emergentNO!
as someone who is 90% excited and only 10% concerned with what I see in the emerging church movement, I was fairly disturbed when I came across this site, emergentNO!. I thought that the critiques were unfair, the strokes entirely too broad, and coming from people who are not even (it seems) willing to spend time with an emergent community and see what comes out of it, I worried... I worried that people would read the site get this slanted, incomplete profile of the EC movement and I'd start getting letters from parents of people in my congregation about our "cult."
I'm now relieved...
The reason I'm relieved is that I'm fairly sure anyone reading the stuff there, because they will find not meaningful discussion on the areas of theology under reconsideration, but rather the aforementioned straw men, unwarranted charges of heresy, etc. will simply shake their heads and MOVE ON.
The authors of this blog, by refusing to focus on healthy dialogue regarding theological issues, allow for divergent readings of Scripture on secondary and tertiary issues, and especially by calling anyone who is not on their page a heretic (they protest that they are not doing this- they say you can say someone advocates and teaches heresy, but is not "a Heretic." But when you say someone is promoting heresy, you are calling them a heretic- end of story...), they have painted themselves into the corner of irrelevancy.
The only people they will be heard by are the small tribe of uptight, flame-anyone-who-reads-Scripture-differently-than-us types that represent a large chunk of what the emerging church is trying to move away from anyway.
So, seriously emergentNO!... God bless you with peace and love and all kinds of good stuff. When you stop feeling the weight of having to protect Christianity from EVERYONE who may disagree with you, and you want to have a meaningful discussion, let us know. Because if you really want to have an impact, this isn't the way to do it.
So- to the critics I say... if you are so worried about our theology, be our friend, not our critic. Even the best of us can only hear so much from critics, but most of us actually listen to our friends.
On a related note, a large-church (mega church?) pastor friend of mine and I are talking about writing a book- the institutional and emerging church in dialogue. We know we can learn from each other...
UPDATE: this post is somehow the top link on google for "emergentno", at least for now... don't know how that happened! Anyway, I change my mind about being active on the emergentno! site all the time... Currently? Just trying to be nice over there. maybe we can all get get along...
I'm now relieved...
The reason I'm relieved is that I'm fairly sure anyone reading the stuff there, because they will find not meaningful discussion on the areas of theology under reconsideration, but rather the aforementioned straw men, unwarranted charges of heresy, etc. will simply shake their heads and MOVE ON.
The authors of this blog, by refusing to focus on healthy dialogue regarding theological issues, allow for divergent readings of Scripture on secondary and tertiary issues, and especially by calling anyone who is not on their page a heretic (they protest that they are not doing this- they say you can say someone advocates and teaches heresy, but is not "a Heretic." But when you say someone is promoting heresy, you are calling them a heretic- end of story...), they have painted themselves into the corner of irrelevancy.
The only people they will be heard by are the small tribe of uptight, flame-anyone-who-reads-Scripture-differently-than-us types that represent a large chunk of what the emerging church is trying to move away from anyway.
So, seriously emergentNO!... God bless you with peace and love and all kinds of good stuff. When you stop feeling the weight of having to protect Christianity from EVERYONE who may disagree with you, and you want to have a meaningful discussion, let us know. Because if you really want to have an impact, this isn't the way to do it.
So- to the critics I say... if you are so worried about our theology, be our friend, not our critic. Even the best of us can only hear so much from critics, but most of us actually listen to our friends.
On a related note, a large-church (mega church?) pastor friend of mine and I are talking about writing a book- the institutional and emerging church in dialogue. We know we can learn from each other...
UPDATE: this post is somehow the top link on google for "emergentno", at least for now... don't know how that happened! Anyway, I change my mind about being active on the emergentno! site all the time... Currently? Just trying to be nice over there. maybe we can all get get along...
11 Comments:
These people are VERY hard to talk to. It can become very discouraging.
Thanks for the good words in response to them.
hey! Thanks bill!
GREAT photography, by the way...
nice comment, bob. I have been spending time with the emergentNo! folks the last couple weeks in an effort to shore up my own defense for what I have been doing.
Peace, bro
bob - any chance I could talk you into publishing your rss feed? It's just a checkbox in the set up of your blog on blogger. helps out guys like me that try to keep up with 30+ blogs a day.
peace
eli!
I thought I did!
isn't this it?
http://evergreenlife.org/atom.xml
or what about...
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Bobblog
man- I don't see the RSS thing...
how about:
http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/Usm.aspx?xml=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Bobblog
I too got fed up with Emergent No. I sent them a mail with quite a detailed response to some weaknesses in their criticisms. Like you conclude, it seems, they are not interested in dialogue and so the best thing is to walk away...
...the frustrating thing is that my blog keeps showing up on theirs as a frequent referrer. AAAAGH!
Howard
http://gatheringgrace.blogs.com/thegathering/
OK kewl! I got the evergeen atom feed to work. I guess I wasn't looking in the right spot last time. My bad. Thanks for the info
I know. THOSE guys, THEM! THEY just don't understand us. WE are the only ones who understand. Let's go off to Guyana and drink some punch together while we comment on how much THOSE people just don't get it (of course in emergent I'm not sure what IT is).
reading their blog makes me feel very ecumenical
it makes me feel very, very obsessive.
ugh.
it's downright unhealthy.
I just don't know how to stay away from certain conversations. For me, it used to be apologetics. I beat the urge to argue with every Tom, Dick and Harry Atheist on the internet.
Now how do I beat the urge to actually want to dialogue with these people who don't want to dialogue, are completely closed off to the idea that anyone else might have a valid viewpoint...
ugh.
i think I tend to do this (get involved over there) in fits and starts. Hopefully we're on the back end of this episode, and I can take a break for awhile. I feel as though I may actually have gotten somewhere this time though! And that's the problem. It's like a gambler winning one hand- you either stop there, or you KNOW you'll just keep going till you lose it all.
ugh.
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