Boy am I angry

Today hasn’t started out so well for me. To be honest last night did end so well either. Yesterday I was shown a couple of links to some blogs that were very critical of the Emergent Church movement. Now those who know me know that I haven’t jumped onto the Emergent church bandwagon and in fact have some concerns about the movement. I feel lucky to be in a place where I have the opportunity to dialogue with a number of people about the movement, its theology and doctrine. I have come to realize that there are two very distinctly different groups being discussed. On one hand there is the “Emergent Church” that movement is an affiliation of some very well-meaining pastors who have come together to have a sort of structure to what they are trying to do. Out of that group came the “Emergent Conventions” and a lot of shrink wrapped content. On the other hand is a group of churches who could be lumped into that group except they are churches in mainline denominations who are thinking missiologically in a different way. As I read through a number of posts on these couple of sites I was reminded of the “Conversations with the Emerging Church” conference I attended at Talbot last spring. That conference was a great idea but ended up being pretty discouraging. The “Conversations” ended up being a bunch of Talbot professors reading pre-written talks that were pretty dry reviews of the Emergent Chuch, then the Emerging guys got up and shared stories and ideas about what they were doing. Very little conversation happened (except with one particular professor who’s name I don’t remember but I was very impressed with) My frustration with these blogs is the same as my frustration with the conference. People on pedestals tend to lump everyone together and blast away. There are probably some bab Emergent churches. There are also some bad Presbyterian Churches, Methodist Churches, Southern Baptist Churches and Calvary Chapel Churches. The point being that we need to evaluate each church based on criteria which analyzes its theolgy and doctrine compared with historical western Christianity and doctrine and see where it lines up. Too much criticism is only going to lead the church further down the path of irrelevancy. Can we please all just admit that the state of the Western church is not in a good place. More churches are dying and losing members each day than are growing. Something major has to be done. Are there good things happeneing in the Emergent church? Yes are there things that we need to “dialogue” about so that we can work on transforming? “Yes” Even Jesus didn’t give up on his not-so-smart apostles. He stayed with them and believed in them even when they were dumb or denied him. Thanks for reading.