Why the Emergent "Movement" Keeps Stalling

by Phil Johnson

• For all their talk about community, Emergents are too individualistic to hang together.
  
  
• For all their talk about conversation, Emergents mainly just like to hear themselves prattle.
  
  
• For all their talk about humility, Emergents begin with an incorrigibly arrogant worldview.

---

Village Idiots

by Phil Johnson



mergent Village is collapsing on itself. The EV Weblog, once a busy and heavily-trafficked stream of Emergent semi-consciousness (replete with a near-manic discussion forum) is barely functioning these days. The current average wait-time between posts over there is at least two weeks. In fact, the eight posts currently residing on the EV blog's front page constitute everything that has been posted on that blog since September 9. One of the posts is a desperate-sounding "Call for Voices," and another begs readers to "Save the House of Mercy Podcast," which, evidently, has been gasping for life over the past year.

It's already too late, I gather, to save the official Emergent Village Podcast. Their last release was in mid-August.

Meanwhile, Emergent Village's best-known celebrity voices have likewise fallen silent—mostly. Andrew Jones and Tony Jones, both living icons of "emergence," had a little back-and-forth exchange last week, which culminated in Andrew's public, formal separation from the organization. I'll give a link to that exchange in a moment.

First, take a look at this. It's a document that was drafted in 2005 (shortly after I began blogging) to defend "the work of emergent" from critics who were raising serious questions and sounding alarms about the dangerous trajectory the movement was following. The document was co-signed by seven de facto leaders in the movement: Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Spencer Burke, Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Andrew Jones, and Chris Seay. Five years after that document's publication, portions of it are almost humorous and its blithe tone of dismissal is more infuriating than ever. After re-reading it yesterday, I had a brief daydream about making copies with a big We told you so! xeroxed diagonally across the front. It would be nice to distribute them like tracts to the still-Emergent remnant at their next convention—if there are actually enough Emergents left to convene such a gathering. Are there any early, vocal critics of "emergence" who feel no such temptation? If so, they are to be commended for their restraint. I'm not that sanctified yet.

Anyway, the sink-hole that was once Emergent Village will continue to fade into irrelevance. The remnant who are still there will experiment with more and more heretical ideas. They will also be even more drawn to the spiritual idiocy that has plagued the place from day one. After all, virtually everyone associated with EV who ever had any inclination to whisper an occasional word of spiritual sanity has already left the building. It's been more than a year since Dan Kimball began to keep his distance. He said he was going to link up with Scot McKnight (and others) and start a network using the Lausanne Covenant as their common ground. So far that new network has been even more silent than the new Emergent Village, but the point is that Kimball, McKnight, and others have been backing away from their early alliance with Emergent. They aren't even speaking the language of emergence these days. (Hopefully, they are still discussing fresh ways to imagine and explore postmodern spiritualities in a Lausanne context. If so, I can hardly wait till they break silence about it.)

So here's that link to Andrew Jones's announcement: "Goodbyes to Emergent Village." I'll throw in this other link that will get you started tracing the brief exchange between the Joneses that culminated in Andrew's withdrawal.

You wonder why I've hardly posted anything about Emergent/ing Christianity for the past year? The movement has been self-destructing nicely without any help from me.

Does this mean we can all relax and drop our guard against the postmodern mentality, neo-liberal doctrines, and quasi-Socinian tendencies that originally provoked our concerns about the Emergent/ing Church Movement more than five years ago? Not on your life. With the meltdown of the visible movement, Emergent thinking is being dispersed like so many dandelion seeds into the broad evangelical movement, which was overrun with religious weeds in the first place.

The demise of Emergent Village is by no means the end of Emergent thinking. If you doubt that, read the comments under the "Tall Skinny Kiwi" posts linked above. And pay close attention to what Andrew himself says—and doesn't say—about the reasons for his departure.

As a matter of fact, the comments at Andrew's blog last week were both informative and troubling on several levels. It's clear that the real catalyst hastening Emergent Village's meltdown is something more than a few key leaders' sudden doctrinal scruples. It seems a moral scandal of televangelist proportions is about to "emerge." Serious accusations from credible sources have been floating around for months and popped up last week in a couple of comment-threads. (They were subsequently deleted by blog administrators.) I'm not going to describe those accusations here or host a discussion about the brewing scandal. (I'm fairly confident the facts will eventually come to light.) My point here is merely that we shouldn't assume that the collapse of the Emergent/ing movement ends the threat of Emergent/ing ideology.

What it more likely means is that the fight for clarity, conviction, and the authority of Scripture is going to become more difficult than ever in the mainstream of the evangelical movement. Buckle up. This is probably not going to be an easy ride.

---

Emergent Village Tries to Reboot

by Phil Johnson



ou probably saw the announcement: Emergent Village 2.0 (code name: Village Green: "a generative environment where missional friendships are nourished") is now open for bidness.

Evidently there are still many in the Emergent[ing] movement who hold out the hope that a phoenix will arise from the pyre of that movement's massive failure. The jargon hasn't changed. The priorities are as convoluted as ever. Notice, for example, how the "special letter" includes big categories for "Arts" and "Justice," with no mention whatsoever of Christ, Scripture, or sound doctrine. (I'm prepared to argue that Emergent types generally have no better grasp of—and no more genuine appreciation for—art and justice than they have of sound doctrine, but that's another post.)

