Is the "emerging church" a threat to both Catholicism and Protestants?

[total_Catholic]

You know, the Joel Osteen, Newspring, “come as you are”, rock anthem, coffee shop megachurches where Jesus is our buddy? People are flocking to them. Ya know, the preacher wears a muscle shirt and jeans? What think ye?

 

[Allegra]

No.

 

[ltwin]

You know, the Joel Osteen, Newspring, “come as you are”, rock anthem, coffee shop megachurches where Jesus is our buddy? People are flocking to them. Ya know, the preacher wears a muscle shirt and jeans? What think ye?

Joel Osteen isn’t “emerging church.” Osteen is part of the prosperity gospel movement. They don’t really swim in the same waters, so to speak.

The Emerging Church Movement is basically a movement within Evangelicalism that rejects modernism and embraces postmodernism. There is a “conservative” brand of Emerging Church, which is just postmodern Evangelicalism. This might be said to be represented by Mark Driscoll. Mark Driscoll and others in the conservative streams of the Emerging Church adhere to traditional evangelical theology but adopt a postmodern attitude.

Then there is a liberal brand of Emerging Church which is often termed “Emergent” and associated with the “Emergent Village” website. Brian McLaren is the main guru of the Emergent movement. Brian McLaren started out as a typical evangelical but has since evolved in an increasingly liberal direction. The Emergent stream is basically liberal mainline Protestantism without the history.

 

[SteveVH]

Joel Osteen isn’t “emerging church.” Osteen is part of the prosperity gospel movement. They don’t really swim in the same waters, so to speak.

The Emerging Church Movement is basically a movement within Evangelicalism that rejects modernism and embraces postmodernism. There is a “conservative” brand of Emerging Church, which is just postmodern Evangelicalism. This might be said to be represented by Mark Driscoll. Mark Driscoll and others in the conservative streams of the Emerging Church adhere to traditional evangelical theology but adopt a postmodern attitude.

Then there is a liberal brand of Emerging Church which is often termed “Emergent” and associated with the “Emergent Village” website. Brian McLaren is the main guru of the Emergent movement. Brian McLaren started out as a typical evangelical but has since evolved in an increasingly liberal direction. The Emergent stream is basically liberal mainline Protestantism without the history.

From what is this “church” emerging?

 

[robwar]

You know, the Joel Osteen, Newspring, “come as you are”, rock anthem, coffee shop megachurches where Jesus is our buddy? People are flocking to them. Ya know, the preacher wears a muscle shirt and jeans? What think ye?

all of the above are Protestant movements. I am not sure why you are thinking these different movements are a threat to both Catholic and Protestantism. I would say mega churches are not a threat to Catholic but more of a threat to smaller Protestant Churches of which members are drawn away from. Mega Church is more of a description of very large Churches that have a number of characteristics and usually build up around the head pastor and his personality. They are found in a number of Protestant groups.

 

[benotagoat]

all of the above are Protestant movements. I am not sure why you are thinking these different movements are a threat to both Catholic and Protestantism. I would say mega churches are not a threat to Catholic but more of a threat to smaller Protestant Churches of which members are drawn away from. Mega Church is more of a description of very large Churches that have a number of characteristics and usually build up around the head pastor and his personality. They are found in a number of Protestant groups.

Not all people who are not in the RCC are Protestant which assumes a collection of beliefs held in common .One of my great objections and they are many to the RCC is their assumption that to no taccept it in it’s entirety, is to make one protestant .

Someone here with an RCIA tag says of the Church it was a ‘seed’ planted .Do you know of any plant that does not have branches ,does not plant other 'seeds '?

When the original ‘root’ starts to wither a new one comes up .,but in stamping this out she has brought about her own demise,by assuming people left because they were ‘sinners’ .
Perhaps it was the 'reverse '.!!!

 

[JRKH]

You know, the Joel Osteen, Newspring, “come as you are”, rock anthem, coffee shop megachurches where Jesus is our buddy? People are flocking to them. Ya know, the preacher wears a muscle shirt and jeans? What think ye?

No - -

Not even the gates of hell will prevail. So I think we are safe from Mr Olsteen…

Besides he is just the latest in a long line of such “mega-preachers”…They come and they go…and Holy Mother Church is still here.

