Gospel of John – KJV 1611

If, after the hot, dry summer that we have had, you are still persuaded to keep taking care of your lawn, then you are probably very familiar with the term, “emergent.” When you apply a “pre-emergent” fertilizer and weed killer, you are making a pre-emptive strike against those nasty weeds before they sprout up and start causing a real problem on your prized, green turf!

The Emergent Church is a phenomenon, especially occurring in America, that seems to have some similarity to weeds in a garden. This is not a new church body or denomination. The Emergent Church is more of a way of thinking that is influencing large church bodies and in some cases, taking over the whole “yard” of religious expression. You could try to write it off as a passing fad (and it might end up to be just a fad) but people who espouse the Emergent philosophy are causing confusion in an already theologically weak society.

While the Emergent Church does not claim to have a leader, there are several authorities who have written books that have been very influential, even among some District Presidents of the Missouri Synod. While there are varieties and differences among these theologians, and in spite of the fact that they shy away from an expressed statement of belief, there are still some common themes that identify Emergents.

It is claimed that the Christian Church in our world today needs to change. The Internet, cell phones, 24-hour news channels, and post-modern thought are all cited as threats to the traditional concept of going to church, listening to a sermon, believing all the same thing, and learning from the same, old Bible of long ago. People today are more prone to pick and choose what they believe. Someone else may have a different way of getting to know God than I do, so I can’t tell them that they are wrong if they don’t agree with me. Churches are discouraged from taking a stand on moral issues like homosexuality or assisted suicide because that just makes people upset and they go somewhere else to worship.

If something challenges what Church was all about in the past, then that is what the Emergent Church wants to embrace with open arms. What makes Lutheran leaders fall for them is that their principles seem to be taking over in the popular “leadership conferences” that promise boosted church attendance and giving, especially if they emphasize not just “joining a church” but “becoming disciples,” which tends to overemphasize the Law against the Gospel. Absolutes like “heaven” and “hell” are replaced with terminology that touts a sort of “faith journey” in which someone discovers for themselves what God feels like to them. The concept of God the Father punishing Jesus on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins (as clearly described in Isaiah 53:4-6; Matthew 27:46; 1 John 2:2 and Romans 3:25) is denounced as “divine child abuse”! What is so deceptive about the Emergent Church is that to untrained ears, their message sounds so affirming and welcoming, easy to incorporate with open-minded contemporary thought, without any ancient doctrinal details to bog one down.

When Emergent theology first broke on the scene in the 1990s, the Bible took a back seat to a believer’s personal experience and discipleship, because these subjective sources of truth were held as more important than an authoritative text. This is what an Emergent theologian named Rob Bell wrote in the book, Velvet Elvis: “The Bible is a very holy and sacred book… one can make the Bible say anything she or he wants it to. …An accurate guideline to assist you in your interpretation is to ask yourself for the meaning. …When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true.” (Note the intentional reversal in the phrase, “she or he”- it’s another favorite practice of these teachers.)

Yet as the movement takes hold of a greater percentage of church thought, the Bible itself has become a means by which Emergent leaders promote their thinking. They have rewritten the Bible so that it matches the pattern of their theology and renamed it, The Voice. It was not based on a translation of the Greek and Hebrew, but rather a recipe of chopped up Scripture with interpretive comments mixed in. They are taking away key words like “Christ” and “forgiveness” and replacing them with what they say are easy-to-grasp terms like “Liberator” and “acceptance.” Their advertising says that The Voice is “the easiest Bible in print to understand.” The problem is, though, it is no longer the Bible!

Just like the weeds in the lawn, the Emergent Church needs our attention, so that its way of thinking does not lead us astray from our God who has revealed Himself in Jesus as we know Him from the ancient, historical Scriptures, rather than from our personal feelings. People need to know the truth, especially because if you look into your own heart, you will not find God but your own sinful nature instead. Even in our ever-changing world, the unchangeable doctrine of the Gospel of forgiveness is exactly what poor, miserable sinners like you and I need.

Yours, in Christ’s service,

Pastor Stirdivant