Gall in the Family

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor, Mark Coppenger, reviews a book about three generations of pastors who have different views about ministry.

…when the resulting book’s moderator, commentator, and editor is one of the disputants, when he believes his way is the hope for the future, and when the other parties wish him the very best, the results are predictable.  Chris Seay and the “emerging church” win big.

To read all of Gall in the Family, click here.  Then, please join the discussion by clicking on the comments link below.

Comments

[Bob Bliss]

I grew up hating my father. He was a perfectionist who always criticized everything I did and never praised me. Since becoming a father and recognizing just how tough a job it is to raise children, I have since learned to love my father. I find that I made just as many mistakes. I hope that my children love me enough to overlook my mistakes. My dad and I have wonderful conversations on the phone (we live 3,000 miles apart). I would give anything to be close to him and see him as often as possible. I would never write a book to expose my father's weaknesses in order to emphasize my strengths. If Mark's Coppenger's review is accurate, shame on Chris and Donald for a reprehensible way to treat one's parents and grandparents. Perhaps Chris should read Ephesians 6:1-3. Honoring your parents is still the first commandment with a promise, a promise that Chris doesn't seem to be able to claim. If this is what "emergent" is all about, I'll gladly wait for the next fad to emerge.

[Michael]

Mr. Coppenger is entirely unfair to Donald Miller in this review, even if the point he makes regarding Chris and the "emerging" church versus the old American church paradigm is accurate. I've been to several talks by Miller as well as reading his books, and I am not in the least surprised to hear him say: "So there is clearly one way—a missional mindset—where we are about what lost people think about us and about Christ and about Christians. And then the other way is where we care about morality and if lost people don’t like us for it, that’s fine—we don’t care what they think. And so I think the real issue is motive."

Put this quote into the context of his belief structure, and you'll understand that he's saying something entirely different than "comparing" new and old. He's saying "We display we are Christians by our love. And another way we do that, the other way we do that, is to care about morality and damn the person who's offended by it." Both of these ways are meant to engender the faith and win people to Christ, and so the issue here is motive. If your motive is to grow the body, excellent. If your motive is to impose a system on another group, boo. At the very least Miller can celebrate freedom.

And who's business is it to which political party he belongs? More people should read Chesterton's complaints about how dehumanizing BOTH extremes (in our case Democratic and Republican) are; mayb ethen we'd comprehend that the Republican Party isn't perfect and the Democrats, as far as government goes, might be better for us--a debateable issue completely irrelevent to the review of the book.

I am not here commenting on the book itself. I find the "emergent" movement simultaneously frightening and very exciting; I am commenting on Mr. Coppenanger's disingenuous portrayal of the participants. If Chris Seay is as high-minded and dismissive of tradition as the review implies, then I would expect the book to be horrid. But don't attack Miller for that.

[Beth]

I'm hearing folks in important positions in my church talking very positively about their reading on the emerging church movement, and saying that they are going to start following some of the ideas they find there. I know very little about this and do not have time to research the issue myself right now, so I'd like to hear comments from knowledgeable people as to what it's about. What little I have heard and seen makes me nervous, as it seems to be concepts from the worldly culture with a Christian veneer. Can anyone add to what's suggested in Dr. Coppenger's review?

[Rob Grano]

Beth -- I've read a couple of the 'emerging church' books and have had lengthy conversations with a Church of Christ minister friend who's read several too, and has also attended some services. From what I can see, the movement is very much a 'have it your way' version of Christianity wherein the leaders/pastors are picking and choosing what they like from various traditions and theologies and putting them together in ways that they find attractive, but have little or no continuity with the traditions they're drawing from. My advice to them here is to stop reading Robert Farrar Capon and start reading Thomas Oden.

Politically, it's definitely Left-leaning, with a lot of social justice talk and a rather weak pro-life stance that makes moral equivalency statements like that quoted in Coppenger's review. While I think that these folks are correct in their assessment that Evangelicalism has been bedded down with the GOP on too many occasions, the answer to them seems to be to get under the covers with the Democrats, which doesn't really change anything other than the partner. Seems to me that they are doing the same thing that the libs in the mainline denominations were doing 25 years ago, i.e., moving leftward under talk of progress and compassion.