It seems all that has really changed is the cast. Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Brian McLaren apparently became too volatile to be the movement's main spokespeople and mascots. Their names are conspicuously absent from the "Special Letter About the Future." Don't be fooled by this. The new steering committee is no more sound, no less radical, and (judging from these new announcements) no less skilled in the jargon of pomospeak than their colorful and controversial former "National Coordinator" was.

It's hard to see anything in the "new" direction that is really distinct or significantly different from what Emergent has said and done in the past, but they do a good job of making it sound like the movement really has something huge and revolutionary to look forward to, don't they?

So let's not retire the Po-Motivators® prematurely, OK?

---

Emergent Flowchart

posted by Phil Johnson



Submitted by Ben Mordecai.
(click chart for larger version)

---

Eugoogly

by Phil Johnson



s Emergent fizzling, or is it already completely finished? That's the topic on the table this month in the Emerging Conversation—or what's left of that phenomenon. You can read about it here, here, here, and here. The one person whose perspective I'd most like to hear from the Emergent side, Andrew Jones, has dropped out of the blogosphere.

For a totally different (and clearer) perspective, the always-sardonic Remonstrans has the best analysis here.



I'd like to think the Po-Motivators® hastened the demise of Emergent, but let's face it; the movement was doomed by its own radical principles from the start. Brian always said everything must change. The "National Coordinator" thing was clearly a misconceived idea. In the words of one angry Emergent bad-boy: "A coordinator!? For a 'conversation'? Give me a break!"

Of course, the erstwhile coordinator himself, Tony Jones, isn't happy with that meme, but he more or less admits that he doesn't want to lead a revolution. He points out that Emergent has looked dead before but managed to get going again, and then he punts to Shane Claiborne.

But Mike Clawson notes that this time "emergent types" themselves are playing taps. Still, he doesn't believe the situation is as bad as many others are saying. "The emerging church doesn't go away just because you don't want to call yourself that anymore, and you don't stop being what you are just because you take down your 'Friend of Emergent Village' blog button. (Mrs. Clawson also weighs in here.)

For once I think Mike Clawson is right—sort of. The Emergent idea (really an agglomeration of neo-liberal ideas) isn't going to go away just because Tony Jones stepped down as National Coordinator. Emergent Village—the 501c3 organization—may indeed be in its death throes (and let's earnestly hope so). But the contempt for truth and clarity that gave rise to Emergent in the first is deeply engrained in secular culture. And as long as the church is full of wannabe hipsters who think the biblical mandate is to marry the culture rather than confront it, postmodern irrationalism and post-evangelical apostasies will simply mutate into new strains, blend into existing movements of all stripes, and continue to trouble the church for generations to come.

It's a gazillion times worse than swine flu.

And while you are thinking about what a mess various "missional" strategies are getting us into, here's something else to be concerned about.

---

Frustrating, Funny, Fascinating, and Frightening

Monday's Post, Coming to You Early
(Because I am in Omaha and don't want to
get up early Monday morning to post. Plus,
it'll take you some time to digest this.)
by Phil Johnson

ere's eighty-eight minutes of video that is at various times stupefying, thrilling, maddening, amusing, and intriguing. And that's just the opening statements. The key players on this video (in roughly the same order as those adjectives) are Tony Jones, Kevin DeYoung, Scot McKnight, and Brett-and-Alex Harris (Josh's younger twin brothers, barely out of their teens and highly likeable). They're all discussing and debating the Emergent/ing Church Movement. This is a panel discussion that took place two weeks ago at the Christian Book Expo in Dallas:


HT: Joe Coker

My own first impressions:

• Kevin DeYoung, as always, was right on. I love his patience, courage, clarity, and firmness. Pay attention to him; he is an important voice. At the end, he coined an expression I'll definitely use: "Postmodern squishitude."
  
  
• Scot Mcknight was unusually irritating. Especially his churlish chiding of DeYoung for (of all things) being "uncharitable" in his opening statement—and then McKnight's stubborn refusal to get past that issue and talk about substantial matters. He comes off as cranky and irascible—not anything like his blogging persona. (More like mine, frankly.) He must've been having a really bad day.
  
  
• Tony Jones (he of the "chastened epistemology") cracked me up with his bold (and visibly irritable) insistence that "I absolutely know Augustine." It turns out he "absolutely" knows the Reformers, too, and Pilgrims Progress. (He wrote annotations for an edition of Bunyan's allegory, you see.) He made this stunning declaration about his absolute knowledge of church history immediately after saying that until "a couple of years ago" he never even heard of anyone who believed that Scripture has a "plain meaning." Somehow, Jones gained his uncanny knowledge of Bunyan and the Reformers while remaining blissfully unaware that they all believed in the perspicuity of Scripture. Hmmm. Worse yet, Jones is basically denying that Scripture is capable of being known as thoroughly as he knows Augustine and the Reformers. Arrrrgh. (Epistemological humility turns out to be a really hard position to maintain when people keep pointing out that your arguments are full of holes.)
  
