UnGodly Holiness Pt. 3 - Rebels without a Cause

Zechariah 3:1-2 And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.2 And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: [is] not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

"Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father." - Jesus Christ in John 5:45.

One of the main problems I have with emergent Christianity is its hostility toward traditional Christianity. Visit any forum, blog, debate or discussion site, and you will find emergents who are unabashedly anti-church, anti-tradition, anti-leadership, anti-elder and anti-establishment. They question everything the church does from organized missions programs, associations, and even the structure of the worship services.

Noticeably absent from emergent literature and postings on blog sites and discussion boards are a clear set of principles and beliefs. So the nature of the emergent church is one of protest and accusation, not one of a constructive nature. So, the emergent church by nature is basically one that is set on protest against the establishment and questioning every practice in which God's New Testament churches have engaged.

The aim of this post is to highlight the hostility of the emergents toward Christianity, highlight the absence of a clear set of beliefs, and note the lack of scripturality and Spirituality in their movement.

The premise of the emergent movement is that modern Christianity has become pharisaical, hypocritical, and nothing more than empty traditions. They prey upon the errors committed by churches and Christian leaders.

The church, obviously, is made up of men, who still suffer from the sin nature and the temptations thereof, and so it is natural that errors will be made. By the vote of the church, or actions of the leadership, mistakes will be made, wrong decisions will be made, bad moves will occur. Doctrinal error will happen, practical error will happen, and leaders will fall to temptation. It's human nature. It happens.

Failing to see the dual nature of man, and the struggle that each Christian has within their own spirits and souls (except when it's their own struggle) the emergent will jump on any error, any sin, any wrong action, word, belief or practice, all for the sake of advancing his own agenda of deconstructing the church. His arguments are not one of "here is the way the Bible teaches us to do things," rather his arguments are, "look how rotten the modern church is. It needs to be changed."

I remember a few years ago. A dear brother in Christ, to whom I looked up at the time, was in the midst of what I believed to be a Spiritual struggle. He struggled at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning to write a sermon. Unable to get his message together, he aired all of his grievances on his blog (which has since been deleted.) A number of preachers jumped in and encouraged this meltdown, until a notable ABA preacher, Brother Bobby Sparks, stepped in and called the meltdown for what it was worth. The initial post challenged the 21 doctrinal statements of the American Baptist Association (which are all basically non-controversial to the learned Bible student), basically saying, "You can keep your Baptist doctrine, I like Bible doctrine." His insinuation was that Baptist doctrine was not Bible doctrine, and that insinuation seemingly infuriated Brother Sparks.

Brother Sparks is still a man to whom I look up. No man preaches the Gospel like he does. Anyone who heard him preach at the 2006 Missionary Baptist Association of Texas meeting in Longview would have to agree. However, less than a year after Bro. Sparks amazing sermon at the state meeting, several preachers, lay members, and self-ascribing emergents were on Bro. Sparks' case for his statements in response to the original meltdown posts.

The posts included such statements as "Who does Bobby Sparks think he is?" and "What has Brother Sparks done for the ABA?" "His degree isn't worth the paper it's written on." and so on. Bro. Sparks comments were not debated, only his credentials and personality. Basically, Bro. Sparks was under attack from that moment on, at least in cyberspace. THESE WERE PEOPLE WITH ABA BACKGROUNDS, who were preachers, lay members, and some former members of ABA churches.

Bro. Sparks has spent much of his ministry debating the Campbellites, so this sort of controversy had little effect on how he carried out his ministry. In fact, it probably barely registered on his radar. Bro. Sparks, you might say, is a big boy. I rehash all of this for the sole purpose of highlighting the hostility and animosity the emergent movement (of whom at least one of the participants of the discussion was a part, and I suspect several more were) has toward the traditional church. As much as I regret having gotten involved in the discussion, it was a learning experience for me. I began to see the enemy at work in our own ranks.

For the record, Bro. Sparks has spent his entire ministry of preaching and defending God's Gospel, salvation by faith through grace apart from works, preaching the Gospel to the captives in the form of debates, writing books that highlight how Old Testament worship pointed to the coming of Christ (which is very important), and I understand he even has become knowledgeable in tax codes for ministers and has made that knowledge available to others. Yet this man, in the course of that discussion, was regarded as the enemy. That basically sums up the emergent movement.

The emergent views the seasoned pastor as a lord over God's heritage. He sees the church's influence on our political processes (such as Focus on the Family's lobbying for pro-family and anti-abortion legislation) as harmful. He sees traditional worship as boring and unexciting, and thus aims to change that. He sees evening services as redundant and seeks to replace those with Bible studies. Back when the ABA Survey blog was still in existence, the notion was floated that a church could conceivable have only one corporate worship service per month and spend the rest of the month in small groups. They see formal leadership as a hindrance because they believe that post-modern individuals don't trust ordained leaders. They see themselves as Jesus Christ, and the New Testament church as Caiaphas.

