“I actually wonder (and I don’t think there’s any way to prove it) that the reason emergent is ‘listing to the left’ and seeking different space is because they see evangelicalism as drifting into a more hard-line, fortress-mentality attitude toward culture. If so, some parts of the Pentecostal movement may be responsible for this.”

Having grown up in a pentecostal/charismatice tradition, I’ve seen the hardline, fortress mentality Pastor Tim references. But increasingly I’ve also seen a passion to “forget the former things” and experience the “new thing” God is doing beyond the walls of our churches today. In recent years, this has taken many forms including an emphasis from p/c leaders on “marketplace ministry,” “city transofrmation,” and even “cultural engagement.”

I’ve only recently become familiar with the emerging church conversation, but much of its rhetoric and passion resonate with where I find many emerging leaders within the urban p/c context. (Some of it is also disconcerting, like the tendency towards white, suburban, seminarian, “ortho-praxis” jargon.)

I wonder if the solution to DJ’s lament, and my own, will come when the p/c “camp” (including so-called “post-charismatics”) — who tend to emphasize heart and experience and emotional expressions of faith — discovers its kinship with the cerebral emerging church types — who tend to value rigorous analysis and intellectual engagement. When we embrace our common passion for more of God and manifest expressions of His transformative power in our respective cultural contexts, then we might actual find ourselves answering the prayer of Jesus:

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

When the “heart” and the “head” unite, the collective body of Christ might actually function the way our heavenly Father designed us to function.

The thing is, dialogue takes a lot of time and effort, and being the busy Americans that we are, it seems we don’t have much time for it.

Another thing is that perhaps the Internet puts elders and other church leaders in a position that they have never been in before: the position of (a) trying to dialog with the whole world (b) at light speed. The unrealistic scope and the speed of 21st century electronic theological dialog among church leaders can have a serious tendency to foster out of context critiques, immature and arrogant dialog, and shallow, faceless relationships and communities. In a word, no one man (save our Lord Jesus) is right about everything, and it would do well for us wanna-be “uber pastors” to stop trying to please the whole faceless blogosphere. Instead, we ought to spend more effort in remainging faithful to the communities in which God has placed us to be faithful bondservant-steward-shepherds.

Furthermore, some conversations (perhaps much of what passes for normal blog posts) ought to be private communications between the interested parties. Why multiply griefs unnecessarily by publishing them for the entire world (again, the scope issue)? Seems to me like this is pandering to immaturity.

(So, the obvious irony is that I am posting these thoughts on a blog, and I run two or three of my own. What do you elder elders think? Have blogs and the like benefited your ministry more than they have brought strife?)

I’m not trying to be a smartass, just to point out that “evangelical” is a very slippery term, and it bends in a lot of different directions, making it troublesome to determine someone else’s relationship to the term.

For instance, if you espouse the complementarian view of gender roles, isn’t it more convincing to those who disagree with you for them to see you as a husband and father who shows sacrificial love to your wife and family, and exercising “headship” through that? I think that would be more telling than an extended debate over Ephesians 5. I think that’s more productive sometimes then spending so much time debating theology, though of course that’s essential because that’s where it all begins.

That’s one reason I respect Tim Keller, because I get the feeling that he is more concerned about living out the implications of his theology, rather than in just condemning “heresy.”

Roger, I dislike the tone of disagreement much more than the disagreements themselves. I do recognize that people have differences and disagreements, and they should, and it is healthy to have those. I just don’t think people have to lead with saying “I disagree with that” or “I don’t agree with everything they say”. I sense that the term “disagree” itself is getting too emotionally charged, though not as badly as terms like “cult” or “heretic”. So, on rare occasions I do change my mind on matters (I’m better on collecting observations than forming opinions anyways), but probably not because they started by saying “I disagree.”

On Stott, it might be fair to say he believed in inerrancy, but you know full well that he had problems with that term — he preferred to call Scripture (as do I) truthful and trustworthy rather than inerrancy. It seems to me to be a capturing of Stott to push that term for what he said. Clearly, in Evangelical Essentials, he does not disagree with the inerrantists but he makes it clear that he thinks that is not the best term for a theology of Scripture. At one time on Tony’s blog, you and I had a similar conversation.

Now, to be fair to Stott, he pushed the boundaries for evangelicalism, and the right side of evangelicalism in the USA thought he was soft on eschatology, on final state, and on social justice/evangelism.

Regarding my openness to correction, I guess I’m no the one to judge that, although I have sat under some wonderful teachers in my life, and I’ve been shaped by each of them. I will say that I have a policy that I’ll meet anyone I can at anytime I can to answer questions and address concerns they have about my own theology, or about Emergent Village (the broader emergent church movement, however, I am unable to answer for). That’s exactly why I invited the presenters at the DG Conference for coffee while they were in town. So, DJ, please don’t assume that I’m unwilling or unable to receive cautionary remarks. I welcome them, for they make my thinking sharper. On my blog, I was just asking why Tim was suggesting that we/I are sliding away from orthodoxy. I’ve now had that question answered. My next question is, what, in particular, is leading Tim to that conclusion?

[sorry to be off the main discussion, but I just have to confirm Dj’s parenthetical statement. There is nothing like rushing full speed down dozens of blocks in the Bronx in order to get to Redeemer on time. I was experiencing a wonderful time of worship and Dj popped into his seat just as Tim was starting. Cutting it too close for me!

P.S. I survived art graduate school in Philly by listening to Tim’s sermons over and over, especially on the affirmation of the arts and a redemptive view of culture – Rachelle, Dj’s wife)