  
• It was likewise a high irony that Jones (who says he despises critiques based on caricatures) utterly misrepresented DeYoung's and other "young Reformed guys'" worldview, insisting that they naïvely think Christianity can and should be culturally neutral. Of course, the "Reformed guys" (especially the young ones) don't really believe such a thing. On the one hand, we don't believe Christian doctrine is so flexible that it can change like a chameleon to blend safely into any worldly culture. We also deny that it's necessary for Christianity to become something totally different for every culture and every generation. But we do believe Christianity should face every worldly culture honestly and confront them all, including our own. In other words, the gospel is about as far from "cultural neutrality" as possible.
  
  
• There is an unaccountable break at about 35 minutes into this video that destroys the flow and context of the discussion for a moment, but when the video comes back, Scot McKnight is working himself into a second diatribe against Kevin DeYoung for being "uncharitable" in his opening statement. Mark Galli (moderator) tries bravely to get the train back on track, pointing out that "uncharitable" involves a judgment of motives. He asked if Scot merely meant Kevin has been "inaccurate." Surely he didn't mean Kevin is deliberately sinning in his critique of Emergent/ing. Scot fulminates and sputters for a few seconds more, and then Tony Jones tag-teams him and pummels Kevin some more, saying (in so many words) there's no question about it: Kevin is behaving wickedly, and it's really ticking Tony off.
  
  
• I think it's funny to hear what criticisms of the Emergent/ing movement get under Jones's and McKnight's skin. McKnight seems to think all analyses of the movement should simply ignore the loudest, best-known heretics (or better yet, the critics should shut up altogether and let Scot do the analysis). Jones is clearly irked by how the critics of Emergent/ing criticize things like candles and couches—and yet in that very same context Jones himself reduces the significance of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Menno Simons to the fact that they were "doing things that were 'cultural.'" (He even "makes" the "quotation marks" with his "fingers"). Jones doesn't seem to grasp the legitimate doctrinal concerns that are at the heart of the major criticisms of the Emergent/ing controversy. I suspect Scot McKnight does understand that serious biblical and theological issues are at stake, but it makes him angry when that's what someone wants to talk about.
  
  
• Perhaps the most uncomfortable moment (in a discussion fairly filled with awkward poignancies) was Tony Jones's analysis of why the Mark Driscoll branch of the early Emerging Movement has renounced the rest of the movement. ("It's not just for doctrinal reasons.") One of the Harris twins (you've gotta like them, right?) later gently chided Tony, saying that remark was "unhelpful."
  
  
• I loved it when the Wesleyan liberal woman asking a question from the floor unwittingly sided with Kevin DeYoung, admonishing Scot and Tony that they need to understand and acknowledge and embrace Brian McLaren's prominence in the movement. (The lady also took a poke at Tony Jones for not including John Wesley in his list o' Reformers & Radicals.)
  
  
• For the umpteenth time Scot McKnight inveighed against Kevin DeYoung ("I told you these things on the phone!") and decried the unfairness of critics who keep bringing up Brian McLaren. Kevin responded by reading a paragraph from his book that answered that charge. Kevin then pleaded for the conversation to turn to something substantial. What are the distinctives of Emergent/ing and how can we assess this movement through the lens of Scripture? (I heard you, Kevin. No one who was actually there in the room seemed to get it, though.)
  
  
• I would like to have eavesdropped on Scot McKnight's thoughts when a questioner from the audience asked Jones about his epistemology. Jones had already said that his discovery of postmodernism at Fuller Seminary was the turning point that thrust him into Emergent/ing-style thought. McKnight usually bristles when critics suggest that postmodern epistemology lies at the root the Emergent/ing movement's agenda. But in answer to this question from the floor, Jones went so far as to say that the quest for certainty engenders "power and violence." ("That could be Christian, or it could be . . . Hitler!"—Jones's very words.)

Well, anyway, listen for yourselves. We haven't had a post dealing with the Emergent/ing mess in a long time, mainly because I think the whole movement is in the early stages of a total meltdown anyway, and I don't want to beat a dying horse. But this video suggests that the critics and dropouts and defectors from the movement have taken a toll, and the "Conversation" is about to turn angry.

---

Trump Card

by Frank Turk

I usually have this thing in an argument -- when one side invokes the epithet "Nazi", I recognize things have gone from reasonable or rational to absurd.

In that context, I present the following, HT: Abraham Piper & Andrew Jones.

Mind your coffee ...



Have at it.

---

Kids?

by Phil Johnson

oug Pagitt calls us "kids" and falsely claims we are proudly Platonists and Aristotelians. (This after claiming he can't remember ever calling anyone a Platonist.)

But:

1. We're all older than Pagitt is.
   
2. Not one of us gives a hang for Aristotelian or Platonic categories in theology.
   
3. Contrary to what Pagitt claims, we have never applied those labels to ourselves.
   
4. Nor can those terms be accurately applied to us.
   
5. We're not particularly fond of Aquinas, his natural theology, or his Aristotelian syntheses, either.

But in the interview those comments were extracted from, Pagitt manages to sound like both a nihilist and a wag. He also makes it pretty clear that he is not particularly interested in what's semantically accurate or theologically correct, as opposed to what he "feels." So, it's no surprise that he so badly misrepresents us.

