Glad God pulled you out of it. Thank you Jesus
The Emerging Church
- Thread starter Theophilus
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Glad God pulled you out of it. Thank you Jesus
Thank you, it's like a pretty veneer with some of the same terms as christianity and underneath it is demonic forces wanting your soul!
I believe I was converted before going in to it, so was trying to be discerning..but I did know my bible much and the nice feelings doing it pulled me in.
Foster
Active Member
The shield of faith keeps us from being vulnerable to deception and lead us down a path that often ends in destruction. But we won’t be distracted if only we operate our hearts from a point of faith.
Faith is not a blind leap into the dark. Faith is believing the principles of God’s Word and ordering our lives accordingly. God tells us how to live successfully. He doesn’t leave us in the dark regarding His will for our lives. He spells it out for us in the Bible. The ultimate question is: Do you trust God or don’t you? The answer to that question will determine how you handle quenching all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
Faith is not a blind leap into the dark. Faith is believing the principles of God’s Word and ordering our lives accordingly. God tells us how to live successfully. He doesn’t leave us in the dark regarding His will for our lives. He spells it out for us in the Bible. The ultimate question is: Do you trust God or don’t you? The answer to that question will determine how you handle quenching all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
Jay
Active Member
I think that key leaders within the “Emerging Church” like Brian McLaren, who perhaps is the most widely read author in the field. As a pastor who has made his own transition through a crisis from a modern mind-set to a postmodern one, McLaren offers perhaps the most carefully nuanced, thoughtful viewpoints on the practical effects of modernity upon the church.
Our young people today have been growing up in a postmodern setting, or at least in a culture strongly influenced by postmodern thought. We should expect, therefore, that postmodernism would be impacting how youth ministry is being done, and the “Emerging Church” is what we find.
www.challies.com
Our young people today have been growing up in a postmodern setting, or at least in a culture strongly influenced by postmodern thought. We should expect, therefore, that postmodernism would be impacting how youth ministry is being done, and the “Emerging Church” is what we find.
The False Teachers: Brian McLaren
A few months ago I set out on a series of articles through which I am scanning the history of the church—from its earliest days all the way to the present time—to examine some of Christianity’s mos…
Yeah, Ravi Zacharias (someone who did have a tarnished testimony, but also did some profound apologetics) talked about post modernism.
He went to the post-modernism museum, which had structures of stairs going nowhere and other shapes that were meant to represent notions of no truth/subjective.
He was being hosted at the museum by a tour guide, and he tilted his head to look at the foundations of the building and asked if the foundations holding up these structures was built this way!
So a museum dedicated to post-modernism, had foundations built on modern, absolute physics!
He went to the post-modernism museum, which had structures of stairs going nowhere and other shapes that were meant to represent notions of no truth/subjective.
He was being hosted at the museum by a tour guide, and he tilted his head to look at the foundations of the building and asked if the foundations holding up these structures was built this way!
So a museum dedicated to post-modernism, had foundations built on modern, absolute physics!
Oh I meant that I DIDN'T know my bible much then.
Overjoyed
Active Member
I’VE NEVER MET a Christian who didn’t like the Bible. No matter how liberal or conservative, mythical or literal, text-critical or traditional—no matter the approach, every Christian of every persuasion whom I have ever known or read has liked the Bible. And so do emerging Christians.
“I believe it [the Bible] is a gift from God,” writes Brian McLaren, “inspired by God, to benefit us in the most important way possible: equipping us so that we can benefit others, so that we can play our part in the ongoing mission of God. My regard for the Bible is higher than ever.” Elsewhere he writes, “The Bible is an inspired gift from God—a unique collection of literary artifacts that together support the telling of an amazing and essential story.”
Similarly, Rob Bell affirms that “the Bible is the most amazing, beautiful, deep, inspired, engaging collection of writings ever.”
Doug Pagitt calls it “a member with great sway [in our community] and participation in all our conversations.”
Emerging Christians dig the Scriptures.
But they also confess to having “mixed feelings” about the Bible.
Emergent leaders want to move away from seeing Scripture as a battleground. They don’t want to use the traditional terms—authority, infallibility, inerrancy, revelation, objective, absolute, literal—terms they believe are unbiblical. They would rather use phrases like “deep love of” and “respect for.”
