In a little over a week I will be attending (in disguise) the Together for the Gospel conference at Southern Seminary. Having been a product and observer of the New Calvinistic movement I think we are at a turning point.
Running alongside the New Calvinistic movement has been the Emerging/Emergent movement. Some within the New Calvinistic movement have also been part of the Emerging movement often fighting against the Emergent movement. Point being that there has always been some crossover that has effected both movements. Let’s take a quick look at the good and the bad of where we are today. Remember these are only my observations.
The good is that there is greater separation from the emerging and emergent sides of this movement. It seems that those that used to be categorized as emerging have jettisoned the name. Which I believe is a good thing. The emerging/emergent movement for good or for bad began by fighting against dead orthodoxy, (a good thing to fight against), the danger was always to distance them from anything that resembled a N.T. church to the point that they would cease to be a N.T. church. Thankfully for the Emerging people this didn’t happen and now that they are no longer referring to themselves as Emerging we can see the evidence that they are trying to be seen (as they should be) as part of the N.T. church along with other branches of the N.T. Protestant church.
The other paradigm shift that has recently occurred is in the vehicle; “A New Kind of Christianity”, by Brian McLaren, which has been accurately described as being no kind of Christianity at all. In this book Brian leaves no doubt that he is not a Christian and is at ‘best’ a deist, even ‘Liberal’ would be a gracious description at this point. This already should have been apparent to Christiandom in his book; “A Generous Orthodoxy”, so I am thankful for Brian’s further clarification.
The accusations that the Emergent church was nothing more than repackaged liberalism was usually laughed at with wrinkled noses. It is always better when movements define themselves and given enough time they often do.
So where does this leave us? I am glad to see the Emerging church is trying not to be labeled as Emerging anymore. May I suggest something that I think more accurately describes what they have been (thankfully) trying to do all these years? Instead of ‘Emergeing they can cling to the slogan semper reformanda or Always Reforming. As for the Emergent church it is my hope that those that had been classifying themselves as Emergent will finally see that the movement has emerged itself right out of Christianity.
So where do we go from here? The idea of always reforming is supposed to lead us back to the Scriptures, constantly asking ourselves the questions; “Is what I believe Scriptural? Is my worship Christ centered and Biblically mandated?”, every church whether Old School Presbyterianism or New Calvinism should be asking these questions on a regular basis.
The dangers I see in the New Calvinism movement seems to be a straying from the Biblical model of trained Pastor led congregation. I am concerned at the campus model of a church. A pastor is supposed to be a shepherd to his people and this can only be done if the pastor actually knows his people. It is one thing to be a church plant from a larger more established church. Paul and Barnabus were sent out from Antioch to plant churches but part of that was also establishing Pastors, Elders and Deacons in each of these churches. How can a man shepherd a people when he is beamed in every Sunday on a screen? If this was a third world country and there weren’t enough pastors to go around then I wouldn’t complain but that doesn’t describe America.
The Gospel is supposed to be the driving force each Sunday, preached by a frail man of God. Should we simply find the best preacher we can get and beam his message to every church in the nation? I would say no. How would that Pastor know the individual needs of each individual congregation? Why then are churches modeling their Sunday services in this manner? I am not talking about new churches that are being planted. I am talking about churches that have been planted that are ready to be on their own.
The second area of concern for me is a seemingly downplaying of training pastors. I have heard from both Baptist and Presbyterian circles in the last few months of men who have not been to school that are pastoring churches. This baffles me. Would you go to a doctor that hasn’t been to medical school? On one hand we have churches that are not even getting a pastor going with a virtual one and on the other hand we are rushing people into the pastorate that haven’t been trained.
The conservative members of the protestant church made the same kind of mistakes in the early part of the 20th century. In the fight against liberalism conservatives pulled out of the established schools and started their own and in many cases stopped training their pastors altogether. The mistakes that they made were the lack of training for their pastors as well as establishing many schools that were sub-par in academic standards. But what is the reason to do this today? Some of the schools that were started at that time were started in the right way leaving us with some excellent seminaries throughout this nation, Southern seminary, a few Westminsters, a few RTS’s, Mars etc. So why is the non-schooling of pastors starting to become a trend?
I have given you some observations that I have made and please feel free to comment on them. Overall I am pleased with the recent developments within the Emerging/Emergent movements. I am a strong believer in clear definitions. No movement is perfect and we always should be careful when we start to think that we can get rid of one or two things or change this or that, thus making ourselves perfect. In the end we will always be reforming.
No comments:
Post a Comment