The above audio excerpts came from an interview conducted by Chris Rosebrough on his "Fighting for the Faith" podcast. (I hafta say, however, that Chris wasn't doing much fighting here. Perhaps because the interview was made on Pagitt's dime). The interview is nevertheless very eye-opening. Listen to the complete broadcast here.

---

Transmogrification

by Phil Johnson



itness the changing tune (if you can make it out above the background noise).



Tony Jones in 2004:

"Emergent is trying to do something else, something new. We are not trying to get back to what Luther and Calvin were doing. We are not attempting to recover primitivist views of scripture, like the Anabaptists. . . . [T]he emerging church movement has more in common with liberationist thought than it does with the Reformation. That is, we are on a quest to unmask how the gospel has been used to serve the (often oppressive) interests of those who are already in charge. Comments from those in comfortable positions of power, like those above, are to be expected, for they show the subtle ways in which we will be marginalized. But we will not allow ourselves to be marginalized, to be labeled as 'left,' 'right,' 'angry,' or 'immature.' No, we have been disenfranchized. We have taken the blue pill, and there's no going back."

Tony Jones today:

"While you may have differences of opinion with me, I think it’s truly impossible to say that I have landed on a place that is outside of historic, Christian orthodoxy."

Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi) swore off the term Emerging Church earlier this week.

Dan Kimball is apparently trying to pull together a smaller, more manageable movement of progressive thinkers who share a theological commonality—i.e., who won't constantly embarrass him. (As Calvin would say: Good luck.) Better yet, Kimball has moved beyond his former Nicene-Creed-oriented minimalism and has decided the Lausanne Covenant "seems broad enough."

I think the old "emerging" movement is collapsing on itself. (See also Scot McKnight's current CT article titled "McLaren Emerging.") That doesn't necessarily mean better things are on the horizon, because I don't think all the recent scrambling, repositioning, and redefining really represents any significant change of thinking among any of these leading figures in the erstwhile "movement." Instead, it's mostly an attempt to move the furniture around, so that everyone has a comfy-chair or sofa to hide behind when critics start pointing out the inappropriateness of the paintings, posters, and graffiti Emergent Village types have hung all over the walls.

Still, I do think its good that these guys (who have never really all been on the same page doctinally, and who generally seemed to think that was a Really Good Thing) are now having to admit—albeit tacitly—that the mischief inherent in that kind of latitudinarianism is not merely fun 'n' interesting, but serious, weighty, and deadly dangerous.

I also harbor a vague hope that all the redecorating being done by these ex-Emerging leaders will cause some of their followers to rethink whether it's really safe to follow someone into the future who always wants to redesign the ambience and change to a new song before the old one finishes playing.

---

Hey, CT Told Us the Megashift Was Coming

New-model Christianity, or old-model heresy?

The following post, and some of the material that will follow in subsequent posts, has been adapted from one of my messages at the 2005 School of Theology at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London in 2005.

(First posted Thursday, August 11, 2005)

bout fifteen years ago, Christianity Today (February 19, 1990) published a major article describing several novel theological ideas that were (at the time) barely whispers among a handful of influential academic evangelical writers and theologians. Written by renowned Canadian theologian Robert Brow, the article was titled "Evangelical Megashift."

According to Brow, evangelical theology was quietly being remodeled by some of the movement's most influential thinkers. He used some benign-sounding language to describe how evangelical thinking had already changed radically, even though most evangelicals had not yet noticed the changes. But Brow implied that even more monumental changes were on the horizon. Subsequent history has shown, I believe, that he was exactly right in his predictions.

(Don't take that as an endorsement of Brow's theological perspective. In my assessment, he is himself a theological miscreant of the worst stripe. I've listed him in the "Really Bad" section of my annotated bookmarks and given a brief explanation for that assessment. I don't need to rehash it here.)

Brow's 1990 CT article pretended to be an objective report about what was happening in the theological world, but the truth is that Robert Brow himself was one of the main figures working hard behind the scenes in the academic world to bring about a wholesale remodeling of evangelical theology. He was an ardent advocate of virtually every theological innovation he described. So the article was actually a propaganda piece promoting what Brow referred to as "new-model theology."

Today the new model exists in full form, and it has a name: Open Theism. Every issue Brow discussed in that 1990 article touches on a key point of doctrine where some or all of the leading Open Theists have departed from the historic evangelical position.

But here's something I find even more interesting: Read Brow's article and notice that virtually all the issues he raised are also the pet issues of several leading figures in the Emerging Church movement.

I'm not suggesting everyone associated with the Emerging Church is also tainted with Open Theism. Nor would I necessarily accuse Emerging Church leaders of harboring deliberate sympathies with everything their "openness" cousins stand for. But I do believe the two movements clearly have common roots, and the Emerging Church, in a very real sense, represents the metastasis of the same unhealthy theological tendencies that gave rise to Open Theism. Brow's article is a catalogue of those pathologies.