And they bemoan the fact that evangelicals, as they see it, employ the Bible as an answer book, scouring it like a phone book or encyclopedia or legal constitution for rules, regulations, and timeless truths.
The net result is that the Bible has taken on a different role in emergent communities. The Bible is not the voice of God from heaven and certainly not the foundation (foundationalism being a whipping boy among emerging Christians of a philosophical bent). Rather, the Bible spurs us on to new ways of imagining and learning. It is “not reduced to a book from which we exact truth, but the Bible is a full, living, and active member of our community that is listened to on all topics of which it speaks.”
The Bible, for many emerging Christians, has been rediscovered “as a human product.”
“The Bible is still in the center for us,” Bell explains, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.” Rob Bell’s wife, Kristen, continues the train of thought. “I grew up thinking we’ve figured out the Bible, that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again—like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color.”
During this time of reimagining the Bible, Kristen Bell credits Brian McLaren with directing their thinking on Scriptural authority. “Our lifeboat,” Kristen continues, “was A New Kind of Christian.” It’s here that McLaren first introduces us to his protagonist, Neo, who helps the bewildered pastor Dan Poole discover a new kind of Christianity and a new kind of biblical authority. Neo explains, “When we let it [the Bible] go as a modern answer book, we get to rediscover it for what it really is: an ancient book of incredible spiritual value for us, a kind of universal and cosmic history, a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live. That letting go is going to be hard for you evangelicals.”9 Through the lips of Neo, McLaren argues for a postmodern understanding of the Bible’s role in our churches—a role that is above propositions, beyond inerrancy, and behind the text.
Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be
“I believe it [the Bible] is a gift from God,” writes Brian McLaren, “inspired by God, to benefit us in the most important way possible: equipping us so that we can benefit others, so that we can play our part in the ongoing mission of God. My regard for the Bible is higher than ever.” Elsewhere he writes, “The Bible is an inspired gift from God—a unique collection of literary artifacts that together support the telling of an amazing and essential story.”
Similarly, Rob Bell affirms that “the Bible is the most amazing, beautiful, deep, inspired, engaging collection of writings ever.”
Doug Pagitt calls it “a member with great sway [in our community] and participation in all our conversations.”
Emerging Christians dig the Scriptures.
But they also confess to having “mixed feelings” about the Bible.
Emergent leaders want to move away from seeing Scripture as a battleground. They don’t want to use the traditional terms—authority, infallibility, inerrancy, revelation, objective, absolute, literal—terms they believe are unbiblical. They would rather use phrases like “deep love of” and “respect for.”
And they bemoan the fact that evangelicals, as they see it, employ the Bible as an answer book, scouring it like a phone book or encyclopedia or legal constitution for rules, regulations, and timeless truths.
The net result is that the Bible has taken on a different role in emergent communities. The Bible is not the voice of God from heaven and certainly not the foundation (foundationalism being a whipping boy among emerging Christians of a philosophical bent). Rather, the Bible spurs us on to new ways of imagining and learning. It is “not reduced to a book from which we exact truth, but the Bible is a full, living, and active member of our community that is listened to on all topics of which it speaks.”
The Bible, for many emerging Christians, has been rediscovered “as a human product.”
“The Bible is still in the center for us,” Bell explains, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.” Rob Bell’s wife, Kristen, continues the train of thought. “I grew up thinking we’ve figured out the Bible, that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again—like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color.”
During this time of reimagining the Bible, Kristen Bell credits Brian McLaren with directing their thinking on Scriptural authority. “Our lifeboat,” Kristen continues, “was A New Kind of Christian.” It’s here that McLaren first introduces us to his protagonist, Neo, who helps the bewildered pastor Dan Poole discover a new kind of Christianity and a new kind of biblical authority. Neo explains, “When we let it [the Bible] go as a modern answer book, we get to rediscover it for what it really is: an ancient book of incredible spiritual value for us, a kind of universal and cosmic history, a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live. That letting go is going to be hard for you evangelicals.”9 Through the lips of Neo, McLaren argues for a postmodern understanding of the Bible’s role in our churches—a role that is above propositions, beyond inerrancy, and behind the text.
Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be
