10:20 AM: mattguevara In the emergent church, no one speaks for anyone else in the movement . It’s Anti-creedal and Anti-centrist . It is hard to define emergent. The ideas will live on and fracture Evangelicalism
10:20 AM: mattguevara Emergents commented on the book and critiqued its “niceness”
10:21 AM: mattguevara What is emergent: trying to accomodate Christianity to a post-modern culture
10:21 AM: mattguevara Christianity has ben wed to modernism. So we need to change the message (because the message has been tied to modernism) and it now needs to be wed to post-modernism
10:22 AM: mattguevara Doug Pagitt, Brian McClaren, Scott McKnight – the right wing of Emergent Movement
10:22 AM: mattguevara Rob Bell – the left wing
10:22 AM: mattguevara Emergent is a style
10:23 AM: mattguevara Kevin was at a church where his youth pastor started an Emergent service
10:23 AM: mattguevara Style – coffee, conversation, couches
10:23 AM: mattguevara Keywords – nonlinear
10:24 AM: mattguevara Usually anti- church, corporation
10:24 AM: mattguevara Pro-arts, environment, Apple, Starbucks
10:24 AM: mattguevara Emergent leaders endorsed Obama
10:25 AM: mattguevara Emergent is an approach (difference between emerging and emergent) – Emerging (trying to do church different – Mark Driscoll) – Emergent (trying to change the message)
10:26 AM: mattguevara Emergent is a philosophy, reaction (to seeker sensitive, Christendom, Evangelicalism), set of theological propositions, new mood (embarrassed by the church, squeamish about God’s wrath, more about orthpraxy than orthodoxy)
10:26 AM: mattguevara What they get right – diagnosis of the problem
10:27 AM: mattguevara What they get right – a criticism of watered down mega-churches
10:29 AM: mattguevara reaching the young kids can be seen as rocking “As the Deer” or “Shine Jesus Shine”
10:29 AM: mattguevara Cultural identification needs to be less of our message, not more. What is the main thing that holds the church together? If it’s not the Gospel, we are in danger of the Galatian heresy.
10:30 AM: mattguevara Many emergents have been hurt by fundamentalist churches
10:31 AM: mattguevara Fundamentalist – lots of mental, not a lot of fun
10:32 AM: mattguevara Emergents see that the church has lost their first love
10:32 AM: mattguevara Okay – but Jesus commended his followers for being discerning and intolerant
10:32 AM: mattguevara Other churches in Revelations were criticized for being too tolerant
10:33 AM: mattguevara Emergents get right – Christianity is more about getting your ticket punched for heaven. This is a utilitarian view adopted by many churches.
10:33 AM: mattguevara Kevin has 5 criticisms
10:33 AM: mattguevara 1 – There is a radical skepticism about what we can know about God.
10:34 AM: mattguevara Rob Bell – the mystery is the truth
10:35 AM: mattguevara Pete Rawlins – all theology is heresy. Anytime we try to talk about God, it’s heretical because we can’t really do it.
10:35 AM: mattguevara Kevin was accosted that he needs to repent for his worship at the throne of DeCartes (the fact that we can “know” things)
10:36 AM: mattguevara Recall the six blind men and the elephant – www.noogenesis.com – this breaks down if the elephant TALKS!
10:37 AM: mattguevara Is God strong enough to communicate to us and good enough to want to communicate with us?
10:38 AM: mattguevara Paul says, “I know the unknown God”
10:38 AM: mattguevara We need to get that far in our cultural engagement
10:38 AM: mattguevara The Scriptures matter because they tell us real things about God. We can know what these texts mean.
10:39 AM: mattguevara Many questions in emergent texts about hell or God’s wrath. When it comes to God’s kingdom – there is much surity.
10:40 AM: mattguevara We need more than just questions and journey
10:41 AM: mattguevara Doubt is not the unforgivable sin. Peter didn’t say, “I’m comfortable with your unbelief.” It’s okay for people to ask questions – but what’s okay for a senior in high school is not okay for a guy who sells 200K books and speaks every Sunday.
