What's So Dangerous About the Emerging Church?

Selected Scriptures

Hi, I'm Phil Johnson and I'm here in the studio with John MacArthur.    And we've set aside the next hour or so to discuss a movement known as the Emerging Church.  Now, John, that's going to be a familiar topic for a lot of our listeners, I know, because we get lots of questions about it.  It's been about two years since Christianity Today featured a cover article about the Emerging Church Movement, they called it, I think, The Emergent Mystic.  And for many evangelicals, I think that was November of about 2004 and for many evangelicals that was their introduction to this movement and this phenomenon known as the Emerging Church.  And ever since that article was published, we have been getting a steady stream, an increasing stream of questions from listeners about this movement.  It's become the number one thing we are asked for.

Now here's a sample of what we get, and I'll read this to you and then let you respond.  This came to us by e-mail.  "Dear Pastor John: I would like to know if you have any opinions regarding the so-called Emerging Church Movement.  This movement seems to espouse a doctrine of Christian post-modernism.  As this would seem to be a major contradiction to biblical truth, I'm concerned as to the effect of this philosophy on the church as a whole.  Additionally, it seems many young people today are embracing this movement, including my own son.  I'd like to know what you think and if you can suggest some resources for us that might help shed some light on the subject."

I know you've been watching this movement, John.  In fact, last year you participated in a faculty lecture series at the Master's Seminary, evaluating the movement for students there and then some of the seminars at the Shepherds Conference for the past two years have dealt with the movement and its ramifications for church leaders.  Today I want to give you an opportunity to answer some of the questions about the Emerging Church Movement that have come to us from our radio listeners because we want you to talk about this movement in laymen's terms for the average Grace To You hearer. And so we're going to give you an opportunity to say in the simplest possible terms what is wrong with the movement, what if anything is right with it, and what you think about the goals and the strategies of those who are at the forefront of this movement.  And, as always, we want you to shine the light of Scripture on this movement and let's see how it fairs.  So I've collected some of the questions our listeners have sent us and I've even prepared a few questions of my own.  And if you're ready, we'll start with the first question I'm sure is on the mind of many of our listeners...what is the Emerging Church Movement and how can I recognize it when I see it?

JOHN:   Well, I'd like to give a simple answer to that, I'll do my best to.   The Emerging Church Movement is an amorphous sort of loose-knit association of churches that have decided that there is value, there is even virtue in uncertainty about Scripture.  The bottom line in the movement is they believe that we aren't even suppose to understand precisely what the Bible means.  And to me, that's the big issue. It is an attack on the clarity of Scripture and they elevate themselves as if this is some noble reality.  They have finally risen to say we're honest enough to say, "We don't know what the Bible really means.  We can't be certain.  We are...we're the truly spiritual ones."  It has overtones of spiritual pride, a false kind of spiritual pride which they call humility.  They say, "We're too humble to say that we know what the Bible means."

The bottom line, I think, in the movement is that it is a denial of the clarity of Scripture.  It is a denial that we can know what the Bible really says. And as I said, it's amorphous because there's a mish-mash of approaches to this and a mish-mash of styles and things like that. But they have embraced this mystery as if it's true spirituality.  And so, it becomes celebration of mystery, a celebration of ignorance, a celebration that we can't really know.  I think it's just another form of liberalism.  I think it's just another form of denying the clarity of Scripture.  And I think there's a motive behind it.

PHIL:   It's interesting you compare it to liberalism because the typical leader in the Emerging Church Movement would say what they stand for is post-modernism. And theological liberalism was...drew out of modernism.  These guys say they're reacting to modernism.  How would you respond to that?

JOHN: Well it's just another philosophy.  Post-modernism is another bad philosophy.  Modernism was a bad philosophy.  Post-modernism is another bad philosophy.  But in both cases, they assault the Scripture.  Modernism made reason, human reason, the king.  Reason was supreme in modernism.  Thomas Payne, The Age of Reason, The Enlightenment, all of those things, the Renaissance.  Out of that came the worship of the human mind and the mind trumps God.  Now mystery trumps the Bible.  The human mind trumps the Bible in modernism, mystery trumps the Bible in post-modernism.  It is at the foundation an unwillingness to accept the clear teaching of Scripture. Scripture is clear, "A wayfaring man though he be a fool need not err."  God holds us responsible for a right understanding of Scripture. We are liable before God for what we do with a true and right understanding of Scripture.  These people, like the liberals, deny the clear teaching of Scripture. And I'm convinced that the reason they deny it is not because it can't be understood, not because it's unclear, but because they don't like what it clearly says.  And that takes you back to John 3, "Men love darkness rather than light."  The light is there, they hate the light, they run from the light.  The issue is not that Scripture is not clear, it is crystal clear.

