The emergent church has been shaken by the recent question: What is the difference between emergent church, emergence and emergency? In this emergency the first-responders are Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, and the scramble for definitions has been amusing. The Keystone Cops are called to lower Manhattan.

Apparently everything must change; but not so much as to leave the leaders of this movement without a confused following, for crying out loud!

Here is Doug's "little reflection"; we hope you find it somewhat more helpful than his commenters have. Tony Jones reasons—if "reasons" is the right word—that "where we all go from here will have more to do with that to which God is calling us than to any labels".

Odd. Here was a movement not about definitions and ideas, but about "ethos" and "vibe". Now it is engaged in nice little distinctions between words and subsets of words, labels and subsets of labels, movements and subsets of movements.

Tony thinks it's all a question of NSMs, which he has learned from the sociologists means New Social Movements. [By the way, aren't sociologists scientists and suffering under "platonic" delusions? Aren't they the labelers of social groups?]

Anyway, the NSMs that excite Tony's imagination are cultural and social: civil rights, GLBT (people whose sexual identity is under cataclysmic deconstruction), environmentalism and feminism. Fret not thyself that these are merely a bunch of labels for lefty political alignments.

Apparently God is calling them to social upheaval, racial resentments, sexual perversion, economic extortion, gender ambivalence....

Moses would be so proud.

And St. Paul.

Doug Pagitt, trombone abuser over at dougpagitt.com, revisits the anti-Plato schtick that bombed on his traveling revival. Make of it what you will. If you were born after 2005 you will find Pagitt very informative; if you have even a cursory knowledge of philosophy, you will find Pagitt hilarious.

You can also read Shelley Pagitt's views on yoga and the church. These you will find hilarious whether you know anything about yoga or not. Doug and Shelley are a matched set.

But what provoked all this emergent flossfy was Doug's picture in a haystack. It is one of many posters you can find here.

This is a collection of motivational posters which capture the emergent movement in a thoroughly appropriate way. These posters are not only superior to any of the "art" produced in the emergent movement, they accurately identify the movement's "vibe".

The arsonists over at teampyro have provided your Sunday School with some great material. Don't let it go to waste.

Personal favorites are Art, Church History, Comedy, Community, Cruelty, Generous Orthodoxy, Heaven, Humility, Justification, Liberality, Missional, Reimagining, Spirituality, Tradition, and Unity.

With the arrival of fall our attention turns to the harvest.  It is true that the harvest is plenty and the workers are few but some crops are worth more than others.  This issue of ChristianityTuesday highlights the church's message of careful stewardship of our resources which has put us in a position to reach environmentalist seekers like never before.

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True God and bountiful father, maker of all that is beautiful and good; we acknowledge our ingratitude and our insufferable self-love.

You have created us for worship and given us tongues for praise. You have covered us with loving-kindness and we have not been grateful; we have been proud and selfish and we have neglected your worship. We have loved the evil thing and indulged every unworthy passion.

You gave us eyes but we have not looked, you gave us ears but we have not listened, you gave us lips but we have not praised. You gave us hearts but we have not considered. We have received but we have not given thanks, we have been blessed but we have not honored your name.

We have shown contempt for thy gifts and we have withheld what we owe. We have given what is not wanted and we have offered what is lame and unclean.

We repent of our sins and we implore thee to hear and forgive.

Amen.

We speak of church leaders with no judgment. I came across this while looking for that.

From the prophets we learn this and from the apostles, as well as from our Lord Himself. These were never bound by a mechanical religious "curriculum" which dictated unintelligently that certain doctrines were to be taught at certain times regardless of conditions. They prescribed truth as a divine medicine to be proclaimed with emphasis when the needs of the people called for it. They preached hope when the morals of the nation was low, obedience when the people grew careless, purity when their morals began to sag, humility when they became proud and repentance when they fell into sin. All was in accord with the total body of revealed truth, but the moral skill of these men of God enabled them to fit the message to conditions....

Today the religious situation cries out for the skilled moral physician who can diagnose our ills and prescribe wisely for our cure. It is not enough simply to repeat correct doctrinal clichés. It is imperative right now that we have the benefit of the piercing discernment of the Spirit. We must not only know what God has said, we must hear what God is now saying.

