come across similar sentiments elsewhere - I think we humans have a tendency to want things done (human/sin nature) or seen "my" way and maybe that shows through the cracks in our clay-pot lives at times. Yet the one thing that Jim is pretty clear on and is a dominant theme in a lot of other EC stuff I have read, is the need to build relationship. So I see approaches like Jim's in this instance as hypocritical because it seems to fly in the face of everything he says we should be doing when trying to reach out to those outside the kingdom, i.e. being understanding of different opinions, willing to listen, non-judgmental attitudes etc. etc. yet when dealing with fellow Christians all this kind of goes out the window.

Re: cultural rebellion - I have found when reading "testimonies" from North Americans who are doing church EC style alcohol seems to come up in the conversation a lot. I guess I didn't realise that alcohol and Christianity where seen as being so incompatible in the US. It particularly came through when I read the The Exodus Papers (I would recommend right clicking this link and selecting "save target as" as it is a PDF file and almost guarenteed to stuff up your browser).

I'll come up with some more links and post them later on - but for now, bed is calling me!

Cheers,

Andrew in Oz

Anonymous said...

Thanks Andrew, plenty to read there. I am in the UK, so my views on alcohol are probably exactly the same as yours. But then the american church has always been out on a limb on a number of issues: alcohol/death penalty/guns/science/war/aid.
What concerns me personally is the way some of these views seem to be spreading.
I will do some reading now.

Anonymous said...

Scot McKnight’s Full Text of What Is the Emerging Church? has been published and is an interesting detailed analysis of the emerging church.

The Creature said...

Thanks for that David - I'm looking forward to reading it!