Are You Emergent?

According to Deyoung and Kluc, defining the emergent church and its doctrine is very difficult for several reasons. First of all, the term “emergent” can mean different things to different people. There seems to be a certain ambiguity that is intentional and even among its own ranks, there appears to be divergence of opinion on what it means to be emergent and its role in Christianity today.

There are, however, certain recurring themes that show up in the works of emergent writers and leaders that can provide a basis for understanding what the emergent movement is all about.

Although not exhaustive, here are some of the issues that Deyoung and Kluc raise in their book with respect to the emergent church movement:

-The Bible is not the inspired Word of God, but merely is a collection of
stories that help believers on their “spiritual” journey.

-God is so infinite that it is entirely beyond our capacity to know Him in a
definite way.

-The words of Jesus don’t really matter; the main thing is to have a
relationship with Him. The movement seeks to contextualize the Gospel by
making it more palatable to today’s postmodern society.

-Worship needs to be redefined to make it more attractive to outsiders,
thus drawing them into the church.

-With respect to the Bible, emergent thinkers do not believe that it is the
inspired (God-breathed) word, inerrant and infallible in regards to the
original manuscripts.

In addition, emergent thinkers would deny that the Bible speaks with absolute authority on every area that it speaks including morality, sin, God, salvation and areas such as homosexuality.

Hence, emergent thinkers rob the Bible of its rightful authority (and resultant claim over our lives as believers) and relegate it to a collection of stories (not to be taken literally) that can be understood allegorically and provide encouragement on our “spiritual journey.”

Here again, emergent thinkers provide emphasis not on the destination of our spiritual journey (heaven or hell), but merely on the journey itself! Many emergent thinkers are uncomfortable talking about hell, and who goes there and why, preferring to focus instead on their own concept of building the kingdom of God.

Another idea that characterizes emergent thinkers is that God Himself is so vast and infinite that we, as believers, can never really know anything about Him. Essentially, this amounts to agnosticism, couched in a form of false humility. If left to ourselves, yes, we would never be able to know anything about God; but God has revealed Himself through His Word, both the written Word, the Bible, and the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

God is capable of communicating about Himself to us in a language (or languages) that we can understand, and He has provided us with the mental capacity to comprehend His communication. Although we can never understand everything fully about Him, we can grasp what He has communicated to us, especially through the illumination by the Holy Spirit.

Emergent thinkers say they love Jesus and want to have a relationship with Him and live like He did. This sounds good, but the problem is that many emergent thinkers contest or downright deny the words of Christ as if it is possible to separate His words from having a relationship with Him. The two concepts must go together. Without taking His words seriously as the very words of God, there is no possibility of living the abundant life that He offers.

After depriving the Word of God of its authority, after espousing that one can never really know God in a definite personal way and after separating the words of Christ from the very one who spoke them, many emergent thinkers believe that the gospel is out-of-date and must be altered to become more relevant to the postmodern society in which we live. Many emergent thinkers reject preaching and prefer to have “conversations.” Of course there are elements in the gospel that “scare people away” from church.

Concepts like sin, hell and election are not popular with the emergent movement. Using the Bible as the basis for morality is also disdained. As a result, the emergent community simply redefines, or eliminates these subjects from their “conversations” altogether.

What emergent thinkers revel in attempting to do is to make “church” more palatable to unbelievers by redefining worship. Instead of biblical expository preaching, they have mazes, candles, coffee shops, bookstores, art classes in an attempt to make “church” relevant and fun so as to attract unbelievers so to church. In this way, the heavily contextualized emergent movement is highly similar to its predecessor, the seeker sensitive movement.

The problem is that watering down the gospel automatically makes it irrelevant. Christ crucified, buried and risen is the only gospel, and will always be relevant to every generation. Once churches begin to see church as an entertainment medium, they unwittingly have become useless and their message has become irrelevant.

Why should true believers care about the emergent church? Isn’t it just a fad that will die down in time and then nobody will have to worry about it?

The answer is probably not. Actually, the emergent church may be presented by its advocates as “new”, but the concepts can be traced back to the Garden of Eden and have been re-packaged throughout the centuries. Gnosticism and New Age are just several examples of heretical ideas presented as new and vibrant and have threatened the teaching, unity and ministry of the church.

If the emergent church’s “gospel” is not the true gospel, then it is leading many astray to an eternity apart from Christ. Besides misleading those outside the church, the emergent church’s doctrine can cause believers to walk away from their faith and damage their lives and testimony. The church’s ministry needs to be about first and foremost centered upon sharing the whole gospel, the Word of God, including faithfully preaching its message for the instruction of Christian believers in righteousness.

To compassionately seek to meet material needs is a valid secondary component in ministry, however, to provide materially, but neglect to give the true Gospel, is to miss entirely the true commission of Christ’s church.

The need for being aware is essential, not so that we can argue people into the kingdom, but rather so that we can more effectively proclaim the truth. Please prayerfully consider reading this book (and then passing it on) and pray that each one of us can truly shine as lights to a lost and dying world and dispel the darkness by sharing the true gospel!