Help Me Out Here, George BarnaI just came across this, the You Say You Want a Revolution conference slated for next month in Seattle. Nothing too unfamiliar here, the usual Emergent topics and lingo, and some of the usual suspects at the front. But the presence of the renowned pollster surprises me. I know his book Revolution certainly shares some common ground with postmodern/emergent in it's prediction of new, alternative, non-institutional and usually smaller expressions of church in the coming years. I can imagine that Emergents would find his analysis and forecasts encouraging on that level, but would not care much for some of his "affirmations of a Revolutionary" pp. 128-130 Revolution:
Absolute moral and spiritual truth exists, is knowable, and is intended for my life; it is accessible through the Bible.This sort of black and white statement is usually the answer to "the wrong question" in the world of McClaren and Co. and makes post-modern folks very uncomfortable. I wonder why Barna would be invited, and why he would accept. Any thoughts?
4 comments:
I think the simple answer is money. If you look at it there is no depth to the explanation of the conference, it's just a bunch of shallow marketing buzzing about hot topics in christianity. Of course thousands of church leaders will bite on this, looking for a quick fix to the "post-modern" problem.
The topic draws the attention, McLaren ads the controversy and Barna ads the credibility, why they all agreed to do it I'm not sure. Maybe a nice benefit package?
It's high time I figure out this whole emergent church thing. I have done no research and talked to no experts... only heard the term here and there since coming back from India. Can someone kindly clue me in with a nice summary of this movement? Ahem... excuse me... this "conversation"? I'm a little tired of using my deductive reasoning skills to figure it out. It doesn't seem to be working.
Thanks!
Mindy,
While I'm not entirely sure what the rest of this speaker's teaching is all about, I thought his talk on modern/postmodern/emergent was a pretty concise summary:
http://swordandtrowel.com
"Beginner's Guide to Post-Modernism" is the name of the audio track.
I'm sure somebody from a local Emergent chapter would be happy to finger-paint an answer for you as well...
Mindy,
At the Postmodern Conference we attended, in one of the question and answer sessions with the pastors, John Piper summed up emergent with this quote:
"Committed relationships trump truth. They probably would not like the word trump, but rather committed relationships are an authentic expression of the Gospel and that to ask what is the Gospel underneath in the supporting relationships is a category mistake."
My take on it is that the truth of the Gospel (man's sin and God's wrath because of man's sin, Jesus' death and resurrection to pay the penalty, the Virgin birth, and all the "doctrine" that goes along with the Gospel) are not discussed because what matters is us relating in love to each other. That is the meaning of the Gospel to the emergent.
It's sort of a repackaging of the "social gospel" thing and appeals to a generation of people who believe everything is relative.
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