10:41 AM: mattguevara 2 – There is a diminished role for preaching (Rob Bell is the exception)
10:41 AM: mattguevara This goes hand in hand with a diminished confidence in our ability to make truth claims
10:42 AM: mattguevara Scripture talks about the preacher being a herald – where truth is proclaimed.
10:43 AM: mattguevara Preaching substituted with group meditation, sage, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz (she’s lost, confused, with her friends)
10:46 AM: mattguevara 3 – Emergent view of doctrine. All we need is Jesus – we don’t need dogma, event, or doctrine. But if we get rid of those things – what do you have? “We have Jesus.” Well what is that? “We don’t believe in doctrine.”
10:46 AM: mattguevara Emergents: Jesus is Bono in a bathrobe
10:46 AM: mattguevara If I don’t know anything about my wife – my relationship with her will be nonexistent
10:47 AM: mattguevara How do you make sense of Galatians 1:8 if the church has no doctrinal center?
10:47 AM: mattguevara Or John 8:24?
10:48 AM: mattguevara Without doctrine/belief/propositional understanding of who Christ is, you’re dead (but there is such a thing as dead orthdoxy)
10:48 AM: mattguevara Doctrine is not the invention of DeCartes – think back to Nicea and Athanasius! Know your church history!
10:49 AM: mattguevara Tony Jones – I have no statement of faith.
10:50 AM: mattguevara Elders need to be able to give sound doctrine
10:51 AM: mattguevara It’s Biblically untenable that defending Biblical orthdoxy doesn’t matter
10:51 AM: mattguevara 4 – There is a denial of original sin (Pelagianism)
10:52 AM: mattguevara Some have explicitly done so (Pagitt, Jones, others)
10:52 AM: mattguevara There’s a different problem to be solved.
10:53 AM: mattguevara Tony Jones statement of faith quote – www.relevantmagazine.com
10:53 AM: mattguevara We are blind to the churches successes
10:54 AM: mattguevara Without original sin, we are overly optimistic about utopian kingdom theology
10:54 AM: mattguevara God wants to do more than just save us – we are agents of transformation
10:55 AM: mattguevara We need to be more realistic – there will always be war and the poor
10:55 AM: mattguevara You must know the King to be part of the Kingdom – “You MUST be born again.”
10:55 AM: mattguevara Emergent emphasizes group over individual
10:56 AM: mattguevara We want to relieve as much suffering as possible, especially eternal suffering. You have to have a theology of hell to go there.
10:56 AM: mattguevara 5 – (most important) Emergents have a different view of the Gospel
10:56 AM: mattguevara Jesus is the best way to live – often quoted
10:57 AM: mattguevara Jesus wasn’t talking about Christianity being the best religion (I am the way, truth, life) – he was talking about Jesus being the best way to live.
10:57 AM: mattguevara I don’t just need a model to follow, I need a substitute
10:58 AM: mattguevara The cross is where God’s righteous anger burned and the Son took it
10:58 AM: mattguevara We have to get the cross right, not just identification – but substitution
11:01 AM: mattguevara The Gospel is not a message – it is an invitation to live in the way of Jesus
11:02 AM: mattguevara The Gospel is a message! It is about what God has done for us
11:03 AM: mattguevara You can’t skip Romans 1-11 for Romans 12 (living sacrifices)
11:03 AM: mattguevara In view of God’s mercy, we need to live as God intended
11:04 AM: mattguevara Kevin posits the social Gospel gives you beautiful churches without people. 20 years from now, the Emergent Movement will peter out.
11:04 AM: mattguevara 144 years ago today – Lincoln was assasinated
11:05 AM: mattguevara Kevin is not a fan of Nooma
11:05 AM: mattguevara Kevin is counting down the number of times he has to talk about the Emergent Church – he doesn’t want to pick fights
11:08 AM: mattguevara Christianity Today – Rob Bell’s Gospel – www.christianitytoday.com
11:10 AM: mattguevara Closing in prayer
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