C. S. Lewis’ reputation for being unimpressed with the modern world, with the pretensions of newness, is well established. Long before Thomas Oden coined the phrase modern-chauvinism and then critiqued its underlying assumptions, Lewis understood and rejected its reflexive instincts. Namely, the default assumption that newer ideas and practices are necessarily superior to older ones.

Now that “networking” designates one of the supposed essential tools of success for today’s aspiring professionals, including for many would-be ministers of the gospel, a peek into Lewis’ view of such things reminds us of the prophetic edge the creator of Narnia so often achieves.

In the following excerpt Lewis reflects upon childhood experiences at boarding school:

“ . . . the essential evil of public-school life, as I see it, did not lie either in the sufferings          of the fags or in the privileged arrogance of the Bloods. These were symptoms of something more all-pervasive, something which, in the long run, did most harm to the boys who succeeded best at school and were happiest there. Spiritually speaking, the deadly thing was that school life was a life almost wholly dominated by the social struggle; to get on, to arrive, or, having reached the top, to remain there, was the absorbing preoccupation. It is often, of course, the preoccupation of adult life as well; but I have not yet seen any adult society in which the surrender to this impulse was so total. And from it, as school as in the world, all sorts of meanness flow; the sycophancy that courts those higher in the scale, the cultivation of those whom it is well to know, the speedy abandonment of friendships that will not help on the upward path, the readiness to join the cry against the unpopular, the secret motive in almost every action.”

From Lewis’ Surprised By Joy, paragraph 9 of chapter VII entitled “Light and Shade.”

A little consideraton of Mary on Christmas? Why not? Click here to read my review of Tim Perry’s Mary For Evangelcals: Toward and Understanding of the Mother of Our Lord. 

Reading Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, though I had not yet heard of the emerging church movement, was my introduction to that movement. Donald Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications was the first serious treatment of the movement I encountered. That was almost two years ago. Since that time I have found myself frequently frustrated by the conviction that Carson had “got it wrong,” and so had wrongly poisoned the pot of evangelical reception of the emerging movement. Carson’s reputation as one of the most respected evangelical scholars writing today is well established and well deserved. His influence is significant and with good reason.

Over the last two years I have engaged in constant research of the emerging church movement, have published a couple of short pieces on the movement and have warned audiences that Carson’s work should not be viewed as the final, comprehensive, evangelical assessment of emerging church. I stand by that view. No treatment of the movement that makes no mention of the names Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, Erwin Rafael McManus, Ed Stetzer and John Burke can hope to achieve anything like a comprehensive overview of emerging.

But! Having just re-read Carson’s book, I am much more impressed with it than I once thought possible. In a forthcoming book I will argue that folks like Mark Driscoll and Erwin McManus do merit (whether they like it or not) the emerging tattoo and thus, Carson’s book involves an analysis of only a couple of sub-sections of the movement. But very important sub-sections they are and Carson’s analysis of them is, I believe, right on.

Far from the mean, reductionistic treatment of McLaren some have charged him with, Carson is very thorough, fair, and even seems to look for every opportunity to praise McLaren where he can. For example Carson notes McLaren’s care in avoiding the simplistic notion modernism bad/postmodernism good-trap that so many others fall into. Nevertheless, Carson, through careful and footnoted examination of McLaren’s writings, exposes unbiblical conclusions, questionable analysis of culture, and contradictory assertions that characterize McLaren’s thinking. I read Carson before McLaren and when I got around to McLaren I took a bias against Carson with me. But, now having tried to read McLaren sympathetically with little success, I find Carson, upon second reading, very impressive indeed.

I highly recommend Carson’s Becoming Conversant as an indispensable evangelical assessment of what I call the doctrine/wary and doctrine/averse streams within the emerging church movement.

Click here to read my article published in The Pathway: Newsjournal of the Missouri Baptist Convention.

A portion of Brian McLaren’s account of an encounter from a couple who visited his church and asked about the policy regarding homosexuality:
 

“. . . the young woman explained, ‘This is the first time my fiancé and I have ever actually attended a Christian service, since we were both raised agnostic.’ So I supposed they were like most unchurched young adults I meet, who wouldn’t want to be part of an anti-homosexual organization any more than they’d want to be part of a racist or terrorist organization.”

