EMERGENT is REGURGITANT – Part Four: Loving Evangelism, Emergent Style

By James Fire

The following is a treatment of the article written by Heather Kirk-Davidoff as found in the book An Emergent Manifesto of Hope.

Mrs. Kirk-Davidoff is the Enabling Minister of the Kittamanqundi Community (an independent church) in Columbia, Maryland. She is married to Dan Kirk-Davidoff a climate scientist. Along with writing partner, Nancy Wood-Lyczak she has authored two books, Talking Faith (Chalice Press, 2004) and Dare to Dive In (Abingdon, 2006). She can be reached at kirkwood associates.

Mrs. Davidoff relates an experience at the beginning of her chapter of visiting a bar in an attempt to conduct some “relational evangelism” and encountered a young lady who entered into some casual conversation with her. They spoke of common every day things (work, boyfriend, music, etc.) until the young lady asked her if she saw the stage musical, Rent. Her favorite character in the play was a drum playing homeless gay man who spends most of the show dressed as a drag queen Santa Claus named Angel. She remarks about his love having so “much power in the lives of the other characters. And his love doesn’t stop affecting them even after he dies (of AIDS) . . . it’s like his love is made more perfect in his death.”

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EMERGENT is REGURGITANT – Part Three:

By James Fire 

Scanning Mark Sandrette and his article, “Growing Pains”

1 CORINTHIANS 2:12-14  
¹²Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. ¹³Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. ¹⁴But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

As mentioned previously, proponents of the ECM seek to dialogue and communicate with others within this movement (and with those of all the world religions) and by mutual consensus, it would seem, seek to discover spiritual wisdom in their ‘horizontal relationship’ rather than seeking that wisdom which is from God above (JAMES 3:14-18).

We know as biblical Christians what the source of ‘worldly wisdom’ is, and no doubt this source is integral to the very spirit of the Emergent Church Movement.

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EMERGENT is REGURGITANT – Part Two:

By James Fire

SECTION ONE -

SAME OL’ SAME OL’ –

The title of this series reveals my view of the Emergent Church Movement (ECM) as being the same old, tired doubt and denigration of God’s Word that has been occurring in our world ever since the garden of Eden when the Serpent first said, “Yea, hath God said . . .?” but has returned in our day with new vigor and ambition.

The Gnostics proposed the same question.
Various esoteric societies revealed in the world for these many centuries have asked the same question.
Religious Institutions that have sought to usurp the authority of God’s Word with their own dogma and traditions have aggressively asked this same question (Like the Roman Catholic religion which we touched on in part One).
The liberal so-called Higher Critics and Bible scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries (we took a brief look at these in part One) have raised this same question.
And now we have the same question regurgitated by these Emergent Church advocates and leaders.
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EMERGENT is REGURGITANT – Part One

By James Fire

PRELIMINARY INTRODUCTION and EXAMINATION –

A few months ago I was perusing the site, Christian Book Distributors (CBD) and discovered an Emergent book (sadly, lots of these on CBD these days) by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones entitled An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, Baker Books, 2007. It comprises a series of articles (25 in number) written by various Emergent advocates and leaders.

Realizing that most of all our articles for TTUF and its associate sites that focus on the Emergent Church Movement are based on critiques, evaluations and information provided by other Christian discernment ministries, I decided to ‘go to the horses’ mouth’ as it were and examine one of these books for myself.

I purchased this book (retail price was $16.99, but I got it for a mere $3.99 – so I felt good about spending so little on it) and once it arrived, began to digest it (talk about some serious indigestion!).

Once I started, jotting notes and Scripture references in the margins (a rather easy task as this was a trade paperback with wide margins), I quickly understood that I would have to address a couple of issues before diving into my own critique of these Emergent folk.
~*First of all, we all recognize the fact that this movement didn’t spring up spontaneously, though it seems to have since the mid 90’s, with very little mention of it prior; there were formative influences and factors that led up to it, stretching back to the 19th century. This movement makes the claim that because we live in a ‘post-modern’ world, the church must therefore adapt its methods and means of relating to the world with an equally post-modern approach to the Gospel and Christianity in general. Obviously what preceded the post-modern paradigm was the Modernist movement.

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LOOKING Into The SHACK– A Review of the book, UNSHACKLED by Pastor Larry DeBruyn

~~By James Fire

As we have seen in T.T.U.F.s first article on this novel, The Shack by Paul Young, there are many ideas presented in this fictitious work that are unbiblical. What we often hear from those who love this story is just that: “it’s just a story!”

However, story or not, books contain words, and words convey ideas and ideas, concepts and perspectives are either true or they are not. If concepts in a Christian novel (The Shack is not a Christian novel (By ‘Christian’ we mean a Christian world view based on the truth of the BibleLarry), though it’s packaged to look like one) are not biblical, one must ask why the author (who is presumably a Christian) would promote such ideas.

It begs the question, why can’t a well told story also be biblically accurate? As Christians should we support such work by purchasing the books and related materials, to the financial benefit of its authors and publishers?

True, The Shack touches us emotionally, and speaks to the suffering and pain that is common among us in this world, but then many secular novels do as much as this! How is this novel different from any of its secular counterparts?

It purports to be a ‘Christian’ novel and presumes to teach us things about God, and life on Earth for the believer, and here those who love the Word of God supremely, must challenge its tenets.

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