In the days to come, I'll say more about this and examine some of the key similarities between Brow's "Megashift" and the Emerging Church. But in the meantime, if you want to take an interesting romp down memory lane, review the article referred to above, and notice how the theological agenda being touted by the more outspoken leaders of the Emerging Church (including various champions of innovation ranging from Steve Chalke to Tony Campolo) is a clear, almost point-for-point echo of what Robert Brow was already talking about more than fifteen years ago.

---

Deja Vu All Over Again

by Phil Johnson

xactly a year ago, I was in precisely the same position I am in right now: burdened with deadlines and commitments, unsure of how I would ever get everything done, and generally over-stressed. One of several Swords of Damocles hanging over my head last year was an overdue chapter I had agreed to contribute to a book on evangelical postmodernism edited by Ron Gleason and Gary Johnson. I had worked on that chapter almost every spare minute during my teaching time in Italy but had not finished it, so it was the first thing I had to do after returning to the States. Almost a year ago to the day, I posted an excerpt from one of my footnotes to save having to write a blogpost.

Anyway, that book is titled Reforming or Conforming?: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church (with a Foreword by David F. Wells). For some reason (which I hope was unrelated to my chapter), the book's release was delayed for nearly a year, and it is now slated for this coming September. I received a .pdf copy of the entire book while in Italy this year (just last week), so I'm now reading the full book for the first time. The chapters I have read so far are amazingly good and insightful. Since I contributed a chapter, I won't attempt an objective review of the whole book, but watch for it. It will definitely be worth your time.

Meanwhile, I'm going to do the same thing I did last year in order to avoid having to write a real blogpost today. I'm going to quote another excerpt from my chapter (which, incidentally, is titled "Joy-Riding on the Downgrade at Breakneck Speed: The Dark Side of Diversity"):

Postmodernism has at its heart a nagging suspicion that at the end of the day, no one can really know with complete certainty or settled assurance what is true and what is not. It might not be too far-fetched to say that is virtually the distilled essence of the whole postmodern idea. Postmodernists modestly refer to their own invincible lack of certainty as "epistemic humility." To anyone who has something to be certain about, the postmodernist's refusal to be definitive looks, sounds, and acts like old-fashioned cynicism. From the postmodernists' own perspective, however, that kind of skepticism is the new meekness—while the very epitome of ugly arrogance is any notion that we actually do know something with conclusive and categorical certainty. Dogmatism of any kind is equal to the most diabolical kind of cruelty; anyone with strong moral convictions is deemed particularly judgmental; and even quiet faith has a kind of uppity feel to it. Thus the "humility" of perpetual ambivalence has become postmodernism's one supreme and cardinal virtue. . . . The Emerging Church movement is fundamentally a self-conscious attempt to adapt the church and frame the gospel message in a way that meets the unique challenges postmodernism presents. There's nothing wrong with trying our best to communicate more effectively with postmodern people, of course. In fact, it is right for Christians to grapple with the question of how the church should respond to postmodernism. That's a serious and vitally important issue that too many old-style evangelicals are blissfully oblivious to (and too many evangelicals who are aware of the problem seem unwilling to face it seriously). The ECM deserves credit for recognizing the megashift and sounding a wake-up call. The evangelical movement desperately needs to be stirred from its own apathy and oblivion. Unfortunately, the Emerging movement has an extraordinary knack for adapting to and embracing the very aspects of postmodern culture that most need to be confronted with the truth of the gospel. In the process of contextualizing the Christian message for a postmodern culture, the ECM has rather uncritically assimilated a postmodern value-system. Postmodern "virtues"—such as uncertainty, ambiguity, mystery, latitudinarianism (masquerading as "tolerance"), and above all, diversity—have somehow made it to the head of the ECM's hierarchy of moral values. These inevitably crowd out and eliminate more biblical values, such as assurance, boldness, conviction, understanding of the truth, and the defense of sound doctrine.

---

The Most Basic Questions

by Frank Turk

I've taken up three hobbies lately, all of which will probably vie for the honor of actually killing me. The least of these hobbies – but the one which is likely to be the most fun for the most people – is my new blog called "GiMP University", through which many of you have already clicked through to. Let me know if there's a particular technique or final product you'd like to learn how to create.

The second hobby has resulted in a sort of avalanche of free books. Some of you have noticed that I've been on a book review tear lately, and it's because if I'm going to read two books a week I figure somebody ought to benefit from it – like me. If I read them and review them, and publishers want reviews for their books, I can often get the best books out there for free.

Mostly, it's because I'm a member of TeamPyro, and we get 3000-ish hits a day, and blahblahblah. My hat's off to Phil for inviting me and to Dan for being the smart one in our group that causes readers to return.

Anyway, I'm sort of on a tear right now through books which are or ought to be useful to pastors since I spent 2007 beating down the average church-goer for wanting to leave his church. Next week, DV and the creek don’t rise, I'm going to cover D.A. Carson's new book about his father's lifetime of ministry, but this week I'm going to review a book by a couple of young guys you may have never heard of before.

Kevin Deyoung is a young pastor in Michigan who has previously written a book about practical complementarian theology, called Freedom and Boundaries; his writing partner is Ted Kluck, who has written a couple of books about football and a book about guys who fought Mike Tyson.