One of the big issues is homosexuality in the Emerging Church. They don't want to take a position on homosexuality. The Bible is not vague or obscure or oblique about homosexuality.  It couldn't be more clear.  A homosexual will not inherit the Kingdom of God...that's pretty clear.  Homosexuality in Romans chapter 1 is a perversion that is manifestly when it happens in a culture, begins to dominate a culture, an evidence of divine wrath and divine judgment.  So the Bible is clear. They don't want that clarity. They want to run from the light. Scripture is light, it is not darkness, but they like the darkness because their deeds are evil.

So I think the motive behind this whole Emerging Church thing, whether it's a conscious or unconscious motive, is discomfort over what the Bible really says, whether it's about the gospel or whether it's about sin, virtue...they don't like it and so the out is...Well, it's not clear.  This is just another way to set the Bible aside.

PHIL: That all mirrors exactly what's happening in secular culture, doesn't it?

JOHN: Sure...sure.

PHIL: I mean, if you think about what you've just described, the ambiguity towards every clear statement of truth, that's pretty much what's going on even in the secular world, it's the reason Europe and the secular media and all seem to think everything is morally ambiguous, even the...we probably live in a time where the line between good and evil is as clear as it could be.

JOHN: Yeah, and I think this is...this is nothing new either.  Every culture apart from the gospel and apart from salvation is anti-God.  I don't care whether you're Hottentot, walking around with no clothes on in Africa, or whether you're a tribal person in Indonesia, or whether you lived in the fifteenth century, or whether you are in the Roman culture of the first century, all human society thinking culture is ungodly and anti-biblical. 

What is so interesting about this movement is the Emerging Church sanctifies the culture. The Emerging church sanctifies the post-modern culture as if it is legitimate and says if we're going to reach these people, we've got to become like these people.  That's never been the biblical way...never.  The Bible does not change.  It's not a chameleon, it doesn't shift and change and adapt to culture.  It confronts culture.  It confronts an aboriginal culture.  It confronts an ancient culture.  It confronts a modern culture.  It confronts every trend with fixed unchanging truth in every situation.  And the Emerging Church not only is unwilling to believe the clear statement of Scripture, but it's unwilling to take the clear statement of Scripture and confront the culture.  It wants to let the culture define what Christianity should be.

PHIL: It seems like as long as I can remember and even in my study of church history, this goes back for centuries, generations, there's always been an element in the church that thinks what we desperately need to do in order to reach the world is adapt our thinking and our language and everything to whatever is happening in the culture at the moment. This is just another expression of that, right?

JOHN: Yeah, why would we fail to understand that there are two opposite dominating world views?  One is Satan and the other is God.  Okay, we have a world view that is...that belongs to Satan and his children and the darkness.  And we have a world view that belongs to God and His children and the light.  And they are in absolute opposition to each other and there is no possible accommodation. That's..that's foundational in the Bible. That's as foundational as you can get.  And the idea that somehow Christianity has to be reinvented to accommodate itself to any pattern of culture thinking, first of all, is blatantly wrong at its foundational level, and also it's, secondly, it's hopeless in its ability to actually do that because the culture moves so fast.  What culture are they talking about?  They're talking about a post-modern culture.  Who does that involve? That involves, as you said in the beginning, young people primarily, so you can just axe everybody that's older than generation X, they don't connect with that at all. So now the Kingdom of God is only going to be exposed in this kind of fashion to this niche of people who are twenty and under. And by the way, the next five years of people coming along may have a whole different culture. So now we have planned obsolescence.  So now we have marginalization.

I remember when...when the Crystal Cathedral, Robert Schuller, had figured out, you know, the real strategy, we're going to give them what they want. So he surveyed everybody and gave them what they want.  Now we look at that thing and it's like an anachronism, it's like a...it's like a...it's like a dinosaur, no young person.  I mean, you look at television, look at Robert Schuller, you see any young people in there?

PHIL: Right.

JOHN: You couldn't get...you couldn't get an eighteen-year-old to buy into that approach at all.  It's...you can take the Willow Creek model, they had their little niche, they tried to move one generation down and they abandoned completely by their own admission, they abandoned the whole program after a number of years of trying it because they're so highly defined in their niche. So this is planned obsolescence.

I remember when...a metaphor for this, I was in Tulsa and I was looking at the Oral Roberts campus.  They tried to make it as modern as possible.

PHIL: Right.

JOHN: and now it looks like a parking lot for old Star Wars space ships.  It's so bizarre.  And in an effort to be cutting edge and modern, they became completely obsolete.

PHIL: Out of date.