Peace
James

 

[JRKH]

Joel Osteen isn’t “emerging church.” Osteen is part of the prosperity gospel movement. They don’t really swim in the same waters, so to speak.

The Emerging Church Movement is basically a movement within Evangelicalism that rejects modernism and embraces postmodernism. There is a “conservative” brand of Emerging Church, which is just postmodern Evangelicalism. This might be said to be represented by Mark Driscoll. Mark Driscoll and others in the conservative streams of the Emerging Church adhere to traditional evangelical theology but adopt a postmodern attitude.

Then there is a liberal brand of Emerging Church which is often termed “Emergent” and associated with the “Emergent Village” website. Brian McLaren is the main guru of the Emergent movement. Brian McLaren started out as a typical evangelical but has since evolved in an increasingly liberal direction. The Emergent stream is basically liberal mainline Protestantism without the history.

Thanks Itwin for that explnation

From what is this “church” emerging?

Good Question?

Peace
James

 

[grannymh]

Yes.

I tried starting a thread from the Catholic position and it ended in shambles.
It would not be a good idea to reply to it at this point.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=918073

 

[Cat]

I’m not a fan of Mr. Osteen. One of his sermons advised “Christians” to avoid those people who “drag us down,” e.g., the poor, the sick, the elderly, the mentally-ill, the unemployed, the addicted, etc. In other words, all the people that Jesus associates with!

However…celebrity preachers like Mr. Osteen can be and ARE a “stepping stone” for many, especially the “rich and famous”, to a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ.

These rich and famous people are unlikely (and often unable because of security issues) to walk into a neighborhood church. But they will meet the celebrity preachers in various venues and the Holy Spirit can (and does) use those meetings to spark interest in the rich/famous person, and to stir their heart up and help them get interested in doing more research and reading about Jesus.

This can lead to repentance and a true salvation with Jesus, and even to involvement with a local church! (There are genuine churches that attract and retain celebs; e.g. St. Malachy’s in NYC.)

And you don’t have to be a celebrity to be brought to God by celeb preachers. People sitting in hotel rooms or at their home flipping through the channels can hear a message by Mr. Osteen and be touched and convicted that they need to attend to their souls and get things right between them and God.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t need Catholics to accomplish His Holy Work. He can work through the strangest of people and circumstances to lead people to Jesus.

 

[Cat]

Sadly, many celebrity preachers end up falling into sin, often public sin.

They have a lot of temptations that regular folks like us don’t face; .e.g.

1. the temptation to materialism and excess, extortion and theft
2. the exposure to sex and perversion and the temptation to “yield” to these
3. the tragedy of losing their children because they are “absent” parents and the child suffers and eventually falls to drugs and other vices or even suicide…

Let’s pray this doesn’t happen with Joel Osteen. It’s not good for anyone, but those who are in the public gaze cause a lot of damage when they are exposed in sinful activity. They fall really hard.

 

[Kliska]

You know, the Joel Osteen, Newspring, “come as you are”, rock anthem, coffee shop megachurches where Jesus is our buddy? People are flocking to them. Ya know, the preacher wears a muscle shirt and jeans? What think ye?

Yes.

Although Itwin’s descriptions and labels were a bit more on the nose. Osteen’s camp is more of a motivational speaker’s gig, true emerging churches believe they are emerging from the stuffy confines of hidebound truth.

 

[benotagoat]

Sadly, many celebrity preachers end up falling into sin, often public sin.

They have a lot of temptations that regular folks like us don’t face; .e.g.

1. the temptation to materialism and excess, extortion and theft
2. the exposure to sex and perversion and the temptation to “yield” to these
3. the tragedy of losing their children because they are “absent” parents and the child suffers and eventually falls to drugs and other vices or even suicide…

Let’s pray this doesn’t happen with Joel Osteen. It’s not good for anyone, but those who are in the public gaze cause a lot of damage when they are exposed in sinful activity. They fall really hard.

Not saying Olsteen as I am not in America,but maybe Jesus does’nt want ordinary folks,maybe He prefers those who take risks and ‘stumble’, than those rules who think they can achieve the ‘kingdom’ by obeying rules, set by others .

Did He not say that unless a ‘man’(or woman) be born again,he will not enter the kingdom .

