November has been a rare month for me, in that I’ve just finished my fourth book in 3 weeks. This time around it’s Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. The premise is this, “After hundreds of consultations with local churches and a significant research project, we have concluded that church leaders need to simplify.” They acknowledge the rise of simplicity in business from Apple to Southwest Airlines. Then they discuss how they came to their conclusion.

The book is based on a survey of “vibrant” and “comparison” churches. If you choose, you can read that as “growing” and “stagnant or dying”. The authors compared the survey data and it’s pretty striking. The results showed that the vibrant churches were much more simple than the others. “The difference was so big that the probability of the results occuring with one church by chance is less than one in 1000.” Statistically, the results are “highly significant.”

Before any charts or graphs make their appearance, we see profiles of two churches that Rainer and Geiger have consulted with. This, to me, was the part that convinced me most that they had found something significant; not because they’re great storytellers, but because I’ve seen a copy of their complex church in action. (continue reading…)

I really do. I don’t like Emergent theology. At first I thought it was a good idea…Our world is changing, so we need to be prepared to address it in a different way. But once I started to understand the difference between Emergent and emerging, and saw the basics of Emergent theology, I’ve disagreed. But I refuse to disagree with something when I don’t understand it. So I read papers, blogs, and books written by Emergent leaders and those who consider themselves part of the “emergent conversation”.

I think I’m pretty informed on the subject, so I don’t shy away when I talk about it. I do, however, try my best to be cordial and polite, and avoid stereotypes, assumptions, and generalizations. I try to cite specific people and organizations when I talk about their theological position, and avoid blanket statements. But I’m not perfect. And I don’t mince words. (continue reading…)

Chuck Norris Approved.

If you’re a reader at GetReligion you’re aware of the tendency for journalists to see churches only in political terms. Last Monday’s opinion piece on the emerging church is no different. Tom Krattenmaker writes about the “growing movement of believers [for whom] an activist faith means more than proselytizing about Jesus and stoking the fires of our culture wars.”

There is almost no theological content in this article. He quotes Rick McKinley, leader of Portland’s Imago Dei Community, as saying, “We’d say ‘yes’ [to being 'evangelical'] in terms of what we think about the authority of Scripture and those things…What you have is evangelicalism defined doctrinally, which we’d agree with, and defined culturally, where we would disagree. Culturally, it has been hijacked by a right-wing political movement.”

Other than that it is an article on the politics of the “liberal” emerging church movement. It showcases the morally superior attitudes of the emerging leaders that were quoted, which - let’s be real - mirrors the morally superior attitudes of most on the other side of the aisle. So that’s a wash. (continue reading…)

The last couple of weeks have been good for me, as far as reading goes. I typically have a list of 12-14 books that I’m reading simultaneously, and I have the worst habit of starting new ones with no regard for when I’ll be able to finish them. Well, as I mentioned before I finished both The Truth War and The Dark River on vacation last week, and since I got home I’ve finished Donald Bloesch’s A Theology of Word & Spirit. I’ve mentioned a couple of insights before, here.

I loved the approach to the intersection of theological and philosophical ideals:

One of the salient needs in academic theology today is to combat the ideal of an undogmatic theology, a theology free from the constraint of biblical or confessional norms. Currently the emphasis is not on the truth of the gospel but on the wonder of the gospel or on the experience of the gospel. It is not the normativeness of the Christian faith but the edification of the human psyche or the broadening of the human imagination that commands our attention.

In light of Doug Pagitt’s recent comments about yoga on CNN: “The Jesus agenda is a whole life, is a complete life, is a healed life. So when people use it to relieve stress, to be healthy in their relationships, to feel good in their body, that’s a really good thing.” The concern is feeling better. John MacArthur points out that when people do this they’re turning inward for a “complete”, “healed life”, rather than to Christ. (continue reading…)

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