There was a very lengthy discussion regarding some of these issues on Mere Comments back in December, under a post entitled 'Jesus the Entertainer.'

[Beth]

Thanks, Rob, that's helpful. I was traveling in December, so I missed the MC thread you refer to; I'll look it up for more commentary.

[Erik]

Others have pointed out to me over the last few years that dishonoring of elders has become one of the chief aspects of the "emergent" church, and some of the more postmodern evangelical youth movements. So I wasn't surprised by the article, even though it's pretty sad. There is a fascination with finding a "new" and "relevant" expression of the faith, and the result has been a mish-mash of cultural accommodation with historical and theological ignorance. Certainly there are lessons to be learned from the emergent church movement, but most of it is pure egotism and self-importance.

[GB]

Beth: At the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in November in Washington DC, I heard Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason give a great introduction to the Emerging/Emergent Church movement. His paper from his presentation is available here: http://www.str.org/site/DocServer/Essential_Concerns_Regarding_the_Emerging_Church.pdf?docID=1441

[RalphW]

I had a lengthy conversation with a leader of a small emergent congregation and we both came to the conclusion that, at least in his situation, the chief difficulty the group had was acknowledging the authority of Scripture (or, perhaps, any other authority than that of the individual). While this may not be a problem in all congregations that call themselves "emergent," it seems that the movement is very vulnerable to having people band together under that name with no accountability to anyone to believe any particular Christian doctrines. So far as I can see, there is plenty of room under that umbrella for emergent churches that are Buddhist, New Age, liberal Muslim or pretty much any other "tolerant" system of beliefs you might care to mention.

[Dominic Glisinski]

"Thus saith the Lord,
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your soul.
But they said,
We will not walk therein."
Jer 6:16

[Fr. Dcn. Raphael]

I was "emergent" before it was cool. That is I dropped out of the "Institutional Church" (IC) led home bible study/prayer groups (over beer/wine and/or coffee), and started questioning and "deconstructing" everything we believed and practiced as a conservative Evangelical.

I realized that I was actually building a kingdom around "what seems right to me," and prayed that God would lead me to a place where I could lay that down and be molded into the person that HE wants me to be. That search led me to Eastern Orthodoxy over ten years ago.

I still like "hangin'" with the EC crowd as they express their frustrations over church as they have expereinced with it, but lately have started to get burned out by the negativity and iconoclasm.

A good place to check them out is theooze.com.

[Fr Matt Mirabile]

I have followed the "Emergent conversation", as they like to call it, for so,me time. I have attended a few Emergent gatherings, including the Worship, Art, preaching and liturgy gathering, Theological conversations with Miroslav Volf, and Soulerize (sponsored by Theooze. My take on the whole "Emergent" thing is that it is another expression of a broad cultural move towards an ideational expression of the faith, vs the sensate (See Frederick Baue's "The Spiritual Society: what lies behind postmodernism). Western mainline Protestantism has exhausted itself and the general cultural draw is back to mystical and relational values. Emergent is an expression of this trend. However I think that Emergent is "hypermodern" in that it funnels this trend through radical anti-authoritarian and individualistic boomer sensibilities. The general trend as I have witnessed it has become more and more "liberal" and I fully expect that, short of the grace of God, it will go the way of most heresies. The approach to the faith is that of a smorgasboard where one picks up any historic practice without any respect to the "oeconomia" it has been lifted out of. Thus once this practice (Stations of the Cross for example) has been lifted from it's native economy and has been transplanted into the individualistic and highly skeptical context of Postmoderns it loses its real saving energy. I could go on, but you get the point.

[Beth]

This has been really helpful to me; thanks for links, too. McLaren is the primary name I hear in emergent church discussions; how does Donald Miller fit (or not) within it? I've read Blue Like Jazz but nothing since.