That sounds like a ‘risk’ to me .

 

[ltwin]

From what is this “church” emerging?

You can read the article “The Emerging Church Explained” from the Christian Broadcasting Network for more detail:

As its name suggests, the emerging church largely consists of Christians involved (or previously involved) in mainstream evangelical churches that have “emerged” from preexisting ideologies and church structures. . . .

But the emerging church, as it is known today, first began to surface once again on the mainstream radar after several memoir-style books started garnering attention in the late ‘90s.

In A New Kind of Christian, a book that many consider one of the primary writings in the current movement, Brian McLaren constructs a fictional conversation between a traditional, conservative pastor and a more liberal college professor which leads to a conclusion about what Jesus’ life would look like in a postmodern context—if Jesus were on earth today, would He really be “doing church” like we are?

The book, and McLaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus, led to controversy and conversation between traditional leaders and Christians who were interested in McLaren’s picture of a postmodern faith. In The Secret Message of Jesus, another hallmark work of the emerging church, McLaren says that the modern trend of focusing heavily on evangelism and going to heaven after we die may be missing much of what Christ focused on. . . .

McLaren suggested that Christians should be more focused the prayer of “thy Kingdom come”—bringing God’s Kingdom to earth through caring for the poor, loving our neighbors and encouraging fellow Christians to grow deeper in their faith, a line of thinking associated with thinkers like Dallas Willard, Tony Campolo and other emerging leaders.

The premise of McLaren’s teachings caused a rift in some conservative churches who questioned his theology. But along with the controversy, a conversation was beginning to develop.

“Conversation” is one of the emerging church’s most well-known buzzwords. Like-minded leaders began to engage other churches and leaders in topics like those McLaren had been writing about. Pastors like Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones and Rob Bell started putting the ideas—the importance of community, “missonal” living (another emerging buzzword that describes the act of using people’s cultural understanding to reach them with the gospel) and open discussion—into practice.

But instead of uniting the traditional conservative leaders and the widening circle of emerging leaders, the groups became divided when radical ideas mixed openly with fresh perspectives about faith. Mark Driscoll, a high-profile pastor initially associated with the movement, distanced himself from the emerging church (and later became a vocal critic of it), and critics began addressing their own concerns about maintaining such an open discussion about theology.

As new voices and new ideas continued to enter the dialogue, formal groups started to organize. Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt and other rising leaders formed the influential Emergent Village.

The group (which maintains a blog, publishes books and organizes conferences), says on their official site, “We began meeting because many of us were disillusioned and disenfranchised by the conventional ecclesial institutions of the late 20th century.” . . . .

Unofficial members and emerging churches began fostering outlets to put the ideas into action, encouraging house church meetings, creating an emphasis on humanitarian causes and teaching “narrative theology.” (The theological idea encourages believers to look at the story God has told through His Word and examine how God is using their personal life to construct a new story that will further His Kingdom.)

Many of the churches actually began encouraging dialogue and conversations about faith within the church and started to re-think what the role of a pastor looked like in some Sunday morning settings.

“I really got into the heavy level of participation because I wanted to devalue the role of the pastor a bit,” influential pastor of Solomon’s Porch Doug Pagitt said in an interview with ChristianBook.com. “I was trying to change that paradigm and figure out if I can personally and authentically be a pastor without having to dominate a group of people.” Churches like his started holding services that featured Q&As, discussion groups and forums for artists to express spiritual ideas through art and music.

And even though buzzwords like “missional”, “holistic”, “narrative” and “conversation” are easy to identify, one thing that isn’t clearly pegged down (at least by Emergent Village) is a formal statement of beliefs.

Since many of the authors and pastors that are associated with emerging movements have continued to gain notoriety, criticisms about the emerging church have escalated. And without a statement of beliefs or official doctrinal statement, Emergent Village has done little to quiet its critics. Because the emerging church has no organizational structure and is an incredibly loose collection of Christians, the conversations that are taking place in churches and coffee shops around the country have begun to raise even more eyebrows of concerned pastors, who question the theological safety of such an open discussion, the alignment some were starting to show with traditionally liberal political groups and the abandonment some churches began to show to formal leadership structures. . . . .

