More Resources on the Emergent Church

Nicene Creed in Cyrillic

Bill Honsberger from “Nietzsche, the Death of God, and the Emerging Church Movement” (audio):

So while hiding behind the skirts of the creeds, Tony Jones is famous for saying, “Well, I believe in the Nicene Creed and you can’t say that I don’t.”

Well, we don’t know what that means, do we? I mean, if I don’t know what the Bible said 2000 years ago, then why would I know what the creeds meant 1700 years ago or 1600 years ago, or any other creed? How could I know? It’s all interpretation.

So while hiding behind the skirts of the creeds, they’ve attacked the Trinity, hell, Biblical inerrancy concerning homosexuality, substitutional atonement, inerrancy concerning the nature and person of God, etc...

We need to understand how corrosive this stuff is...It is corrosive to everything it touches and it is corrosive to the Christian Church.

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Greg Koukl on the Emergent Church

CLICK TO ENLARGE GRAPHIC from Stand to Reason
From Stand To Reason's
"Solid Ground" Newsletter (text and graphic)

Truth is a Strange Sort of Fiction Part V: Christianity and Postmoderism: The Emerging Church by Greg Koukl

Emerging Christians, then, are reacting to a church establishment that deeply offends them. They have been embarrassed by what appears to them to be systemic hypocrisy. They are unsettled by what they take to be indifference toward the poor, a fear of (and therefore hostility towards) diversity, and a dogmatism borne of religious conceit....

The driving force for many emerging Christians, therefore, is not orthodoxy, but orthopraxy; not right thinking, but right living – a practical “love lived out” way of life...

My own concerns are theological and philosophical, not cultural. My uneasiness with the movement is not with the emerging church in general, but with a subgroup on the vanguard that I fear is being seduced by a postmodern culture God intended them to transform, not be transformed by. This subgroup goes by the name “Emergent,” a proper noun identifying those following the lead of the Emergent Village...

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The Postmodern Decay of Language: Why People Talk More and Say Less

"Paul Preaching In Athens" by Raphael

In response to several inquiries, I posted some information postmodernism which has opened up into more questions people have asked me about exactly how language has degraded within our culture. Now, more than ever, a growing number of people speak and use eloquent-sounding language, but their messages demonstrate a gross lack of content. Cults and spiritually abusive groups capitalize upon this process. One astute reader asked me how it is that more and more speakers and ministers can offer content-free speeches and sermons but how few people can recognize that their messages actually lack content. People “sound good,” offering “feel good” rhetoric, but they essentially say nothing and are rewarded for it. This reader asked me about possible sources of information to help them understand more about exactly how communicators manipulate language in order to say nothing.

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Thoughts on Physical Disease and the Effects of Stress of Cultic Groups and Relationships

Our thoughts and emotions have a profound effect on our automatic body systems, and these systems are regulated and balanced in a steady state or “homeostasis” by the Autonomic Nervous System or “ANS.” This information from our thoughts and emotions informs the ANS, automatically preparing to help us adapt and survive. When we feel threatened or if we think about and anticipate circumstances, our mind stimulates the immediate release of certain neurotransmitters and/or “stress hormones” that are mediated by the ANS. Our neurotransmitter levels fluctuate to help our bodies respond, doing things like raising our heart rate so that we can pump plenty of blood and oxygen to our muscles in order to run from danger. Our pupils widen so we can take in more light and see more clearly. Our bowels can either become less active or more active, depending on our emotions and how the ANS responds to threat or information (like worrying about taking a test the next day). The ANS stimulates the adrenal glands to release both epinephrine to bathe the whole body in stimulation as well as cortisol (a natural steroid) which regulates inflammation and affects blood sugar, making more fuel immediately available for energy production. The system works quite well when we experience only limited episodes of periodic excitement and when we have the opportunity to discharge the energy that our body produces in response to this excitement.