JOHN: Out of date. And that's what's going to happen to this movement.  It's going to have its little tiny moment to try to corrupt the church and the next generation is going to have a completely different spin on what they want and this is going to be an obsolete kind of thing.

The thing that is not obsolete is the Word of God. The thing that's always relevant, always penetrating is the truth of God.

PHIL: You know, in fact as I surveyed just the past twenty years or so, there seem to be waves of this. The previous wave was the Willow Creek model, seeker-sensitivity, and all of that.  In some ways, your critique of the Emerging Church Movement sounds very much like your critique of Seeker-sensitivity, Willow Creek and all that.  How are these two movements similar, and how are they different?

JOHN: Well, it's the same philosophy.  Give people what they want. And so, as people's wants change as the culture defines things, you change with it.  I don't think the, for example, I don't think the Willow Creek people at the very beginning would say homosexuality is okay, because when they sort of launched their little niche, the big issue wasn't homosexuality, it was feminism.  So they did buy into that.

PHIL: Okay.

JOHN:   They bought in to feminism and he has his wife, they'll have his wife preach and he bought into Gilbert Belzekian's(??) Whole schstik about feminism, an he was his guru.  Feminism was the hot deal and they were going to be relevant. And their relevancy meant we embrace feminism.  The next wave is homosexuality.  So the new deal is, you have people like Brian McClaren and all these other guys, Crissai(??)saying, "Sure we have homosexuals in our church, but we also have people who like chocolate and people who are overweight."  They don't see a difference between that.  So whatever the...whatever the current sin that needs to be tolerated in the culture is, they'll buy into. So it's just the next wave of cultural accommodation redefining Christianity in terms that are acceptable to whatever the trendy sin is and whatever the trendy way of thinking is. But it's really the same thing.  It's moving away from the Word of God to adapt to the society.  In the middle, you've got Rick...Rick Warren who...who is a step from Willow Creek.  His schstik is...is into success and getting people where they need to be in life, and feeling good and having a purpose and a goal.  It's very, very man-centered.  And he's sort of in the middle between those two things.  But the trends are always about...let's find out what people want, let's find out what their hot buttons are.  And they're always week on theology and they always set the Bible aside.  Either they...they don't necessarily blatantly deny it, the Willow Creek people set it aside in favor of things that they think appeal to people, the Saddleback model does the same thing and so does the post-modern Emerging Church.  The Bible's just not in the middle of it.

Now they throw Bible verses around like mad. They're all over the place. There's an article in the...recently I read about Rob Bell and it says that all of his teaching is sprinkled with Bible verses.  Well, that's a ploy.  What does it mean if you throw Bible verses around if you confess that, we can't know what they mean?  What are you doing here?  There's a certain deception, I think, in that.

PHIL: Humph...yeah, now I want to sort of wrap up some of these ideas about post-modernism so people can understand what we're talking about when you mention post-modernism.  You more or less defined it as the embracing of mystery, or uncertainty.  Can you...do you want to expand a bit on what post-modernism is?

JOHN: Yeah, look, let's just take modernism as a starting point and we can simplify the view of the world.  You have modernism, before that you have pre-modernism, after that you have post-modernism.  Modernism says this, there is truth.  Make it simple.  There is truth and we can find it by human reason...not revelation from God, not the Bible, but human reason. We can find the truth.  Before that, pre-modernism which was basically the way of the world back to the beginning, right?  I mean, that was the dominant philosophy from the beginning until the enlightenment.  And pre-modernism said there is truth and it comes from God, it has a supernatural source. And whether you were a Christian, or whether you worshiped the gods of Egypt, or whether you worshiped the pantheon of Athens, or whatever gods you had, you believed in the gods, you believed that there were supernatural powers that created and defined life and truth and so that was pre-modernism. There is truth and it has supernatural source.

Modernism comes along and says there is truth, we can find it with human reason. Forget God, forget the supernatural. So you have a few centuries...what?...a few thousand...a few hundred years, really...                                                                                            

PHIL: Of modernism.

JOHN: You have thousands of years of pre-modernism.  You have a few hundred years, 250 years of modernism.

PHIL: About, yeah.

JOHN: Two-hundred and fifty years of modernism and at the end of that, because man is trying to find the truth and says it is in human reason and it's not from God, it's not in revelation, he thinks that science is the key.  He's going to apply his mind systematically, scientifically and come up with the truth. And sad to say, the world gets worse, the world gets worse than it's ever been.  It's bad before modernism, it's worse during modernism.  You have the totalitarian world, you have the people who think they now know the truth and they're going to be...they're going to be the dictators of the world so you have, as you've pointed out, fascism, Nazism, Communism, and the massacre of millions and millions and millions of people in the name of human reason, right?