Why Emerging Matters

I'm listening to an old podcast of a lecture on the so-called "New Perspective on Paul". Basically, it examines the claims of this new perspective and explains the merits and problems with it. I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say that I'm convinced that the traditional reading of Paul is just fine.

This lecture was delivered at a conference at Mars Hill church in Seattle, which is pastored by Mark Driscoll. Driscoll takes heat from both sides of the emergent aisle because he is thoroughly reformed in his theology and takes stands for biblical truth, but he also is known as the "cussing pastor" who is not afraid to talk about drinking beer. The more I read about Driscoll the more I like him. I'm looking forward to listening to an interview with him here.

There was a great quote in the Q & A at the end of this lecture. Someone was asking about the whole emergent thing. The distinction is that Mars Hill tries to be "Emerging" while not giving in to being "Emergent". The difference is that emergent is more postmodern and is much softer when it comes to truth. It is much more tolerant of other faiths and it seems like it won't try to shove gospel down people's throats. Emerging, on the other hand, refers to being willing to get into the culture in order to share the gospel. The point was that we have no problem understanding that we need to learn Italian if we're going to be missionaries in Italy. Shouldn't we understand something about American culture if we're going to be missionaries in our own country? The quote was that if we fail to do this "we are just Amish in regular clothes". That's not how I want to be.

This thinking has really shaped me over the last 18 months or so. I think that it has made me much more gracious in my speech with people who disagree with me. However, it does set up a constant internal struggle. I used to just wave the sword of the Word of God around with great confidence that it would cut where it needed to. I basically lived a paraphrase of the Marine Corps motto of "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out". Now, however, I'm learning to be a bit softer in my orthodoxy. I still have opinions on most matters of Systematic Theology (though I haven't decided about eschatology). The difference is that I'm not quite as eager to go to the mat over the fight anymore. This is also why I don't get so worked up when I hear that the church is trying to use a movie like "Evan Almighty" to reach people. Do I think it's ideal? No. I think we need to exercise great care whenever we interact with the culture.

I understand that some missions organizations will come behind other organizations to "clean up" the theological errors of the previous ones. I learned that there are some Pentecostal organizations who work overseas not to convert new believers, but to convert the already new believers into Pentecostals. As much as I disagree with the Methodists I don't think I'd try to do that. If I planted a church where they had already sown I suppose that would be the end result since my preaching would be Reformed, but my goal would not to be primarily to correct the wrong thinking of the Wesleyans.