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Problems with Viewing History and Truth through a Postmodern Lens

A week ago, I watched video of President Obama’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery where he paid his respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I recalled my own visit there, my first one, in 1987. I wept uncontrollably as I stood there for the changing of the guard, imagining and empathizing with all the mothers, wives, daughters and sisters that had stood and would ever come to stand where I was standing then. “But for grace, there go I,” always floods through my mind as I ponder those who suffer.

And on Monday of last week, I recalled my childhood tradition of watching the Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches on Channel 17 in Philadelphia every year. I would ponder why God put me in the family that He did in the day and time that He did, as I surely differ little from all of those who have seen greater tragedies and had fewer comforts. When history presents itself to me and gets my attention, it becomes a deeply personal experience. I see myself as some character in most every narrative I read, because “but for grace,” I might have been them. I have something to learn from those people, particularly those who have lived through something that I find to be very different from my own experience.

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Geniuses Are Leading Our World Astray..... "I have a strong sense that the Son of God weeps at the loss and misplacement of such genius."

Ravi Zacharias - Postmodernism Philosophy

The original post featured embedded video clips that are now no longer available to post here on this website.   They can be viewed directly at You Tube, courtesy of the Henry Center.  Click on the links below.  All but the final video can be viewed via a single playlist at the Henry Center Channel on YouTube by following this LINK.

Ravi Zacharias: An Evangelical Understanding of Postmodernism 

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

Q and A following the lecture  (An Evangelical Understanding of Postmodernism)

• Part I
• Part II

Post Lecture Interview

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

What Are the Effects of Postmodernism and Modernism?

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Evaluating Deconstructionism Using Responsible Hermeneutics

Five years ago on this very date, I sat with a now deceased laptop computer in the University of Texas Library, writing an essay. I'd been asked to present how thought reform played into the Vision Forum mindset from the vantage of one who attended a Presbyterian church with the followers of Doug Phillips and, on rare occasion, with Phillips himself.

I believe that I watch the world from an interesting and unique vantage. Though I was born in the first year of Generation X, I don’t bear all of the same qualities as most Xers. Perhaps because my parents missed the hippie mentality by what probably amounts to a few months and owing to slower life in a rural community, both my parents and I think much differently than our peers of the same age. I identify more strongly with Baby Boomers born later in that generation, as though there is a bridge period between Boomers and Gen X that theorists never define or capture. My most comfortable niche places me in an category with those born roughly somewhere between the early fifties and mid-sixties. I tend to march in tune to that drum rather than the drum of my same-aged peers. Though I am Christian first, I think like and communicate best with a modernist and tend to relate to others like a postmodernist living in a postmodern world.

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Voddie Baucham on Getting One's Ticket Punched, Round Two?

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a program called "College Plus!" that is endorsed, most notably, by Doug Phillips. From reviewing their website, I believe that one can easily ascertain that this program offers non-academic coaching to those who enroll in their program. They also offer a core curriculum in Christian Worldview, and I the books of at least one of the authors they use for this program line my own bookshelves. I supported Gary DeMar's ministry for many years until my husband and I withdrew support because Doug Phillips and Vision Forum products became ever more prominent in American Vision's publications. Though I do not agree with the recent direction that American Vision chose, I still find most of what Gary DeMar has authored to be very fine material.

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Shepherding: Many Variations on a Theme

The previous post reviewed the emphasis on submission that came out of many groups that were born during the time of the Charismatic Renewal. Understanding this aberrant “submission doctrine” and how it developed is essential to understanding the shepherding movement and its many variants that exist today. All of the Shepherding/Discipleship groups observed this focus on submission and the “umbrella of protection” concept to varying degrees and continue to do so, despite the fact that shepherding was theoretically denounced and renounced by most Evangelical leaders and some of the leaders of shepherding themselves. I’ve heard from many people over the past week or so tell me that they knew nothing of the practices of shepherding, but that does not surprise me. I participated very actively in a Shepherding group for four years and never knew that there was such a practice or an well-organized set of doctrines associated with it. I knew nothing of the history, and I had to be told about it by an exit counselor.

