Emerging church
Emerging ecclesiology in crisis:
I have been meaning for some time to respond to some comments made by Jason Clark to the effect that the emerging church lacks a coherent ecclesiology. He was commenting on a piece I wrote four years ago asking: What does the emerging church stand for?
Jason acknowledges that there have been...
(17 Sep. 2011)
Roger Olson's thoughts on the emerging church movement:
Roger Olson is always worth reading. (Well, perhaps not always. No one is always worth reading.) He has just posted an excellent and very sympathetic piece on the emerging church movement. It feels a little bit behind the curve, but that may have more to do with perception than with reality;...
(8 Aug. 2011)
Whatever happened to the People of God?:
One of the ways in which emerging theologies have attempted to correct the individualistic bias of much modern Reformed and evangelical theology has been to stress the cosmic dimension to salvation. So, for example, J.R. Woodward, whom I greatly regret having missed when he passed through...
(29 May. 2011)
The Great Convergence: the emerging church and the New Perspective:
Two major developments, very broadly speaking, have impacted modern Western evangelicalism over the last decade. With regard to praxis the emerging church movement has challenged traditional patterns of church life and mission and has set out—in more or less experimental fashion—new, fresh,...
(3 Mar. 2011)
Jesus, Paul, and emergents’ anxieties about the wrath of God:
Mike Morrell asks a couple of very pertinent questions in response to my “presumptuous appeal to both emergents and Reformed”. Very pertinent. The first has to do with the relationship between Jesus and Paul, the second with the fact that any talk about the “wrath” of God...
(13 Jan. 2011)
A presumptuous appeal to both emergents and Reformed:
At the beginning of last year a lot of people were proclaiming the imminent demise of the emerging church. That prognosis may have been premature. Andrew Jones is sometimes credited with having written a self-defeating obituary from within the movement, but he has clarified his position: the...
(3 Jan. 2011)
Pyromaniacs and the debate over cultural engagement:
I have always been somewhat in awe of the feisty visual and verbal rhetoric of the Pyromaniacs blog. I don’t go there very often – it’s the other side of town, it’s unfamiliar territory, I sense that I don’t belong there, I don’t understand the language, and frankly I...
(26 Sep. 2010)
Straws in the wind: why the emerging church still matters:
Brian LePort (Near Emmaus) suggests, not unreasonably, that the more pertinent question is not whether the emergent church has a problem with the doctrine of a final judgment (see previous post) but whether the emergent church still exists. I have to say, I did wonder whether I should add a...
(31 Jul. 2010)
Does the emerging church really have a problem with a final judgment?:
A tweet from Andrew Jones (‘An original emerging church criticism: “Don’t conceive we crapper undergo Absolute Biblical Truth”’) led me to Pastor and Author Bob DeWaay’s resolute and curiously robotic critique of the ‘Emergent Church’ on SO4J-TV. On...
(29 Jul. 2010)
David Fitch, Hirsch and Frost, and the de-ecclesiologization of mission:
David Fitch has posted a series of articles presenting a thoughtful and constructive critique of the emerging/missional church. He looks at Peter Rollins’ deconstructionist approach to scripture and warns that it risks de-incarnationalizing the Word of God; he raises concerns about Brian...
(12 Jul. 2010)
