Yesterday am email came through from christianworldviewnetwork.com entitled "My Journey Into and Out of the Emerging Church." I felt it well written and would encourage you to check out the link if you have time.

One thing in particular caught my eye, however, as I have just been granted permission to write a statement of faith for my church. As most of you know, my church would be considered "emerging" by most, which I am all right with, though I disagree with much of what the leaders of the emerging network stand for. Thus, the author takes aim at a few of the general beliefs of the emerging church:

- A highly ambiguous handling of truth.
- A desire to be so inclusive and tolerant that there is virtually no sense of biblical discernment in terms of recognizing and labeling false beliefs, practices, or lifestyles.
- A quasi-universalistic view of salvation.
- A lack of a proper appreciation for biblical authority over and against personal experience or revelation.
- Openness to pagan religious practices like Hindu Yoga and incorporating them into the Christian life and Christian worship.
- Openly questioning the relevance of key historical biblical doctrines such as the Trinity.
- An uncritically open embrace of the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
- An unbridled cynicism towards conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism.
- A reading of scripture that is heavily prejudiced towards a social gospel understanding.
- Little or no talk of evangelism or saving lost souls.
- A salvation by osmosis mentality, where if you hangout with us long enough you’re in.

Unfortunately, all too much of this is true, and this is the very reason I am drafting the statement of faith, which will consist of the nonessentials to our faith (and I plan to provide you the link once it is done). However, let me add a few additional thoughts:

1) It is my belief that many of the beliefs mentioned above (especially experience over Biblical authority and openness to Catholic and Orthodox traditions) are not all that uncommon in a majority of modern churches, even those where "the Gospel is preached and the Word is taught." The difference as I see it though is that in those churches these beliefs are not accepted, so they are driven inward. However, the problem with the emerging network is that these ideas are not only accepted but driven by the leaders.

2) Churches need to reclaim the Good News of the Gospel. The Good News, as I interpret from Jesus, is that man is a fallen, sinful creature, yet through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Him we have the opportunity to enter into His Kingdom. And Christ was very pointed in his messages on being in or out of His Kingdom. One of the main themes I find in my study of Matthew is that with Jesus preaching the Kingdom of God, he was also saying that the eschatological reign of God in near, or at hand, so repent and enter in because the time is short. Those who don't will be thrown into the eternal fire. It seems pretty clear, yet the author's statements above regarding the inclusive and tolerant talk coupled with the absense of the talk of lost souls is rampant in many churches, including my own. A good friend of mine led a small group discussion the other night and halfway through figured out two things: first, one of the participants wasn't a believer, which was all right, but that his beliefs were being held as valid to the other group members and he was bringing them down to his level; second, one could not refer to this gentleman as a non-believer because of the tone that term brough with it. He was apalled, and I know because I took the brunt of his vent the next day (though I did enjoy seeing him passionate on this topic).

I've said this before and I'll say it again, I love the questions that the emerging church is asking and I love how they accept people as they are. The modern institutional church has done a terrible job of reaching out to and accepting the very people Jesus hung with, and though they preach a salvation by grace alone, if you don't shape up and get your life in order and do it on their terms, if you don't come to their place all cleaned up you better watch out! However, for the most part they have been very sound with their biblical teaching, preaching of the Gospel, and so forth. So, though I am not usually a utopic, I do feel that these two extremes can be brought together under one roof and exist in the same church community. We'll see, I don't know how it will go here, I'll know a lot more in the next six to eight weeks. Pray for me.