I know, I know, once again I am weighing in on a subject that has been talked about and beaten to death. Views on the Emerging movement range from those who see the Emerging Church as the salvation of the church, to those who see it as the front man of all that is wrong with postmodern culture. It seemed for a while that if you didn’t have black, pseudo-cool glasses, semi-shabby dress, a church that met in a warehouse (or pub or coffee house), and weren’t writing about how the church needed to change or die, that you weren’t “in” (whatever “in” really means, probably having a million hit website, best selling book, and getting quoted a lot as in “Sean Ellis a true prophet of our times”.)
Why discuss it now? again? My fear is that it will be labeled as a passing fad or “stage” in our church history like the Toronto blessing or intimacy movement. Whether or not you agreed with books that were popular in the Emerging crowd is irrelevant. We all need to understand what was BEHIND the discussion and why those certain topics were considered “hot”. Underneath the authentic diary style diatribes lays the seeds and need for a new reformation of the church. As the reformers themselves said, “Reformed and always reforming”, though it sounds much better in Latin. “Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda” Don’t I seem smarter already?
The concept of bringing reformation to our faith is not new. As many books have keyed on, Jesus was the ultimate reformer. He established the model of not simply accepting tradition for tradition’s sake, and asking penetrating questions to reveal where man had hijacked the faith from God’s intent. In Mark 2, Jesus was challenged by some people who noticed that John’s disciples were observing traditional fasts while His were not. Jesus reply in 2:21-22 is telling, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
Jesus was making sure that they didn’t see what He was bringing as “Judaism” as they knew it; not even high powered Judaism. Some elements of the old covenant were coming to an end (sacrifices, priesthood), and Jesus was preparing them for radical change. However, when you think about it, Jesus affirmed many of the aspects of old covenant law and Judaistic life. The two great commandments were STILL to be the two great commandments (Matt. 22:36-40). Many who call Christianity a revolution don’t understand how true Old Testament Judaism was the foundation and foreshadow of all that Jesus came to do. I would argue that Jesus came to reform the Jews, not revolutionize them.
This is never more clear than in Mark 7:8, “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” There was nothing wrong with God’s commands, it was that they had replaced them with their own rules and traditions. The Protestant Reformation sought to do the same by cutting through the traditions of the Catholic church that had replaced the Gospel and God’s Word. Of course, what Jesus did was much more than a reformation in that He provided forgiveness of sins and was the fulfillment of God’s Redemptive History. Yet, in the day to day life of followers of God, much of what He said was simply echoed by Luther, Calvin, and others 1,500 years later.
I believe that the Emerging Movement was part of a wake up call from God that we need to continue to live out “reformed, and always reforming”. The Seeker Movement, Toronto Blessing, Intimacy teaching, and now the Emerging Discussion are all signs of the desire to see some of our “tradition” be challenged and changed where it has strayed from the heart of God. Reformation is messy, let’s face it. There were some very weird teachings that came during the Protestant Reformation, yes, even from some of our beloved forefathers like Luther and Calvin. Perhaps you don’t feel that any of the recent movements I mentioned were “all good”, but I challenge you to ask why they took hold and what they might tell us about the whole time in church history. In Jesus day as well as the reformers, most of the established leadership were not happy about asking tough questions about why we do what we do and believe what we believe.
The next few posts will look at what I believe the Emerging Movement showed us about this time of reformation. My goal isn’t necessarily to evaluate the movement or discuss the merits of all the teaching that came out of it. Instead, I hope to explore the causes behind the issues so that we can see we cannot simply dismiss this as a fad in church history. I won’t make any dire predictions to urge you to read on like “and if we don’t discover the causes of dissatisfaction, we are dooming the church today to a continued slow death!” as that would be just a cheap (but sometimes effective) parlor trick. Rather, I will ask you the question, do you want to be part of the Next Reformation?
The Bible Nerd 