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All About Authority: The Popularity of Submission Doctrine

The social unrest and rebellion of the ‘60s combined with the problems of the Vietnam War soon followed as a great number of those in the “Baby Boomer” generation did their best to cast off the perceived perfection of their parents. A whole generation of very idealistic young adults wanted to be unique and expressly different than their parents and their generation. They didn’t want to lead “Leave it to Beaver” lives, and they did not want their homes to look like the idyllic Nelson home or anything like the “Donna Reed Show.”

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Examples of the Posterity of the Shepherding Movement: Geoff Botkin and Surviving Sovereign Grace Ministries

A few years ago, I read a book review of a book on the Shepherding movement that grew out of the Charismatic Renewal movement that started in the 1960s. The reviewer said that it seemed pointless to rehash a movement and a mindset that was old news and past-tense. I remember wondering what planet this person lived on? They certainly had not lived in my corner of the universe.

Shepherding is anything but past tense, and most everything that shepherding did is still alive and as active as it ever was. Though there is not a tremendous focus on the one-on-one (or one-over-one) pastoral care that some of the original groups followed, the other spiritually abusive practices persisted. Some of those include the tremendous focus on piety and an overt focus on submission to and governance by church leadership under the guise of personal concern for parishioners. These groups also spend a great deal of energy maintaining milieu control, urging others to refrain from “sowing discord among the brethren.”

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Links to Blogs and Ongoing Discussions of Abuse in the Church

In an article I referenced in the last post, Ron Henzel notes that the term “abuse” gives many Christians pause and problems. He discusses what I call the “culture of victimhood” that was so encouraged 20 years ago when everyone was a victim of something and needed some sort of therapeutic measure to be made whole. It seemed like a select few people had been victimized and began to heal, and they projected that experience onto everyone else on the planet with the good news of their deliverance from their personal evils. And our culture drank too deeply from the fountains of the victim mentality and developed quite a sour belly full of it.

The problem is that there is a serious and what I would define as a growing problem with real abuse in the church today. Just because others have overused and extended the term should not turn into a reaction that ignores real abuse. We have problems with neglect of those we should be ministering to within our walls and outside of them, but that is not abuse as many have defined it. That problem is yet another problem, a different one. But I mean serious, actual abuse. Reflecting upon the Lord’s work in my life in recent years, a dear friend wrote to me yesterday, stating that “those times have given you the insight to address many of the imperious, life-strangling movements in today's church.” And I see more instances of abuse now than I did then, even when I was very hypervigilant and still suffering the active pain that those abuses brought with them.

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Is Spiritual Abuse Biblical?

Essentially, the most vivid examples of spiritual abuse come from Ezekiel 34 and Zechariah 11, with the consummate example of spiritual abuse embodied in the Pharisees and Sadducees. Though I’ve listed the references for these Scriptures below, I have also displayed the full texts on the Under Much Grace website, and you can LINK HERE to read them (and as of April 2012, they are also noted below).

There are also two excellent articles that discuss whether or not spiritual abuse is actually found within Scripture itself.

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A Synopsis of Terminology Pertaining to Cults and Spiritual Abuse

There are many definitions of what is meant by the term "cult." One must define which terms are being used. Within Christianity, the term is generally not considered to be a pejorative but describes a specific set of conditions.

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Distinguishing Doctrine from Behavior: What Makes a Cult a Cult?

I recently pointed out the connection between the Great Commission “Bible-based cult” and Vision Forum through the person of Geoffrey Botkin. The Great Commission group (GC, GCM, GCI, GCAC, etc.) has been classified as a variant group that follows of the shepherding/discipleship/submission doctrine, terms with which many Christians still remain unfamiliar. For the benefit of all, I would like to define these terms in the next few blog posts. 

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