My pastor and I were talking last week about the state of The Church in America. We were commenting on some past and recent Barna research that was quite disturbing. I probably don’t need to tell you “were in trouble”!! We are loosing a generation who are sick of religion and failing to reach those who are searching for something real!
With the rapid growth of the “emerging church”, it seems that we have made some headway. But, I often have to question how much of what we think is a movement is really just another man-made program or idea. I have no doubt that God is using the emerging church to reach people and change lives and am very thankful for it. I am definitely not against it. But, I think it’s important to remember in America, we so often want to change what we “do” and not “who we are”. God is interested in changing “who we are”! I believe He is more concerned with our personal core values and how we live those out than whether or not we will use candles and Turkish rugs in our sanctuaries or if we have tattoos and buy our threads from Urban Outfitters!! I believe if this is truly all we have, than we’ve really missed it!
In a recent Relevant Magazine article, emergent pastor Mark Driscoll addressed the issue. I thought his comment was very profound.
“There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types want to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.”
