Good gosh...thank you for addressing this. I just went through the exercise of reading Donald Miller's "To Own a Dragon" which took me forever. Not because he didn't have some good things to say (his thoughts on prayer at the end of the book were though-provoking) but the entire book was just a point/counterpoint of 1) problems he had and 2) why the root of them was probably in the fact that his dad split when he was a little kid.

That's all well and good, but what to do about it? Yeah, you embrace God as a sort of surrogate father anyway, but where does the practicality of that end? The whole point of a relationship with God is to deepen your spiritual life based on your faith in His blood sacrifice for your sins. Putting him in the patriarchal chair of your life isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's just an exercise in frustration it seems to me. This coming from a guy who lost his dad to alchol when I was 11 years old, so I know the ins and outs of growing up without a father figure.

I appreciate your words Jared...

Perhaps a paraphrase of Lewis would be apt here-- a book worth reading only in one's twenties is not worth reading even then.

A book of the sort we're talking about has to have some mix of "that's where I'm at" and "Wow, that's a new world I need to be a part of." It's tempting to load up on the former at the expense of the latter.

On BLJ-- there was an irony in it, whether intended or not-- a narcissistic book almost focused on the folly of selfishness.

One could (perhaps over-think it and) make a case that he was intending for an effect like Umberto Eco in Foucault's Pendulum. I didn't read it, but one reviewer commented that he took an utterly boring section in the middle to be a literary device, intended to comment on the subject matter (occultism) that was in play. In other words, when you read about occultism, he wanted to make you feel bored.

There's some of that in BLJ-- you end up loathing his self-absorbed ways by the end of the book.

I read 'Velvet Elvis' (my only foray into emergent reading) by Rob Bell a few months back. There were parts that were good and helped explain things to me about doubts I've had for years but there were other parts that were just too wishy-washy for me. Maybe that's why I like Driscoll so much. He just seems to say what he believes even if it's no palatable to popular thought.

Rob Bell's NOOMA DVDs and many of his sermons are often great IMO but it seems the whole emrgent thing is a repackaging of the old social gospel in many ways. I'm not saying having social concerns is bad, in fact, it is necessary, but you also have to concern yourself with theology and having a proper worshipful view of Jesus.

[...] Our Thinkling friend Jared sounded off a nice rant on Emerging this morning. It started with Spencer Burke’s recent book, but went quickly into an observation that nicely sums up what is the most valid criticism of things “Emerging.” His critique comes in two ways: The first: “I don’t get it. I just don’t. I try to read this stuff, partly as a barometric reading of the younger Church, and it always smacks of “the Church adolescent.” Maybe I’m not hip enough, I don’t know. But I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know what the real bona fides are, but I’m fairly young (31), I like indie films and indie rock, I like young people, I’m not into traditional ecclesiology, I’m not a fundamentalist, I prefer “modern” worship (at least stylistically), and I drink coffee. What else is there?By all indications, the whole emerging thing is just my style — and I know I’ve said this before — but it’s certainly not speaking my language. Am I hopelessly mired in modernism? I don’t think so. I like most postmodern fiction, if that means anything.” [...]

I actually understand the motivation for people like Donald Miller and Brian McLaren, because I was recruited into the Leadership Network in the 90s. LN conferences were supposed to be GenX spiritual zeitgeists. Instead, I kept running into died-hair-and-pierced seminary rebels who just wanted a church to look like them. I thought it was supposed to be about bringing methodology up-to-date, so to speak, and instead methodology was put on a pedastal in the name of missions. On the back end, I ended up not understanding what the mission was, because minor theological points like the Atonement had become watered down to the point I couldn't regonize them. We were told to go out and get people saved ... we were just trying to get them into church.

So when I read McLaren and Miller and all those guys, I am reminded of all of us pretentiously going about reinventing not just church, but church history. I'm surprised we don't today have churches named First Church of Mike or George's Community Church or Bob's Faith Center. That's exactly the mentality that came out of those conferences.

The bottom line is so many of us had problems with the blindly fundamentalist elements of the churches of our youth, I think came to the impression that church was about us. We couldn't get our friends to relate to church, so we went out of our way to make a church we thought our friends would like: No guilt, no condemnation, no ... teeth in the message.

If you get tired of hearing Emergents bad mouth the state of Evangelicalism, you should've been at these conferences in the 90s. We were figuratively drawing horns on some of the most Biblically sound churches in the country, all because people wore suits to church, sang really old songs, and we assumed could never possibly accept our nuances and quirks. It was church as viewed by St. Low Self-Esteem.

Jared,

Posts like these remind me why I admire you so much.

I've said it before, but I wish you would write a book, attainable to the masses, about church, about Jesus, and about the Christian life. Your writing on these subjects really resonates with me.

I wish I could write a book like that too. :-)

Actually, the closest I'll get in a timely fashion is the kick-off series of our upcoming new alt-service at church (name pending ;-). It's going to be an overview of discipleship and community, a quick jaunt through Philippians. Very Christo-centric.
Maybe I'll post the text of the messages somewhere.

And thanks Bill, as always, for blessing me.

NHE, I can only comment with any authority on where it started. What it's become is probably more self-assured because it's organized now, with several well-published media figures to give it a face. That's some great insulation. And kudos to the Emergents for attempting a more mature discussion, although the lack of normative responses I sometimes perceive as passive aggression, and not patience. I don't think it's stopped being the movement that turns God into Someone we get to define, though.

And to add to the confusion, the Driscoll/Keller strain don't identify with term "Emergent." That's a term that sort of defines the open-ended theology of McLaren and his acquaintances. Driscoll/Keller prefer "emerging," little "e," because it better suits their shrink-to-fit methodology that doesn't compromise their traditional theology. It's not accurate to me to view Driscoll/Keller as the right side of Emergent and McLaren as the left side. The former portion of that partnership certainly don't think of group themselves that way.

As an aside, I really, really like Driscoll, Keller, and the like. I don't think of them as pioneers, though. I see them as the next generation of people who took the baton from people like Chuck Smith Sr., John Wimber, and other Third Wavers. I doubt Driscoll would like being described as Third Waver ... maybe because it implies he prefers acoustic guitar over electric, but that's the river of thought I think he probably best identifies with. He is a culture current charismatic with roots in traditional, reformed Evangelicalism.

For the past decade or so, Third Wavers such as myself have been grounded in the theological fruit of Wayne Grudem and John Piper, so I think it makes sense to now include the new guys as well under our tent.

I think I've left a comment on this before, but I'll write again. I'm in the middle of Tim Keller's series on Galatians, sent to me on tapes by my sister-in-law (God bless her). I think I can accurately say those messages have changed my life. One of them springs off of a thought Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones makes in his sermons on 1 John, that the whole book is about idolatry. Keller said that idea changed the way he preaches and counsels people.

We usually think of 1 John as a book on Christian living, but John writes in his last sentence, "My little children, keep yourself from idols." There are only two ways to understand that sentence. Either John is throwing out another thought or admonition before closing the letter, or he is summarizing his message throughout the letter. Lloyd-Jones argues that John is summarizing his letter, and by that we can understand that all sin, all doubt, all fear, all pride, all neglect of the Spirit found in our hearts is the result of idolatry.

You can find the MLJ sermons online, and the tapes of Keller's sermons can be ordered too. Powerful teaching.