Tag Archives: Emergent

Advent Conspiracy

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I’m skeptical about all things “emergent,” mainly because it is impossible to nail down the theological underpinnings of all things “emergent” (and they – whoever “they” are – like it that way!).

I recently read a news story about two ladies in Ohio who started a campaign to buy up billboards on interstates to share the message that “It’s OK to say Merry Christmas.”

You should know by now how I feel about the efforts of well-meaning Christians to keep Christ in CHRISTmas. Now it seems there is a group of believers who are being just as proactive to ensure that Jesus’s birth isn’t associated with rampant year-end consumerism.

The article made reference to a group called Advent Conspiracy. I’d never heard of it, even though for the past two years they have raised more than $3.5 million dollars for social causes around the world.

Turns out it’s those hard-to-define “emergents” who are behind this conspiracy to replace consumerism with compassion at Christmas. Five pastors collaborated in 2006 to start the conspiracy among their own churches -churches with names like Imago Dei Community and Ecclesia. My interest was peaked.

So peaked that on Monday’s Paul Edwards Program I’ll talk with the Creative Director at one of these “emergent” churches: Tony Biagnne of Windsor Crossing in St. Louis, MO. Hopefully your interest is peaked enough to tune in at 4:00 pm ET on Monday.

Pagitt at 4:00 pm

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Emergent founder Doug Pagitt is my guest at 4:00 pm ET TODAY. Stream it LIVE here.

Doug Pagitt is a self-described “social and theological entrepreneur,” the founder of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, MN, a founder of Emergent Village, and owner of a wellness center and production company. His mission in life, according to his website, is “seeking to find creative, entrepreneurial, generative ways to join in the hopes, dreams and desires God has for the world.” He thinks twenty years is a long time, which isn’t surprising when you consider Pagitt has written whole books on why things that were written 2,000 years ago are “foolish” and “expired” in a contemporary context.

Doug is the author of A Christianity Worth Believing (Jossey-Bass 2008), Church Re-Imagined (Zondervan 2004), Preaching Re-Imagined (Zondervan 2005), and BodyPrayer (Waterbrook 2005). He is the co-editor of An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (Baker Books 2007). He has contributed to numerous books, including The Post-Evangelical (Zondervan 2003), Practioners (Regal 2006), and Listening To The Beliefs of the Emerging Church (Zondervan 2007).

Dr. John MacArthur says of Doug Pagitt:

“Pagitt is a Universalist…It’s most helpful to go back and kind of recast how we view these people. He’s not a pastor. He’s not a Christian. That’s not a church.”

Hear my full interview with Dr. John MacArthur on the emergent church: Part One, Part Two

RELATED LINKS:
Doug Pagitt’s Blog 

Happy to be stuck with…Jesus?

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It’s crass statements like the following that make it difficult (but not impossible) for me to value even the very relevant writing coming out of the Emergent crowd:

Beware of any literature that starts with these words: “Jesus was the greatest leader of all time.” The sentiment behind those words may be true, but the point they make is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if Jesus was the greatest leader of all time. Jesus is our leader (and, in a holy sense, we’re stuck with him).

An otherwise excellent perspective on our Evangelical tendency to “Americanise” Jesus is immediately deflated in the first paragraph because of an Emergent tendency to crassness and irreverence. That won’t stop me, however, from recommending you read the whole piece. I am, after all, an open-minded cranky Calvinist.  🙂

 

Emergent Meets Reformed

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Tony Jones is the National Director of Emergent Village and author of the book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. Collin Hansen is editor-at-large for Christianity Today and the author of the new book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists.

Tony and Collin recently began an email exchange which Christianity Today is letting us peak in on here.