Together, they have turned out Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), published by Moody Press. It's technically in pre-release right now, so you can't buy it yet, but let's talk about the "you" here before we talk about "should buy this book".

You are just this guy (or woman) who reads blogs, and maybe some books, but you're not working on your Th.D. and you can't read Greek or Hebrew. You watch a little TV because, well, it's fun and enjoyable, but it's not a lifestyle for you – you don’t schedule your life around "Lost", and you haven’t lost any sleep over the fact that SciFi is about to start the last season of Battlestar Galactica, and you wouldn't care if I printed spoilers right here. You read the Bible, attend church, and you have this fear of something called "emergent church" because, it seems, their Bible is missing some pages or something.

Or you may be a person who has listened in to the "emergent conversation" over coffee at the local bean-ista, or maybe at Barnes & Noble. "Church" for you is something that people do when they can't figure out how to live like Jesus, and for people who prefer to read dead Presbyterians more than they prefer to read the Sermon on the Mount. For you, chatting in someone's living room about the mystery of God is way more interesting and edifying than thinking about the problem man's vain reasonings pose for man when he's faced with the God who talked to Moses and wrote a Law in stone with His finger – as if God actually has a finger.

Listen: if these two versions of "you" are two points on a line, and the actual "you" falls in between these two points someplace, you need to read this book. The brainier, academically-inclined professorial types have already read D.A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with Emergent, and also everything by David Wells on American Culture, Postmodernism and the Church. The rest of us have been waiting for a book by someone with an I.Q. below the boiling point of water to speak simply, plainly, and clearly about what's at stake in the "emergent conversation", and why someone who shares many of the concerns of the Emergents would choose to do something besides, well, what the Emergents are doing.

Without boxing pastor Deyoung in, I'd call him one of the better examples of the so-called "young Calvinists" out there. He obviously has a robust faith, something which is not a "mere Christianity" but a robust philosophy that hinges on a real Christ, a real Jesus who isn't far away from us in time and space but speaks to us through Scripture. And he's a serious thinker – not someone seeking to score cheap shots or create unnecessary controversy. And he's sort of the anchor in this book – the guy who keeps us faced toward the real issue, which is "Is Jesus real, and can we know Him?"

Ted Kluck, on the other hand, is sort of an interesting bird. He comes across as a very level-headed guy who has a very pleasant, anecdotal style of writing; he does really nice things with common-place events like the death of one of his childhood Sunday school teachers, or a conversation which takes place in a diner. And at one place, he calls Donald Miller "the male Ann Lamott", which I think he means as a compliment, but I thought that was exactly right – for better and worse. The thing with Kluck is that exactly where you think he's going to sort of duck into an "emergent" brain-storming alley about mystery and poverty and candles, it turns out he is actually turning on the street light of thought about the problems or questions at hand; he answers a little more deeply and a little less, um, adolescently and demonstrates to the reader that the call to faith is not merely a poetic notion.

And we're blogging here, so rather than turn out a 10-page paper on this book, I'm going to give you what I think is a taste of what's inside, and leave it up to you to actually buy and read this book.

First, from Pastor Deyoung:

I understand that the emerging church is only addressing certain areas of inquiry that they deem are most crucial. That's their prerogative. But at some point in the conversation it would be nice if they would share their convictions on something other than community, kingdom living, and mystery. The emerging church will grow irrelevant to the very culture it is trying to reach if it can't answer with some measure of clarity, however tentatively, the most basic questions that face every human being.

And also from Ted Kluck:

I am struck by the fact [while reading Peter Rollins' book How (Not) to Speak of God] that what is billed as sort of unchecked creativity has produced ten liturgies that are remarkably similar in look, feel, and purpose. This is not a critique so much as an observation that Ikon may be more like its traditional counterparts than it would like to think. At the beginning of the tenth liturgy we are reminded by Rollins that Ikon "has no substantial doctrinal center ... just as a doughnut has not interior, but is made up entirely of an exterior.

I am reminded of what goes on in seeker-friendly megaplexes all across the country on Sunday morning – slickly produced music, followed by multimedia clip, followed by drama, followed by ambiguously thought-provoking/inspirational message with a minimum of Scripture at its center.

Get this book; read this book. It frames the issues both for the Emergent church and for the larger body of Christ in such a way that both side get rightly challenged and called to action for the sake of our Lord and Savior.

Oh yeah: my last new hobby. The last hobby is, um, ... it's a TeamPyro podcast. Details to follow.

---

Why I Don't Like the C-Word

A Short Prologue to a Discussion on Paul's Mars-Hill Strategy
by Phil Johnson

Contextualization? Why Not? Here's a handy index to this entire series: "Why I Don't Like the C-Word" "Context and Contextualization" "Paul on Mars Hill (part 1)" "Paul and Culture" "Paul and Conversation" "Paul and Contextualization" "Paul and Charitableness"

   remarked in a message at the Shepherds' Conference two weeks ago that I'm not a fan of the word contextualization—or the set of ideas usually associated with that word. Although the message was generally well-received by the pastors who heard it in person, it unleashed an avalanche of forceful reactions from people in the blogosphere—ranging from shocked disbelief to angry derision. The former reaction came from people who gave me the benefit of the doubt. They were merely stunned at my astonishing naïveté. The latter brickbats came from less sympathetic folk, a couple of whom said that they have pretty much always thought of me as a fundamentalist cretin anyway.

