So there I was surfing the net and I stumbled upon a site entitled the “discernment resource” (www.discernemntresource.com). How thoughtful, another watchdog site against any Christian idea that is somewhat progressive. I read about the concerns of Rick Warren and Billy Hybels and of course the Emergent Church. So I clicked on the first article under the emergent church and could barely get out of the first sentence. Here it is: Unfortunately, todays church is caught in a paradigm shift. That is, the church is moving from a modern church, where teaching fundamental Bible doctrine is the norm, to a post-modern, or transformational church in which loud, watered down, seeker-sensitive services are the order of the day.
This is what my interpreted as I read, “Unfortunately, the church is changing, because the world is changing and because both of these are made up of people, this unfortunately means that people are changing. The church is moving from what it Jesus had meant (you know how we did church from 1950-1989 or whatever arbitrary date that is defined as the “good old days”), where milk flowed like honey and the land was plentiful, where we had our doctrine, hermeneutics and translations right. Now we’re headed to …
Pardon the sarcasm, I didn’t really mean it. Well … anyway, although I could go on and on about the mistakes, incorrect assumptions and flawed thinking (and please don’t blame it on the Bible), I would like to just talk about that first line, “Unfortunately the world is changing …” It’s not unfortunate.
The world is changing because people are changing. That writer is changing. The world around him is changing. This is the reality of life. We cannot stop time, we cannot dwell too much in the past, we ought not to curse the future, but be faithful stewards of it. It is my belief that the emerging church conversation is part of this faithful stewardship.
My friends, fortunately, the world is changing.
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