McLaren goes on to explain why he cannot give straight and negative answers to questions about homosexuality. Here are some of my concerns:

Notice what is going on here. Racism and terrorism are associated (if not equated) with the loving revelation of God that homosexual behavior is opposed to God’s will, bad for those who practice it, and detrimental to others who might follow their example. From McLaren’s point of view, it seems, Christians are rightly anti-racism and anti-terrorism but not rightly anti-homosexual behavior. Why not? Why, according to McLaren’s reasoning should we not bend over backwards to be sensitive to the views of racists and terrorists? If McLaren would have similar trouble giving straightforward and negative answers regarding a Christian church’s policy on racism or terrorism, then we could congratulate him for being consistent and also note that he is consistently nuts.

McLaren believes racism and terrorism are wrong. Good for him.  The people of Israel and followers of Christ (and by the way, the vast majority of the human race) in virtually every spot on the globe, for virtually the whole of history, believe that homosexual behavior is wrong, aberrant behavior, harmful for those who practice it and for others who might follow their example.

Could it be that McLaren’s blindness to his inconsistency stems from his default awareness that “nowadays, all morally sane folk know intuitively that racism and terrorism are repugnant and evil?” (though some on the anti-semitic and anti-American left today even make bizarre apologies for terroists [e.g., Ward Churchill!]

Could it be that the source of McLaren’s hesitance and ambiguity where homosexuality is concerned is simply that the politically-correct cultural norm now rewards such equivocation regarding and even rejection of traditional and Biblical views on the subject?

And does not McLaren’s hem-hawing on homosexuality highlight the crucial difference between McLaren’s quest for culturally relevant forms of Christianity and Mark Driscoll’s  similar quest? Could it be that, fundamentally, McLaren’s touchstone is culture while Driscoll’s is the Bible?

I am asking.

The distribution of the little booklet “Building Bridges” to messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention in San Antonio this past June could signal a major step toward a brighter future for the largest Protestant denomination in America. I, for one, pray that the insights and convictions expressed in this small volume by co-authors Timothy George, David Dockery, in the forward by Chuck Colson, in the preface by Thom Rainer and in the endorsement by Morris Chapman are given serious consideration by leaders throughout the SBC.

“Building Bridges” recognizes the sad necessity for the conservative resurgence within the SBC and gratitude for its success. I share that recognition. I confronted that necessity in the mid 80’s first hand as an M.Div. student at Southern Seminary where a culture hostile to Bible-believing Christianity held sway. Old Testament professors questioned the historicity of the plagues visited upon Pharaoh; one church historian questioned the historicity of Jesus’ bodily resurrection; an ethics professor viewed abortion on demand as a constituent prerogative of human rights and homosexual behavior as a function of sexual orientation. Yes, the conservative resurgence was necessary. All who love the gospel of Jesus Christ and recognize the Bible as the very word of God owe Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler and the scores of Baptists who helped make their dream of rescuing the SBC from its leftward slide a deep and abiding sense of gratitude.

The conservative resurgence prevailed. Thanks be to God! What now? Listen to the heartfelt words of Thom Rainer: “I am a firm supporter of the conservative resurgence. I knew we could not continue down the path we were headed. But it seems as if we just can’t stop fighting even though the battle for the Bible is over and won.”

Dockery and George offer incisive overviews of the history of Southern Baptists, its now complicated make-up, the new challenges facing the denomination and a plea for the development of a new consensus that can anchor us as a people in evangelical, orthodox confession but also free us from constant self-destructive fighting over secondary issues (important issues but still secondary). The continuance of such controversies threatens to fracture our fellowship and to divert and drain energies better spent in evangelism and church planting. Failure to build the needed new consensus could ensure that the now undisputed decline of Christianity in North America will drag the SBC down with its terrible tide.

David Dockery’s discernment of fourteen categories of Baptists to replace the old moderate/liberal vs. fundamentalist/conservative divide in the convention marks a truly profound contribution to our comprehension of what Southern Baptists have become. If Dockery’s analysis comes even close to an accurate description of the true character of current SBC constituencies, the fragility of that fellowship becomes obvious and so does the urgency of that new consensus necessary to hold together large portions of the various streams in the new SBC.

Current controversy surrounding private prayer language and now the consumption of alcohol highlight the ease with which SBC energies can be diverted from the great task of global evangelism and church-planting into fractious fights we can ill-afford where the character of the gospel and other core doctrines of orthodox, evangelical and biblical faith are not at stake.

14,000 copies of Building Bridges are now in print. Read it for yourself if you can lay your hands on a copy and if you share the message contained therein, pass the word along. The difference between a future of fighting, fragmentation and decline or one of growth, fellowship, and advance of the gospel may hang in the balance.