The emergent would be perfectly content if all the churches in America sold their buildings, scuttled their missions programs, withdrew from the political arena, accepted a secular society, then worked quietly from their homes withing that secular society. Stuart Murray, author of Post Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strangle Land says the emergent church is widely opposed to the attributes of the traditional church, including being at the center of society rather than the margins. Satan also wants Christians and churches to withdraw from society and live on the fringes. It's much easier to discredit and disregard them that way.

Other similarities between the emergents and Satan include the constant accusations made toward the church and its leaders, and the hostility toward God's churches.

Emergents think formal organization is also a hindrance. In fact, having an organized belief system is also useless to the emergent, who seeks to establish a dialog rather than deliver a message. The problem with this viewpoint is that Christ came to deliver a message and complete a mission, not to establish a dialog. When God told His people in Isaiah 1:18 "Come let us reason together," He was not asking them how they felt. He was telling them what He was going to do. He was going to cleanse them from their sin. No dialog. God gave us His message, and He commissioned the churches to spread that message and make disciples.

Perhaps the commitment to dialog and railing against the church can explain the absence of a clear belief system for the emergent movement. Christian scholar D.A. Carson wrote that the emerging church movement is primarily a movement of protest against their more conservative heritage. He concluded that emergent literature is more preoccupied with criticizing the church rather than offering a constructive agenda. In fact, the only thing an emergent will truly be dogmatic about is the need for contemporary worship service.

ABA, as well as most Baptist writers, write about the distinctions of the Baptist faith and use their research and study to affirm Bible doctrines. Emergent writers use their research to figure out why people are non-religious and seek out new ways to engage the unchurched in a dialog, conversation, or seek to interact with them via contextualization. When the focus becomes fitting in with the unchurched and being attractive to them, Bible doctrines and beliefs are abandoned, no message is conveyed, and evangelism and Bible study get reduced to "I kind of think this... but you have the right to your own belief."

Beyond the idea that church stinks, I can not find the central message of emergent Christianity. And I've tried. I've read some of the books, many of the blogs, and engaged a few online. Many emergents (and many Christians in general) don't even have a clear concept of what the Gospel is. The lack of a central message and mission relegates the emergents to being rebels without a cause. They don't like the way things are, they want to change the way things are and withdraw from the church, but they don't really know (as a group) where they are going. All they know is where they are going will be a magical land of authenticity, openness, dialog, equality, and emotional comfort. All of which are alive and well in the Lord's churches, but then again, who wants to wake up on Sunday morning?

The lack of a central message is indicative that the movement is not rooted in scripture. This is vastly different from B.M. Bogard's protesting against increasing infringements on church sovereignty back in the 1920s, or John Leland's railing against the rise of missionary societies back in the 1700s and 1800s. Both men had a core set of beliefs, that God commissioned the churches to carry out his work, not para-church organizations. They had a strict set of doctrinal beliefs, and preached and taught those beliefs. Anyone who has read either man's work will see that those beliefs were deeply rooted in their study of the scriptures.

Contrast that with the emergent's approach of studying the culture then looking for ways to blend in with that culture without violating an explicit Bible command. One example of this is the new rise in third-location churches, many of which meet in coffee shops. Now, scripture permits a church to meet anywhere it deems practical, however, the coffee-shop phenomenon was not born out of a study of the scripture, rather it was born of an idea that it would be easier to get people to show up to a coffee shop where food was being served than a brick building with a steeple. In fact, many of these third-location churches even reject the notion of calling themselves a church.

Notice the difference between studying the scriptures and letting the practice grow out of that, as opposed to studying the culture and building a practice around that. The emergent movement, by practice, lack scripturality because they seem to have no interest in deep studies in the scriptures. Rather, they look for permission to fit into a culture that they have deeply studied. The premise and starting point are flawed.

While it sounds nice to be "outwardly focused," the truth is we are to be focused on God. Any time our primary focus shifts away from God, we are drifting into idolatry. This drifting leads to a lack of spirituality. While the feeling in the room of an emergent gathering might have a spiritual feel to it, the fact that they are operating outside of God's will renders them unspiritual. The greatest action by the Holy Spirit, the empowerment of the church in Acts 2, happened as the church was praying to God and seeking His will, not as they were studying their culture.

The fatal flaw of emergent Christianity is that it seeks to deconstruct the church and remake it after its own image. God never called anyone to remake the church after his own image. We are to join the church and its mission to make disciples in all the world. If the emergents really want to see God move, they'd be well off to get on board.