[Sandra Keeney]

I just read a novel, Chasing Francis, by Von Cron. Is this novel in the emergent church line? I was disturbed by the ending.
Sandra

[Vincent]

Take your take time. I think at some point we all grow through this epntpisg back from the church for a min. I actually wrote about this from my perspective from a different angle. I love my home church. It's a very humble spot, but i think at this point I've simply outgrown it, but looking for another is exhausting and I don't have the energy. I'll share those thoughts with you in detail another time. I am still hanging tough with my home church, though I don't frequent a seat in the pew. However, you are more than welcome to come by for a visit when you do have the urge to mediate, pray and fellowship. I'll sit with you.

[Dania]

Too bad there wasn't any pictures of the girl in the gknabroucd she was the hottest costume, hottest legs just the best of everything all around! She was a firegirl! smokin hot! sorry dear i didnt mean to rain all over your picture youre cute too!

[Dawid]

Anthony, I'm not sure whether to begin with nkaths and praise or congratulations!I appreciate, first of all, the fact that you care enough about the liturgy and the institutional church to have to struggle over this. Your honesty and commitment to living the truth is a great witness to all of us, and helps us feel sane even when we are pushed to make insane choices so that we can eat. It is difficult to know, sometimes, what choice is the best to make in all this. Your words here, your listening, and your example have been very helpful as I have charted my own path. I have chosen, whenever I talk about the new missal, to be bluntly honest about it: some of the final product is good, some of it bad, most of it a choice among equally valid possibilities; the process which is supposed to govern translations is good, but there remains in the hierarchy a codependent and often abusive tendency to engage in boundary-violating control tactics, which tendency the hierarchy shares with the vast majority of human beings; if we approach liturgy with the sole purpose worshiping the all-holy and life-giving Trinity, we can move beyond the imperfections of the coming translation just as we did the imperfections we didn't know about for the last forty years. I have found that once I acknowledge the defects of the translation, as well as those of the people and dysfunctional processes that begat it, people look relieved that I don't expect them to maintain a happy-happy' pretense about it. This makes it easier for them to accept what good may come of this admittedly imperfect moment in our history, and to continue to pray for the ongoing conversion of our whole church, including especially our hierarchy. May we all, each and every one, grow to embrace more fully our call to be disciples of Jesus. Standing up for truth is an essential part of this discipleship. Thanks so much for your witness to this!20ea

[Gejdlnljuo]

You guys are funny! Mano, inchoo miyyan Mayisin??????I couldn't be there, but I heard it went well! =) News travels fast....... =)!!! Bravo Giragnoria!!! I'm glad you were able to raise some money. Darose badaniatsin! =)

[Paul]

Jordan You are neither gnroiant, nor uneducated. And the women and men who, in 1960, prayed the rosary during Mass were not either. They were originally mentioned here because they were obedient, faithful, and silent and the original topic, I thought, was regarding the silent acquiescence on the part of our pastoral leaders when they have deep misgivings regarding the translation and the effect on the people in the pews. Your sensitivity to and knowledge of the teachings of the church in regard to full and active participation is clearly reflected in your concern for others at Mass with you.Tim, shamelessly, continues to ignore many of the words and, surely, the intent of the writers here in order to persistently promote his own agenda. In charity, I believe he does so because he wishes to teach and, to his credit, he speaks well and forcefully. But he does not listen. Perhaps, he does not have ears to hear. A shame, for there is much wisdom to be found here.When you say, e2809cIt is often better to simply be present and be silent.e2809d, you articulate the position of loving and being so loved that all words fall short to describe the relationship. Thank you for reminding me.But what a worlde28099s difference from being silent because one is intimidated against speaking honestly or because the words you are allowed do not reflect or ring true. Please continue to pray as the Spirit leads you. May you always feel your hand being held by our Mother. I will keep that image with me when I am tempted to chuckle or groan aloud at awkward words and phrases spoken at Mass in November.