It's the Church Baby

It’s The Church Baby

Man the church is a messy thing. 

Let me think of some other messy things...

Government, families, businesses, teams, the Jersey shore. Now what do all of these things have in common? People.

Church is messy because of the people who go to it?  Yes – sort of.  Most of us have a diluted definition of the word, “church.”

The church is not a thing that people go to.  The church is people.  Specifically, the church is God’s people.  God’s people are the church when they are sitting in pews on a Sunday morning, or sitting in bleachers on a Friday night.  So does that mean that the same conduct should apply in the pews and in the bleachers? 

Ouch. My bad yall… Nachos and beer would be kinda cool in the pew tho, right?

There are some churches that actually might take me up on that idea.  Ok, nachos and beer might be a stretch now, but if they keep heading down the same path without checking up for truth, a nachos-and-beer-church will be a conservative one by comparison.

The kind of church that I’m talking about are part of the “emergent church” movement and the “emerging church” movement.  Yes, they sound similar phonetically, and they do have some similar characteristics.  I do want to talk about these movements and how they compare to each other.

The Emerging church refers to a movement of churches in the present time that seek to make churches (building) more relevant to and applicable to people of today’s society.  One part of this movement is a “House Church” lane.  This lane appeals to people’s distaste for big buildings and congregations.  These people want to stay away from the big performances and plastic grandeur of “mega-churches.”  The Emerging Reformers lane of the movement look to Acts 29 for guidance to make church services more relevant.  They seek to respect the past while moving forward.

The Emergent church is often referred to as, “Emergent Liberals.”  These churches call in to question Biblical doctrine that should not be questioned.  They consistently hesitate to take a stand on absolute truth.  They are pushing a perverted version of Christianity that can be molded around a person’s personal preferences rather than God’s authority through scripture. 

When studying church history this week at the Kanakuk Institute, we learned about these modern day church movements.  In my observations of the information that we were presented about the church’s history throughout all time, the Emergent church seems more likely to be disregarded as heresy rather than accepted as another reformation based in truth.

I do think that the Emerging church can hold tightly to truth and season it with relevance in order to bring about reform in the way church is done in America.  Do I think that this would be a bad thing? No. I think that with truth of scripture as the priority, churches should seek new ways to present that truth so that it is relevant to the culture.