My favorite response was from someone who basically said, Sure, the word contextualization is misunderstood and much-abused today, but so is justification. Rather than simply discarding these terms, we ought to fight for their biblical meaning.

See, the thing is, contextualization isn't a biblical word like justification is. Although lots of people now think of contextualization as one of the most essential and elementary terms in the theological and missiological lexicons, it's a word no one ever even heard of until 1972, when Shoki Coe used the term in a paper delivered to the World Council of Churches. (Prior to that, the favorite fad in missiology was indigenization, which was a little more passive approach to tweaking the gospel than contextualization, but a similar idea in some ways.)

Anyway, critics in the blogosphere are nothing if not predictable. They intoned the baby/bathwater cliché; they recited mantras selectively adapted from 1 Corinthians 9:19-23; and they suggested that whether I knew it or not, I myself employed a kind of contextualization when I compared the Athenian philosophers of Paul's day to people who surf the Web and watch YouTube for viral videos.

As if I hadn't already addressed all those "arguments."

So I intend to begin a series of blogposts which will contain the heart of that message (including, especially, a close look at Paul's Mars Hill strategy). But first let me reiterate a few crucial things I said at the very start in my session at the Shepherds' Conference:

1. Definitions of the word contextualization tend to be murky and far too open-ended. It's one of those currently-popular jargon-words like missional that gets defined differently every time, depending on who is trying to explain it.
   
2. People explaining contextualization usually start by making the (obvious) point that in order to cross linguistic and cultural boundaries effectively, we need to translate and illustrate our message in a way that is suited to the understanding of the people or people-group we want to reach. Quite true. And if contextualization entailed nothing more than translation and illustration, the word would be superfluous. It practically always means something more—and that "something more" is what I object to, not the translation and illustration of biblical truths.
   
3. The idea of contextualization first gained traction among evangelicals in the realm of Bible translation, and it's easy to see why. Obviously, if you take the word of God to an Eskimo culture where they have no clue what sheep are, you need to find a way to explain all the pastoral references in terms that Eskimos can understand. Something like Psalm 100:3 ("We are His people and the sheep of His pasture") is naturally harder for an Eskimo to relate to than it is for a New Zealander. So in one famous instance, a group of Bible translators working in an Eskimo language translated the word "sheep" as "sea lions" throughout Scripture. (I can't imagine what that does to the 23rd psalm or why it wouldn't be a whole lot easier just to teach eskimos what sheep are, but there you have a classic example of verbal contextualization, showing how it can actually obscure more than it really clarifies.)
   
4. In postmodern missional strategy contextualization always seems to involve embracing the values of the target culture. Listen to those who talk most about "contextualizing" the gospel and it becomes clear that their actual goal—sometimes deliberately and sometimes unwittingly—is to make Christianity seem more familiar and more comfortable and less counter-cultural.
   
5. Many advocates of contextualization expressly state that proper contextualization involves temporarily adopting whatever worldview is held by the people we are trying to reach, so that we can speak to them as one of them, and not as outsiders and aliens.
   
6. In the real world, therefore, contextualization usually goes far beyond translating and illustrating truths. It also goes far beyond adopting the language and the social conventions of polite culture while avoiding certain cultural taboos (which is what Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 and 10:32-33). Today's contextualizers are trying to adapt the content of the gospel message as much as possible to the worldview of whatever subculture they see as their target audience. Not only do sea lions become an acceptable substitute for sheep; postmodern tolerance becomes an acceptable replacement for Christian charity.
   
7. In fact, people who are enthralled with contextualization nowadays tend to turn the "give no offense" principle of 1 Corinthians 10:32-33 on its head. Rather than avoiding cultural taboos in order not to obscure the gospel unnecessarily, they sometimes purposely try to flout as many taboos as possible. Unlike Paul, who wanted to avoid anything considered impolite or uncouth so that the gospel could be heard without unnecessary distractions, they want to maximize the shock-and-awe effect, thinking that is going to gain them a better hearing with the South-Park generation.

To sum up: proper cross-cultural translation and illustration ought to aim at making the gospel clear. Listen closely to the typical missiologist or church planter who champions the idea of contextualization—and what you'll usually hear is someone trying desperately to make the gospel more palatable. Unbridled enthusiasm about this sort of contextualization has dramatically changed the evangelistic strategy so that the number one goal in contemporary evangelical outreach is for the church to assimilate into the world as much as possible—and above all, be cool—so that the world (or some offbeat subculture) will like us. That is actually the driving idea behind both seeker-sensitivity and the Emerging church approach.

The idea of "contextualization" by adjusting Christianity to existing beliefs, values, and traditions was probably the twentieth century's most significant contribution to ministry strategy—and it is not a good one. It has made the church indistinguishable from the world, indistinct in its message, and (frankly) ineffectual as an evangelistic force in an unbelieving culture.