No matter how sincere they may be, ministers without discernment are sure to err. Their conclusions are inevitably false because their reasoning is mechanical and without inspiration. I hear their error in our pulpits and read it in our religious periodicals; and it all sounds alike: revived churches engage in foreign missions; hence let us plunge into missionary activity and spiritual refreshing is sure to follow. The healthy church wins souls; let us begin to win souls and we will surely be revived. The early Church enjoyed miracles, so let's begin to expect mighty signs and wonders and we will soon be like the early Church. We have neglected the "social implications" of the gospel; let us engage in political activities and charitable endeavors and all will be well again.

Miserable counselors these, and physicians of no value. Their advice is not only poor; it is spiritually damaging.

This could almost be an outline for a contemporary Christianity class. As it happens, it is the observation of A. W. Tozer in The Size of the Soul.

The absence of judgment in our worship is not unconnected with an absence of judgment in prophecy.

Some of our readers have asked for recommendations on what to listen to or what to buy. This can be a bit tricky, as I've said before: someone—especially a child—may have a natural preference which must be guided rather than squelched. The fact that I prefer Milstein should not be taken as a criticism of Hahn. Because I treasure the Guarneri doesn't mean I dislike the Tokyo, but it might give some indication as to why I pass on the Kronos, if you get my drift.

We are talking about the development of a proper sensibility among a people who don't even know the meaning of "proper".

So much of evangelical trinketry is nothing more than religious sentiments a la mode, banal statements of belief set to popular genres which only ornament a rather pathetic view of God and human experience. That is why I think you ought to inform your sensibilities with things like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnyvFpP30bs

No one should leap to the conclusion that I think Rachmaninoff 's piano concerti belong in church. There is a difference between the concert hall, the salon and the chapel. But having said that, what is done in the chapel ought to be informed by the best we can find in the salon and concert hall. We cannot speak properly about God at the piano if we cannot even express ourselves at the piano. What we offer to God should be no less articulate than what we hear in the concert hall.

I found this by accident a couple of weeks ago. This was my first chance to pass it on, and I have no way of knowing how long it will stay up.

This masterclass might help in several ways, but my biggest hope is that it will give us a better recognition of what good is. What Christian educational institutions are producing is unforgivably below what meets the requirements. First we have to recognize and appreciate the difference between what a Bible college music program offers and what Curtis Institute offers.

There are 14 masterclasses here, and the whole might test your endurance. I still suggest you go as far as you can and take note of the great gulf fixed between art and entertainment.

There is not a single thing about God that is ignoble or ephemeral, and that fact cannot be conveyed at the piano by people who have no clue as to what is noble and permanent.

Come, let us join our friends above,
That have obtained the prize,
And on the eagle wings of love
To joys celestial rise.

Let saints below in concert sing
With those to glory gone:
For all the servants of our King
In heaven and earth are one.

One family, we dwell in Him,
One church above, beneath,
Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death.

One army of the living God,
To His command we bow.
Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now.

E'en now, by faith, we join our hands
With those that went before;
And greet the blood-redeeméd hands
On the eternal shore.

---Charles Wesley

Draw me to Thee, till far within Thy rest,
In stillness of Thy peace, Thy voice I hear—
For ever quieted upon Thy breast,
            So loved, so near.

By mystery of Thy touch my spirit thrilled,
            O Magnet all Divine;
The hunger of my soul for ever stilled,
            For Thou art mine.

For me, O Lord, the world is all too small,
            For I have seen Thy face,
Where Thine eternal love irradiates all
            Within Thy secret place.
And therefore from all others, from all else,
            Draw Thou my soul to Thee...
...Yea—Thou has broken the enchanter's spells,
            And I am free.

Now in the haven of untroubled rest
            I land at last,
The hunger, and the thirst, and weary quest
           For ever past.
There, Lord to lose, in bliss of Thine embrace
           The recreant will;
There, in the radiance of Thy blessed Face,
           Be hushed and still;
There, speechless at Thy pierced Feet
           See none and nought beside,
And know but this—that Thou art sweet,
           That I am satisfied.

--- Gerhard Tersteegen

David A. Powell
1956 - 2008

Saturday evening we were shocked and grieved to learn of the passing of our own Dave.

Dave had a Christian testimony and an internet presence when I came along, and when Joe had the idea of starting a blog it was Dave's knowledge and experience that made Remonstrans what it is. In addition to his posts and comments, it was his know-how and patience that rescued us on several occasions from what would have been certain catastrophe.

