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…)

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…)

A couple of really good articles from Christianity Today about religious spectacle: Amusing Ourselves on Sunday, Listening for the Whisper

And one from GetReligion:  Listening to the African Anglicans.

Here’s an incomplete list of mindsets that I don’t understand:

1.) Christians who believe the Bible is totally metaphoric. One such person said he chooses to believe this because the alternative is ugly. But ugly doesn’t equal untrue. This seems to spill out from a materialistic worldview, and the belief that since we’ve made many scientific advances since that time, we know that those things weren’t possible. One side says the Bible was never meant to be taken literally, that it’s all myth; the other says that the writers truly believed it, but were wrong. Both say a metaphoric reading has more meaning than a “literal” reading.

2.) Women who are willing to be accomplices in their own objectification. They dress to get men to lust after them. The only reason to show it, is because you want people to look. It would seem to me that this is a bad way to get attention, or at least it is bad attention to get. The looks (leers is more like it) women will receive from men when they wear revealing clothes are not the type that lead to thoughts like, “She seems smart,” or, “She’s the type of girl I could settle down with.” Maybe those aren’t the kind of responses you’re looking for, but that’s a whole other issue. If you are hoping to meet someone and settle down, perhaps you shouldn’t be out fishing for a lustful response from the men in your vicinity.

3.) Christians who believe that we have to choose between social justice and evangelism/discipleship (Beliefnet has a good thread on this…here). Why can’t both sides agree that the two are equally important? Sure, Jesus said in Matthew 25:31ff that those who care for “the least of these” will enter the Kingdom. But he said in verses 1-13 that those who horde their goods and refuse to share will enter. Not too many people preaching that message today. Then he said in 14-30 that those who make money will enter, and those who merely save it will be thrown “outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” I haven’t heard that sermon yet. What’s really strange is that these people, many of whom are of the liberal/progressive/emergent stripe that values a metaphorical reading as superior, take a surprisingly literal reading of the parable of the sheep and the goats…one unbecoming to their exegetical skill.

More to come, I’m sure…

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