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 PrintableVersion Letter from AmericaBe a thermostat, not a thermometerSo I can never tell how much any one issue is becoming controversial in the ‘broader’ church — after all, we all live in villages, so to speak. But one ‘emerging’ issue seems to The Emergent Church (though I bet they’d rather we say ‘the emergent church’; postmodern sensitive dudes seem to like lower case grammar, just read any McLaren book). To be fair to the controversy, the matter is not entirely straightforward by any means. A lot of people seem to be fed up with contemporary church forms. Our current culture is moving rapidly more postmodern. By postmodern I don’t mean only more relativist (every road leads to God), but also acute insight into power relations, concern for softer or different moral matters, and in general a lack of confidence in authoritative authority statements or figures. Understanding the issuesYes, by all means. But read Don Carson’s admirable book on the subject (Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church, a tour de force; if you haven’t read it you really should), and you’ll begin to get a sense of the issues. Then take a moment and compare it — purely stylistically — with, as I say, a McLaren book. What do you see? McLaren writes like a postmodern. He feels like a postmodern. He sounds like one of us (that is, those born on the wrong side of the 60s, generational analysts might put it!). He’s a great thermometer. Anyone who wants to do evangelism or church planting or (indeed) any kind of Christian leadership among today’s generation should familiarise themselves with the style. I mean the style you understand. But then there’s the content. It ain’t subtle, people (does that sound thoroughly American? Come home, Josh, I hear you say, all is forgiven). Take the atonement, if you will, and I hope you do. Steve Chalke’s unhappy analogy — not wishing to dredge all that up again — is not precisely used, I suppose, at least not in what I’ve read. But the same lack of comfort in a God of wrath, and therefore in sin, and hell, and judgement, and (of course because you really can’t have it both ways) therefore in grace and forgiveness and mercy and, ultimately, the orthodox doctrine of the gospel that he was ‘pierced for our transgressions’ and ‘by his stripes we are healed’ (Isaiah 53.5) is lost. The lost gospel indeed. The thermostatOn the other hand there’s the thermostat. MacArthur has a new book out in this vein, called The Truth War. You see, the real problem with today’s church is not that we’re ‘out of date’ (though some of us may be — you know who I mean, you over there, that’s it, you’re not cool enough…message over, fashion police), but that we are obsessed with being ‘in date’. And what that means is that we have no prophetic word. The environment’s current sooo… let’s have a conference on the environment. It’s not all bad; Christians do have something to say about the environment. But what about the environment can we say that is challenging to the current trend? Isn’t there something in the Bible about this present world passing away? This seems to be what Jude is about when he calls on us to ‘contend for the faith’. That doesn’t mean we have to be contentious. In fact, we shouldn’t, for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. What it means is that we need to position ourselves as counter-cultural (cross-cultural, like missionaries), not just aping culture, but challenging it, being competitive with it, trying to be a contrast to it, not a copy of it. Committed to evangelismNo that doesn’t mean we have to wear flares when everyone else is wearing drain pipes (if you don’t know what drain pipes are, I’m getting too old). No, that doesn’t mean we have to sing old hymns only, please. No, it doesn’t mean we have to have falling down buildings in unfashionable parts of town. Yes, it does mean we’re to go to the poor and not just the wealthy. Yes, it does mean we’ll challenge the politically correct morality. I don’t think we’re going to get out of this current cultural malaise by playing nice. Our model needs to be, say, Richard Wurmbrand who spent 14 years in jail during the Communist era and who was so committed to evangelism that he even told the gospel to a fellow prisoner in the next door cell through Morse code. Now that’s what I’m talking about. In short, we regulate the culture, we don’t record it. We’re thermostats, not thermometers. Or we should be. And if we’re not, it’s only going to get hotter. Josh Moody,
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