Audio of the Dockery and George contributions to this volume are availale from Union University. Perhaps copies of the booklet can be obtained from Union University or the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I am off to Britain and Scotland and, for a day, to Rome. It is a study tour for Midwestern Baptist Seminary Students. My Lewis book accounts for my presence on the trip. I am looking forward to the Lewis sites. I doubt that I will be able to blog again until June 4, but who knows.

The more I read Lewis the more I am fascinated. I think the recent publication of the final volume of letters will result in significant clarification of Lewis’ views and illumination of the richness of his spirituality.

Lewis seems to hold together a very strong, very serious commitment to the spiritual disciplines and to spiritual accountability and growth without the worst by-products such seriousness can sometimes produce: fixation on spiritual naval-gazing; the holy huddle syndrome; and loss of the glorious liberty of the children of God that knows our righteousness is not our own. Am I right about this?

Later.

Morris Chapman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the SBC Executive Committee, is saying some very interesting, helpful and hopeful things these days. Let’s review a few of them:

“. . . dare we as biblical conservatives to speak of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and let the world see our love? Do we dare to let the world see that while we have strong convictions, we will be less judgmental so people can see Christ in us?

Are you willing to take the risk of trusting your fellow Southern Baptists and being worthy of their trust? (SBC Life, April, 2007)

[The] common commitment to missions is the primary reason the Baptist Faith and Message focuses only on core beliefs of Southern Baptists. If we insist that every doctrinal nuance debated among Southern Baptists is a core belief, sooner of later, our missionary force will be depleted and the unsaved will be abandoned.

In answer to the question, “What is your perspective on the emergent church?” [it should be “emerging” but never mind] Morris responded:

We need to remember that all emerging churches are not the same. In fact, all younger, emergent, and emerging pastors are not to be considered one and the same.  . . . The Southern Baptist Convention has many fine younger pastors who lead their churches differently than we did in earlier generations and yet they are strongly committed to the inerrancy of God’s Word and have a spirit of love and loyalty to our Lord Jesus Christ and the Southern Baptist Convention.

We should become knowledgeable about the emergent church and reserve judgment for those whose actions and words prove them to be heretical in their faith and practice. We should be careful not to speak falsely against those who are honestly trying to find God-honoring methods more suitable for reaching this generation of unsaved for Christ. And we certainly must be careful about condemning a younger pastor simply because his methods are innovative. My prayer is that God will give the people and their pastors spiritual wisdom in the application of their enormous creativity.

Some younger Southern Baptist pastors are insisting that the consumption of alcoholic beverages is not prohibited in the Bible. While the Bible never says that a drink of wine is a sin, it is filled with principles for living a pure life as a testimony to what Christ did for us on the Cross. . . . Rather than argue the finer points of biblical interpretation, why would we not pray, “Dear Lord Jesus, there are some things I will not do, though there be not biblical injunction per se against them, because they are perceived to be an integral part of the world.” (SBC Life, May 2007)[Link to the entire interview here].”

Wow!! What a different tone and substance we encounter here compared to the sweeping judgments some are prepared to make with regard to the emerging church movement! Notice how carefully Chapman chooses his words. Where the Baptist Faith and Message is concerned, our fellowship as Southern Baptists is at stake. But where alcohol is the subject, respectful, scripture-informed conversation between brothers and sisters—no pontificating; no patronizing; recognition that some matters are core and others are very, very important, but not core. The appeal for patience and caution when dealing with young leaders committed to biblical inerrancy, biblical authority, evangelism, and church planting is most welcome.

My reading is that the tone and conviction present here parallels the tone and conviction at the IMB, NAMB, and Lifeway much more closely than do some of the calls for sweeping denunciation of theologically conservative streams within the emerging church that we encounter in some quarters. I strongly and enthusiastically identify with those, like Chapman, calling for a default posture of openness, trust, patience, and respectful conversation where solidly evangelical Southern Baptist leaders and churches are concerned.

I believe a rush-to-judgment response to the emerging church movement could seriously damage the SBC’s effectiveness in evangelism and church-planting at this critical historical juncture in which the center of gravity of God’s converting activity is moving to the Southern Hemisphere [See Philip Jenkins’ extraordinary treatment in The Next Christendom]. One of the very few bright spots in the West and North America is precisely among those conservative, evangelical, doctrine-friendly churches associated with the emerging church and missional Christianity. Lovers of the SBC such as myself should be very careful whom they choose to alienate.

