One of the emerging church’s foremost figures, Brian McLaren, challenged Anglicans earlier this week to speak the Gospel into the world’s ever-changing cultures.
McLaren said he had come to the Anglican Communion’s once-a-decade Lambeth Conference to speak to the more than 600 bishops and their spouses “on behalf of the people who never show up in your church, … who are never part of your community, the multitude of people who have been created in the image of God, but who have never known the redeeming of the Spirit of God through the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
He argued that religion had “orphaned” emerging culture such as materialism and technological development, and failed to answer questions raised by the “hurricane of change” in the modern world.
McLaren went on to present his view of evangelism in what he defined as the pre-modern, modern and emerging worlds. He said that evangelism in parts of the world that are experiencing a shift from pre-modern to modern may seem “effortless,” but churches in the modern world are “static and declining” and “evangelism is hard to come by.”
“You might say that evangelism is almost non-existent because the Christian faith is, to be very frank, almost non-existent,” he told the audience, gathered at the University of Kent, in Canterbury.
McLaren, who was previously voted one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential evangelicals and is one of the more controversial emerging church figures, also told the bishops that they needed to ditch “internal institutional maintenance” and focus instead on the “outward mission” of making disciples among all people. That, he said, was “our only hope of saving the church from division, diversion, implosion, irrelevance and triviality.”
McLaren remained positive about the “wonderful” and “creative” ways that Anglicans are making disciples around the world, including the Church of England’s Fresh Expressions initiative to develop new ways of being church.
He also offered a fresh perspective on the challenges confronting the Anglican Communion right now, saying they could become a “great asset” to the Church if they realized “we’re in a different place, different contexts and we have different challenges.”
“The fact that you are a global communion means that you are forced to realize that different cultures are dealing with different struggles,” he said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.”
He encouraged the bishops to use Lambeth as an opportunity to enter the emerging, post-modern world as disciples of Christ and change history.
"What new, unimagined capacity could be stirred up in the church if we re-discovered and re-prioritized our outward mission to be the hands and feet and eyes and ears, the presence of Jesus Christ to a world in desperate need? What would happen if we turned that outward mission into the good news of hope?" McLaren asked the bishops. Continue >>
Comments
Brian McLaren is trying to neuter Christianity
and reinvent God's Word and His Will. God loved Brian
McLaren enough to suffer and die on the Cross for Him,
and now McLaren mocks that as "false advertising for God"
I think most of us have forgotten that God wants us "...first to LOVE the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind; and love our neighbor as ourself." That means even McLauren. We are to pray for our enemies. We are to pray his eyes be open to the truth.
"They will know we are Christian's by how we love each other." That is what God wants us to do. Love each other and our neighbor.
Here's a quote from the emergent church website given below:
"Marriage for Christians is the freely given consent and commitment in public and before God of a man and a woman to live together for life. It is intended to be the mutually faithful lifelong union of a woman and man expressed in every part of their life together."
Apparently, emergent is a method vs a theology.
I've been going some googling and found this site. It seems to hold some balance as an emergent church.
http://assembly.uca.org.au/theologyanddiscipleship/resources/the_emerging_church#4
They have some doctrine statements which seem right on though I haven't gone through the whole site. They're 'emergent' sounds much more like what our church is doing. It's not about changing the message, it's about telling people in a way they can hear.
Do you realize there were people who didn't like radio and TV as a method of evangelism? "It will keep people from coming to Church" they said. Still, even concervative churches do broadcasts now.
Why does it not surprise me that feetxxxl thinks McLaren is right about anything?
2 Peter 2
False Teachers and Their Destruction
1But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
"In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network. But, I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like BRIAN MCLAREN and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake." Mark Driscoll
McLaren is all about entertaining the goats rather than feeding the sheep.
consider mclaren is asking what is the church that jesus is speaking about to us, to our hearts, who lives in us. jesus whom god has entrusted all judgement and has placed in authority over all things.
We are to be reconciled to GOd, not to sin.
feetxxxl,
Nobody debates this statement. This is the mission of the Church at large - to GO INTO ALL THE WORLD AND MAKE DISCIPLES OF ALL NATIONS BAPTIZING THEM IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
No one has ever debated the mission of the Church, BUT at the same time we are to remain separate and unspotted from the influences of the culture coming into the Church superimposing its values (or the lack thereof) onto the Church.
The culture does not control or dictate what God does. Mr McLauren believes it does. His philosophy is to ask "What do you want in a Church?" My point is who cares what you or I want in a church. What does GOD WANT IN A CHURCH?
When we determine what God wants, THEN and ONLY then can we reach a lost and dying world effectively. Do it on our own and we will only end being a Mr McLauren - a man pleaser.
"What new, unimagined capacity could be stirred up in the church if we re-discovered and re-prioritized our outward mission to be the hands and feet and eyes and ears, the presence of Jesus Christ to a world in desperate need?
maybe its time to give our belief systems a rest.
My day would be so much brighter if Mr Lyin' McLaren would just go away - or better yet, actually get saved.
It's a fearful thing to imagine the firey indignation that he will face at the judgment seat of Christ when he has to answer for all the souls that he has led astray.
Homosexuality is a sin. PERIOD! There is no gray area in scripture about it. It is sin. There is no trying to understand it, tolerate it, or reason it out. It is sin. Repentance is the only solution. Same goes for adultery, fornication, blasphemy, pornography, lying, stealing, murder, et al. Sin is sin is sin. Period.
Repent! That is the only solution that will gain you entrance into heaven and grant you favor with God. Sin separates us from God. Repentance (turning away from sin) reconciles us to Him.
Playing "church" is a stench in God's nostrils. Anyone acting outside of God's Word and yet calls themselves a Christian is NOT a Christian. "Only those who do the will of my Father in Heaven" are the ones God sees as Christian. Everyone else is a fraud.
Mr McLauren's theology has NEVER been in keeping with the Word of God. Culture dictates to him what is acceptable or not, not the Word of God. this man does more damage to the church than any heathen ever could because he plays both sides of the fence.
Jesus said: "I wish you were either hot or cold but because you are lukewarm (about who you're going to foloow) I'm going to spew you out of my mouth."
Choose you this day whom you're going to serve! God or man! Christ or culture! Stop contaminating the Church with your abominable heresy! Get in or get out!