As our software went through several upgrades, those of us who are not technically adroit became less and less competent to share the load. Dave patiently tolerated the dumb questions and feeble attempts at flipping the right switches. He also provided a counterweight to some editorial enthusiasms and made the blog better than it otherwise would have been.

We extend every condolence to members of his family and church and to all his colleagues, friends and internet companions.

Then why dost thou weep so? For see how time flies,
The time for loving and praising was given!
Away with thee, child, then, and hide thy red eyes
In the lap, the kind lap, of thy Father in heaven.

--- Frederick William Faber

June 11 the Guarneri String Quartet announced that 2008-9 would be its last season. It begins later this month.

This has not only been a long journey, but a deeply satisfying one as well. What could be better than performing the inspired string quartet repertoire, traveling the world, and meeting wonderful people along the way!

I don't believe there is a quartet to replace it, and more ties to the past are broken: Feuermann, Toscanini, Rudolf Serkin, Mischa Schneider, Roisman, Zimbalist, Otokar Cádek, Toscha Seidel, Szell, Gingold, Szigeti, Casals, Schnabel....

You really should check this site; click on MORE, then CONCERT SCHEDULE to see if you can catch one last concert.

Back to pencils, back to books, but with this issue of ChristianityTuesday in hand, there will be no dirty looks as you return back to school.

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Because we know that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, we left you last Friday with the discerning words of "suchabirch". We wanted your holiday to be as health-giving as it was possible for us to make it on our modest budget, so naturally we wheeled in the meds cart of the emergent church.

There will be a strong temptation to think that suchabirch is of such meager intellect that she could be dismissed after a polite giggle. Unfortunately what she is doing carries the weight of recent breakthroughs in epistemology and hermeneutics. We could well call what she is doing "the technology of emergence"; this is the way to do theology now.

Where the church once "focused on logic, evidence, proof, answers, scholarship, reasons, arguments, and appeals to authority", suchabirch helps us understand the new apologetic which "will focus more and more on beauty, goodness, experience, questions, mystery, community, and humility".

Apologetics is now a matter of speculating on the eschaton and rethinking sodomy; entertainment now includes soft porn, and the untimely teachings of the New Testament now make it hard for emergents to believe.

Hard times come again no more.

I have suggested often that we view the long line of history.

Emergents are not doing anything new here; this attitude has been encountered before. We have already run into this sort of "indolent impressionism" in lieu of theology. The people were better-read and they were what this writer called "men of marked intellectual power".

Modern writers have abandoned the historical method of approach. They persist in confusing the question what they might have wished that Jesus had been with the question what Jesus actually was. In reading one of the most popular recent books on the subject of religion, I came upon the following amazing assertion. "Jesus," the author says, "concerned himself but little with the question of existence after death." In the presence of such assertions any student of history may well stand aghast. It may be that we do not make much of the doctrine of a future life, but the question whether Jesus did so is not a matter of taste but an historical question, which can be answered only on the basis of an examination of the sources of historical information that we call the Gospels.

And the result of such examination is perfectly plain. As a matter of fact, not only the thought of heaven but also the thought of hell runs all through the teaching of Jesus. It appears in all four of the Gospels; it appears in the sources, supposed to underlie the Gospels, which have been reconstructed, rightly or wrongly, by modern criticism. It imparts to the ethical teaching its peculiar earnestness. It is not an element which can be removed by any critical process, but simply suffuses the whole of Jesus' teaching and Jesus' life. "And fear not them which can kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." "It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire"—these words are not an excrescence in Jesus' teaching but are quite at the center of the whole.

Amen and amen.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was offered as a response to Brian D. McLaren. It is actually the response of J. Gresham Machen to what he called an "attack upon the intellect". That was in 1925. A sufficiently powerful computer will reveal that that was 83 years ago. *

Emergents are fearlessly forging ahead into the salad days of the previous century!

In Machen's day they weren't dithering about Derrida, but they were very much trying to rethink Christianity in such a way as to make Revelation comport with their own prejudices. This is an old game and one we should be able to recognize by now.

Whether it be fundamentalism, neo-evangelicalism or emergence, the enduring need of the hour is to recognize faithlessness for what it is. Allowing the crisis of the moment to determine the shape of your faith is always dangerous.

__________________________

* What is Faith?, J. Gresham Machen, Banner of Truth Trust, p. 25