A couple of weeks ago, I addressed the Theological Sub-committee of the Missouri Baptist Convention on the question of the emerging church. My article on that subject was copied and distributed to the committee of four persons and also to around 10 or so others who were in attendance.

Yesterday this press article appeared on The Pathway website. Since its release, I have been inundated by folks who have read my article and cannot understand how the “points” listed by Chairman Rev. Michael Knight could possibly be “based on” things I have written or said. I share their confusion.

Editor of The Pathway, Don Hinkle, has graciously invited me to write an op-ed piece for the next issue. I am grateful for this opportunity to articulate my views on the subject directly. You can link to a first draft of this op-ed piece here and comment as you wish.  

My interest in traversing the emerging/missional landscape involves several factors. I am bi-vocational pastor of an inner city Southern Baptist Church, and in my search for help I found Acts29. I was intrigued because of their success in the city combined with unashamed embrace of a fully-orbed evangelical confessional statement versus the doctrine-ophobia I have encountered among some McLaren-enamored types. I am not a church-planter or re-planter so I needed help and I had no interest in planting a church that imagines that the Apostles Creed can suffice for sustained fellowship over time. History tells us that ain’t so. The Bible has too much to say about too much else.

I find McLaren helpful if I am looking for insights into culture or if I want to know what can go wrong within evangelical churches and how anger and hurt might manifest itself among those who have had bad experiences in evangelical churches.

But I do find McLaren alternately sloppy and disingenuous where the Bible, theology, church history, historical theology or evangelicalism are concerned. He plays himself up as a gentle soul looking for respectful conversation, but that does not include conservative evangelicals. There I find caricature and dismissiveness and evasiveness.

I noted the issues of homosexual behavior and substitutionary atonement; one ethical matter and one theological/doctrinal matter. On both of these, McLaren seems to relish confusion and tends toward the tickling of politically correct ears. “Scholars disagree” is supposed to silence challenges to McLaren’s aw-shucks uncertainty on a range of issues where, surprises surprise, his attractiveness to the politically correct and theologically progressive is deftly maintained.

Is he unable to study the meaning of the word “porneia” in the New Testament? It is not controversial. The finest liberal exegetes (or New Testament scholars of any strpe for that matteer) tell us that, in fact, homosexual behavior is viewed as sinful by the apostle Paul and, almost as certainly, in the words of Jesus in Matthew 15:19 where Jesus’ listeners would have heard that word (porneia) as referencing all unlawful sexual behavior covered by the Levitical holiness code. Liberal scholars admit that this is the meaning of Jesus’ recorded words and go on to reject this New Testament teaching for today’s believers. Such admitted rejection of Biblical teaching I can disagree with but still respect as honest.

But McLaren hem-haws. Why does this kind of thing matter? Because McLaren wants to be viewed as a builder and nurturer of biblical communities of faith. Help me here. How can I take him seriously if he, year after year, evidences no interest in learning what the Bible teaches on just those issues that would render him odious to those who have made him a star? Does not his antipathy toward evangelicals outweigh his stated commitment to the Bible?

Meanwhile, I see in Acts29 effective engagement with young supposedly thoroughly postmodern urbanites while retaining a fully-orbed doctrinal stance and a willingness to bear the brunt of attacks from progressives, liberals, and politically correct bashers of conservative Christians. I suspect a major Baby-out-with-the-bathwater factor borne of the “protest” roots of much that I see in emerging.

Scot McKnight (whose default sympathies are with the McLaren-friendly types and not with the evangelicalism-friendly types like myself) once put it this way: those recovering from fundamentalism are anxious to befriend all those who were “othered” within their former churches. I think McKnight is on to something here. I see an amazing openness to almost anything except conservative Christianity among many within the emerging movement. There is that rush of freedom that comes with liberation from having been denied the good things of Christianity present within other traditions. I understand this from a human and therapeutic point of view, but I also believe that, in time, those who would build and sustain anything recognizably biblical and Christian will eventually have to take stands on the major teachings of Holy Scripture. At this point it appears to me that Acts29 gets this, McLaren seems not to, and significant chunks of the emerging conversation seems indifferent.

One more little tid-bit of my thinking. It strikes me that McLaren and Padgitt speak of postmodernism as a formidable, almost fixed cultural, even philosophical force before which one must genuflect or be found irrelevant. On the other hand Mars Hill/Acts29 try to distinguish within the culture dimensions that are neutral, beneficial, or pernicious vis-à-vis the gospel. This view of the relationship between the confession of the church and culture strikes me as more protective of the gospel and less susceptible to relevance-chasing, heresy-endangered syncretism.