A friendly critique of Emergent No

I've learned the wisdom of listening to one's critics; they tend to be right an annoyingly large percentage of the time. Even when they're wrong, it's usually worth knowing what they say. Nobody is wrong all the time. Emergent No has taken its place on my regular reading list. Carla, one of the contributors, is part of my denomination. This site is a clearinghouse for information and opinions against the emerging church, especially from a Reformed perspective. It's regularly updated and often links to material that is new to me. The good about this site? Well, they are sometimes right. The emerging church is far from perfect, and at times it needs a gentle rebuke. I am not comfortable with every teaching contained in every emergent book, or every practice seen in emerging type churches. As others have noted, the emerging church can benefit from healthy critique. May God give us that. The bad? At times, I feel like I'm reading a caricature of the emerging church. The best critiques take great pains to describe what they're criticizing as fairly as possible before they go to work objecting. They might say, "Now, this isn't representative of the whole movement, but..." or describe the situation so that the people they're critiquing say, "Yes, that's us." Then they can object. Emergent No has a tendency to go to the jugular and paint the emerging church in the worst light possible before critiquing it, often (unintentionally, I believe) inaccurately. It's easy to pick the "worst of" any movement and paint it as representative of the whole. This is, I fear, what happens often at this site. This is a friendly critique, because I hope they continue. They could provide a valuable service to us all. At present, the best thing they could do is to work very hard at building credibility by always accurately describing what they are critiquing. Meantime, I'm grateful for them.

Comments

[ed]

You are so much more gracious than I am. Maybe I'm off, but although I long to hear opposing views to my own, I believe the Bible says that if they come from Christians, they should happen with gentleness and respect. The few times I've been to the site, I've read lots of stuff, I haven't yet (I don't go that often) heard many things that sounded like gentleness and respect and nothing that sounded like love. And why not...because often in these circles (not always-but a lot of the time)people believe that if you have the truth, then you're right, and if you're right then you have the right to say and do whatever you want, as long as it's done in defending that truth...and that usually includes what I can only say is very Pharasaical-like behaviour. It boils down to this for me...I have a feeling that if Jesus came today for the first time...they would have a hay day with his lack of preaching and nasty habit of using stories that most people didnt get. If what Emergent NO is all it will ever be, then I disagree, it really doesn't bring anything profitable to the discussion. Ten good points are not worth one hundred that are destructive and show nothing of the fruit of the Spirit. There certainly are better ways for the Emerging Church to discover some guidance and direction and discover where, even they miss the point. I'll shut up now!

[Darryl]

I'm not just sucking up. I obviously don't agree with a lot what is there. I remember Bill Webb saying, though, that even is harshest critic plays a priestly function in his life. I appreciate a lot of things about the emerging church; I guess I'm cheering for someone out there to be the right type of critic that we all need. Who knows, Emergent No might be that one day.

[ed]

It's not that I wouldn't want that too, Just like I'd want my previous church to be an evangelistic force in it's community and a certain church downtown to embrace the people God's place around them...however, within the present spirit and framework...I don't see it. The heart needs to change. I functioned there for almost six years, I wanted, tried to make a difference. In the end, the best difference was getting people to leave that setting...those who stayed are even more bound than they were before. It's about fruit. I don't want to point fingers, I'd rather never have to do that and probably should never have initiated this train of though...but it's about fruit. Having said that...I hope it happens, one day!