 

[ahsokanerd]

Not exactly. The reality is that “churches” that preach the prosperity gospel or exist to essentially entertain their members will attract different kinds of people than the people Catholicism and traditional Protestantism attracts.

For those who are serious about their faith (not only on the emotional feel-good level), there is little risk of them changing their beliefs. Their children? Perhaps, but I am going to assume that if the parents “[t]rain up a child in the way he should go”, it won’t be an issue.

 

[Cat]

Not saying Olsteen as I am not in America,but maybe Jesus does’nt want ordinary folks,maybe He prefers those who take risks and ‘stumble’, than those rules who think they can achieve the ‘kingdom’ by obeying rules, set by others .

Did He not say that unless a ‘man’(or woman) be born again,he will not enter the kingdom .

That sounds like a ‘risk’ to me .

When I said “ordinary folks”, I was talking about people like me who are not rich and famous (celebrities).

In other words, I was referring to their financial and social status, not their spiritual status. Ordinary folks like me have no financial or social status worth writing about in magazines or seeing on TV or movies.

 

[Thorolfr]

Joel Osteen isn’t “emerging church.” Osteen is part of the prosperity gospel movement. They don’t really swim in the same waters, so to speak.

The Emerging Church Movement is basically a movement within Evangelicalism that rejects modernism and embraces postmodernism. There is a “conservative” brand of Emerging Church, which is just postmodern Evangelicalism. This might be said to be represented by Mark Driscoll. Mark Driscoll and others in the conservative streams of the Emerging Church adhere to traditional evangelical theology but adopt a postmodern attitude.

Then there is a liberal brand of Emerging Church which is often termed “Emergent” and associated with the “Emergent Village” website. Brian McLaren is the main guru of the Emergent movement. Brian McLaren started out as a typical evangelical but has since evolved in an increasingly liberal direction. The Emergent stream is basically liberal mainline Protestantism without the history.

Thanks for the explanation. I recently read Brian McLaren’s book Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World and heard a few months ago that he was speaking at a local Episcopal Church. But I didn’t know that he was part of the “Emergent” movement.

 

[Abu]

benotagoat #7
One of my great objections and they are many to the RCC is their assumption that to no taccept it in it’s entirety, is to make one protestant .

Feeling that the “cafeteria Catholic” becomes Protestant is hardly correct, but a real Catholic assents to all dogma and doctrine and to the discipline of the Catholic Church and we all have a duty to help to encourage and promote that.

#14
maybe Jesus does’nt want ordinary folks,maybe He prefers those who take risks and ‘stumble’, than those rules who think they can achieve the ‘kingdom’ by obeying rules, set by others .

As all of the teaching was set by Jesus and He established St Peter clearly as His Supreme Vicar, the Kingdom of Heaven is most easily entered by those who obey Him and the reality of the Church which He established which is the foundation for the risks they take in spreading His Word.

St. Paul writes to Titus: “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: knowing that he, that is such a one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment” (Titus 3:10-11). This early piece of legislation reproduces the still earlier teaching of Christ: “And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican” (Matthew 18:17); it also inspires all subsequent anti-heretical legislation. The sentence on the obstinate heretic is invariably excommunication. He is separated from the company of the faithful, delivered up “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 5:5).

 

[Mystophilus]

No.

Agreed.

 

[Mystophilus]

Not all people who are not in the RCC are Protestant which assumes a collection of beliefs held in common .

This is not quite true.

Protestants and Protestant churches derive from those faith groups which split from Catholicism in the sixteenth century. While we do not necessarily share a great deal in terms of metaphysical propositions (e.g., the exact process, nature, and function of the Eucharist/communion), we *do *share a common ideological heritage in having protested against the Catholic Church and thus basing our theology upon something beyond Catholic Tradition: it is less about what we believe than it is about how we decide what to believe. Even under that common ideological heritage and that common theology methodology, Protestant beliefs have differed from one another quite considerably ever since the beginning, and they now include a very wide variety.

By a similar token, there are variations of belief and practice within Catholicism, and within Orthodoxy, the other of the three major categories, but the difference in theological method has led to a huge proliferation of diversity within Protestantism, which is thus another identifying feature of the category. Many modern Protestants are not really protesting anything, and cannot see the reason for the label, but it remains (fairly) useful as a categorical description and also as a recognition of how our theology is derived.