But the whole idea is actually unbiblical, counter-productive, and contrary to the real strategy the apostle Paul modeled and advocated. That's what I'm planning to demonstrate in a short series of posts beginning later this week.

Stay tuned.

---

"No Statement of Belief"

by Phil Johnson

watched the following video last April or thereabouts, and I intended to link to it on our blog. But I can't find any reference to it in our archives, so I rather suspect it hasn't yet got the sort of attention it deserves from Pyro-readers.

There are lots of sound bites here worth singling out. I'll let you discover them all for yourselves. My favorite is the remark made by the woman at about 4:20.

As a matter of fact, lots of the people in this video emphatically assert in unvarnished terms some of the very things I have cautioned are dangers in the post-evangelical drift. Invariably, when critics suggest this is what you'll find on Main Street in Emergent Village, we're accused of exaggerating. Watch for yourself:

PS: If that left a bad taste in your mouth, here's an Altoid for you:

---

Weary of One-Way "Conversation"

by Phil Johnson

NOTE: From time to time we pull classic comments from an old thread's combox (or fish them up out of some other blog's meta). The text in the shaded box below is one of those. It's an amalgamation of two comments I wrote on the same day. Aside from splicing the two comments together, I've left the basic substance of my original remarks unchanged from the original.

he main substance of today's entry is something I originally wrote in 2006 in the comments section of another blog. A writer on that blog had complained that my criticism of the "Emerging Conversation" was insufficiently nuanced and unnecessarily nitpicky. He seemed to be suggesting that there are more good influences than harmful ones in the broad world of Emerging religion.

My reply deals with a topic I've thought about a lot recently, especially given the almost total lack of serious engagement we get from the Emerging fringe of the evangelical community. For the most part, Emergents and post-evangelicals don't really seem to care what our perspective is (unless we're doing parody at their expense). Nothing in my two-and-a-half -year experience in the blogosphere has given me any reason to think any of those who talk the most about "conversation" are really interested in having a serious one with anyone who is more certain about eternal truths than they are.

I've said before that the rules of postmodern engagement are fixed to make genuinely serious conversation about truly vital matters well-nigh impossible. People with solid convictions on any of several really weighty biblical truths are simply not welcome at the table.

Here's my perspective on the "conversation," including a brief summary of why I think it's a bad idea in the first place to think serious heresy should ever be answered by collegial dialogue. My view hasn't changed significantly since I wrote this comment more than a year ago:

You wrote: "My main point here is that it’s not helpful to point at heretics in the conversation and therefore stop engaging in it." I'll be candid. That's where I think we don't quite see eye to eye. The problem with the Emerging conversation is not that a handful of heretics are trying to horn in on an otherwise fruitful and beneficial conversation, but that people with unorthodox doctrinal agendas commandeered the "conversation" almost from the get-go. It's not realistic to imagine that any amount of "friendly persuasion" is going to make a change in the direction of the larger movement. There's a reason hospitals don't try to cure infectious diseases by unleashing healthy people among those who are already sick. Heresy, like infection, always works the other way around. (I don't know of an unorthodox movement in the history of Christianity that has ever gradually come around to orthodoxy through friendly dialogue with—or subtle infiltration by—sounder minds.) I see absolutely no warrant and no apostolic example for engaging in friendly conversation with heretical teachers. Second Timothy 2:23-26 tells shepherds how to deal with wayward sheep. That is not a recipe for how to handle wolves in sheep's clothing. On the contrary, it seems to me that there are lots of explicit commands forbidding us to cultivate partnerships, friendly relationships, or even academic comradeships with the purveyors of rank heresy. "Receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds" (2 John 10-11). A friendly dialogue with Kimball or Driscoll on an individual basis is one thing. The idea of joining the whole wide-ranging "Emergent Conversation" is quite another. Such a strategy strikes me as abominable. As a matter of fact, my first bit of advice to Driscoll in any private dialogue would likely be a direct quotation from 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 and a passionate plea for him to take the command in verse 17 very seriously. That would likewise be the heart of any message I think might truly and constructively "encourage the masses [in the Emerging mainstream] toward historical-orthodox Christianity." Do I sound like a hard-core fundie? Well, here's my assessment of that: dialogue with some of the more thoughtful old-line fundamentalists would probably be a thousand times more fruitful for mainstream evangelicals than playing footsie with postmodern fads. For every positive thing we "can learn from" the Emerging subculture, evangelical give-and-take with postmodernized religion would expose us to a thousand deadly pitfalls. On the other hand, I think there are still a few sensible fundamentalists out there who remember some important biblical truths evangelicalism as a movement has stupidly discarded—beginning with the biblical mandates for holiness and separation from evil influences. As far as the Emerging/Emergent mess is concerned, I'd rather be a voice from outside the movement itself. It seems to me church history shows a pretty consistent pattern on this: people who try to remain in an aberrant movement or a mixed multitude in order to be an "influence" ultimately have less influence than those who stand outside and try to minister appropriately to those still on the inside—distinguishing as carefully as possible between the convinced and the merely confused. See Jude 21-23.

---