The truth about the emerging church…
Ouch! Some thoughts and criticisms about the current state of the local emerging church movement from a Melbourne minister. Now if only John had comments enabled, I suspect that the response would be interesting…
Of course, we are more than happy to host some discussion in the comments thread to this post.
September 30th, 2004 at 1:29 pm
the link sent me nowhere
September 30th, 2004 at 1:29 pm
or is that the truth about the emerging church … on a road to nowhere
September 30th, 2004 at 1:32 pm
Wow, and he didn’t say anything about not believing the bible as the word of God!
Now, on to the substance of the article, it reminds me of something that I say to my journalism students: It’s very easy to point out what’s wrong and complain about it. It’s extremely difficult to answer “so what do we do about it?”
I suspect there’s something similar in the emergent church movement.
On the other hand, I’d have liked to have seen more specific examples. It reminds me of so much sermonizing: “some people in the church …” and “Other theologians say …”
September 30th, 2004 at 2:23 pm
Don’t know about the problem with the link steve, works okay from here and should send you to an index of articles.
Bryan, I suppose the difficulty with providing specific examples is that these are general comments coming out of a specific community of people involved in this stuff in Melbourne Australia. Naming specific examples would mean fingering particular people or ministries in our small little puddle.
I don’t know, maybe John will wade into this little comment thread and give some non-identified examples.
September 30th, 2004 at 5:45 pm
The link doesn’t work for me either.
September 30th, 2004 at 6:32 pm
Hmmm…
I think I know some of the people John is slamming.
If its who I think he is castigating then my experience of those people has been quite different.
I think like most things there is an element of truth in what John is saying, but he sounds like he’s carrying a pretty big chip too.
I don’t use ‘emerging church’ much in my own discussions / presentations. I prefer to talk about being missionaries. EC is quite a volatile term and has serious baggage (as John shows).
Perhaps its also true that things get birthed out of pain - and that may be true for the EC - but I think it is in a different and healthier place now.
I wouldn’t own much, if any of John’s crit and I’d consider myself probably in that fold he is critical of.
“In fact, I’ve been at the cutting edge of emerging church for 26 years, and frankly, many of the so-called leaders of the emerging church look to me like adolescent wankers.”
I dunno… but it sure sounds like a ‘people in glass houses’ scenario to me.
My question would be ‘who hurt him?’ (John)
September 30th, 2004 at 9:57 pm
Hamo’s comments point to the reason why John perhaps needs to be more specific in his charges. Such “general” comments can be seen by a number of people as reflective of themselves, when that may or may not be the case. If his commentary is generalizable, he should be able to provide specific examples to illustrate the observations he makes.
As for naming names, well, that might actually be a good thing in the long run. Move the conversation out of the “your house/my house” realm and down into specific actions by specific people at specific times.
Generalizations such as those also make it very difficult for people to mount a proper defense. Should I defend my actions? What if he’s not talking about me? What if it’s this other group of people?
September 30th, 2004 at 11:26 pm
Maybe it is a good thing if we wonder whether the comments are directed at us. Even if we reject the criticisms, perhaps it prompts us to consider what has been said, whether it applies and look critically at our own methods.
The link is http://www.frontier.com.au/truth. If people have trouble accessing it (perhaps it has problems with particular service providers?) then I can contact John and see whether he will allow us to reproduce the articles here.
As for the content, I resonate a great deal with some of what John is saying - particularly the separation between the emerging church and the “traditional” church (the archives of this blog will reveal many of the same themes). I don’t know that I would have expressed it in the same way, but I think that the conversation is valuable.
October 1st, 2004 at 1:31 am
Maybe it is a good thing if we wonder whether the comments are directed at us. Even if we reject the criticisms, perhaps it prompts us to consider what has been said, whether it applies and look critically at our own methods.
Or maybe it causes us to wonder if he’s not just talking out of his rear. (/sarcasm)
Seriously, didn’t Jesus say “woe unto you scribes and pharisees …” They knew who he was talking about, and he listed specific examples.
Paul was specific in his criticisms of fellow church leaders, and Peter even said paul was sometimes difficult to understand.
To fail to be more specific is to invite non-specific responses - if responses ye get at all.
October 1st, 2004 at 6:48 am
Interesting, if rather bitter stuff. Makes me grateful to be part of a salt and light related church.
Does the EC in Australia have so many imploding communities (as well as sucessful ones, of course)?
October 3rd, 2004 at 12:17 pm
I too felt it was a little over the top, but for a guy like John, who as he says (although I did think he put it a little arrogantly) is involved with heaps of new and different forms of church stuff, to have to feel like he has to come out and say all of that, must feel some real and genuine angst over the future of the church.
I agree that naming names does not really help anybody, but instead makes us all feel a little uncomfortable and check our own motives etc, smart move John.
As humble as we’d all like to think we are, having some of those comments levelled directly at us would hurt. If John had something specific to say to somebody, then i think a one on one conversation would be heaps more effective.
Anyway, just my thoughts