Emerging Orthodoxy

The title caught you, didn’t it? It was meant to, like so many others. Here is the opening premise of this post - there are two general camps within the evangelical world. To say this is over generalizing would be obvious, but here is what I see.

One camp is made up of a mixture of methodologies and a mixture of theologies. This particular group is much more flexible and mobile in their approach and in their belief systems. They are very open to new ideas about almost anything and many have lifestyles that would make many conservatives uncomfortable. Some are orthodox in their written creeds, but even those are open to dialogue and discuss basic Christian thoughts about issues that fifty years ago would have been thought untouchable.

This group is comprised of evangelicals who are searching for relevancy and change, new believers who have no evangelical history, liberals who interact with evangelicals, conservatives who have embraced wide open methodology, and a whole host of methodological and theological mongrels (not a slur). Picture a giant ship packed with passengers lined around the rails of the ship and as this ship slowly leaves the dock they are all waving. This defines this new group who are collectively leaving some of the moorings that others are still tied to. To be sure there are people within this group who are true believers and love Jesus, but also to be sure they are parting company with many others who remain on the dock. And by the way, there are many more on the ship than remain on the dock.

Now I cannot speak definitively about all the different streams and eddies that journey throughout this group, I doubt whether anyone can given that by definition that is what they are trying to avoid. There is so much variation and difference in their midst one really has a hard time crystallizing in any organized way some of the major departures. And sometimes when you describe someone as an emergent they will turn around and claim he is not emergent but emerging. OK, you get the point, it is very murky and mercurial in nature and confusing to many, even those who wish to understand. Most of the writings speak to each other and no one has stepped forward to offer some corrective guidelines.

And with that over simplification and observation from an outsider I want to give some thoughts about where the orthodox group is and should be. What does it mean to be orthodox? Again in a generalization, being orthodox means you believe the cardinal doctrines of the inerrant Scriptures which would be espoused by a list of accepted Christian preachers and writers of the past. I mean if you believe what Calvin or Wesley or Spurgeon believed you probably are considered orthodox in your theology. But there is also another part of the term orthodox that has become accepted as an ecclesiastical colloquialism, it is your methodology. If you can pass a Calvinic test on paper but you preach in a clown suit, you are not considered orthodox because your methodology is so aberrant that it affects your standing as orthodox even if you claim to believe the orthodox checklist. I know, this label thing can get a little tedious but it helps in identifying people’s Biblical identity which in these days cannot be known without a scorecard.

So let’s examine us, the orthodox group.(I can hear everyone put down the sword and pick up a smaller and less painful scalpel) Within our group we have our own set of very real problems that have in some ways fossilized our effectiveness and rendered us without much power. And now as the emergent/purpose/seeker movements are sailing away with a full cargo we have attempted to steer them back to some semblance of Biblical orthodoxy which admittedly varies even among us, and in this scene we have been exposed. I can feel the self righteous hairs begin to stand up on our sometimes stiff necks and we do not take kindly to correction.

Look around, do we not write extensively about everything and anything? Do we not share among ourselves the awful state of the compromising church? Do we not have our leaders who can articulate what we are thinking? Do we not have our own books, CD’s, websites, blogs, conferences, and all the rest? Have we not sufficiently flogged Rick Warren? Brian MacLaren? Rob Bell? Etc., etc., and etc.? Do we think we need more of the above or can we now realize it will take more than just the same, same, same? Are we witnessing great numbers returning to their moorings or are they continuing to stray? And by the way, if you’re interested, while all this continues the lost still march to a Christless eternity (hell for the orthodox) with so little impact from a wealthy and doctrinally learned church that it is a disgraceful exhibition of the dearth of God’s power so evident in the book of Acts. Go ahead and hide behind your elect theology, God is not impressed.

We are powerlessly orthodox. Listen, can you hear the low grade hum running through the electrons pulsating within the internet as orthodox believers, gifted by God, continue to write extensively excoriating the falling away of the church while drawing deceptive comfort in their doctrinal towers of ivory. We accurately point out that so many churches today have exchanged the eternal power of God for the temporal activities of man. Very true, and if every church stopped all activities except Bible study and prayer for one year they wouldn’t be able to pay the enormous note on the building and the Jehovah’s Witnesses would take it over since they don’t have to borrow and won’t.(another connected subject) Now stop for a moment. Can we not see that much of our writing and commenting and conferencing are just mirrors of what the mega church down the street does. Literary activity that seems to result in very little dividends in the spirit world.

It will never change until there is an unexpected and remarkable movement of prayer, individually and collectively. And I personally believe it should start with Sunday morning. You want orthodoxy? You want the early church design? You want to emulate the church fathers? Then we will have to come to the meeting place on Sunday mornings prepared to fall collectively on our faces before God and allow the Spirit to dictate the time He desire us to pray. There may well be mornings that the actual “service” never materializes in the face of an unusual move of the Spirit among praying people.

It is light years easier to be doctrinally orthodox than to have elongated seasons of prayer. Picture this, in the year 300 A.D. in the city of Thessalonica there are many meeting places in many homes that we will call “churches”. As people gather on Sunday morning they begin to pray and call out to God. This practice of believers coming together for prayer marks and identifies the meetings and is a carry over from the Temple which was a place of prayer. This praying part of the gathering is commonplace and very important. Now as the gatherings became larger some of the houses decided to cut down on the prayer in order to save time. Eventually some churches only had an elder lead in a one minute prayer to open the meeting while some still had a couple of minutes within the “service”. You see, as the churches grew and as newcomers came in there wasn’t enough time for much prayer and besides, the new comers didn’t like it and they wouldn’t come back. I mean how would a visitor feel as he entered the house and saw people on their faces before God praying? And what about the nice clothes, they weren’t meant to wallow around on the floor in prayer.

Well some of the churches who considered themselves orthodox decried this practice and they rightly observed that they were giving way to the culture and compromising what had been historically God’s chosen methodology. They rebuked the prayerless churches for conforming to the crowd and for being relevant to a post Roman culture. They said it didn’t matter what the world did, we should continue to spend much time on Sunday mornings in prayer for a host of reasons. These new three hour gatherings were designed to be short so everyone could go home and enjoy the day and that was an affront to God.

Now some of the more relevant churches still had a time issue, so they decided to only take the Lord’s Supper once a month instead of every Sunday morning. Well that really set the orthodox groups off, how dare they cut out the Lord’s Supper because of time. They would remain faithful to God and receive it every Sunday. In addition, the orthodox churches passed out scrolls that told everyone to avoid these new, streamlined gatherings and they named the leaders of this new movement.

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Zoom to today. When you get to your place of gathering on Sunday morning do you see a throng of believers strewn throughout the auditorium in fervent prayer? Wait, I know. After the pastor has greeted people and a few songs have been sung he calls for prayer and for the next hour everyone comes before the throne of grace in brokenness and repentance. And of course you all cry out to God to rescue Rick Warren and Brian MacLaren and all the others, and I’m sure you plead the Blood of Christ over them and yourselves. I’m sure your church does that every Sunday morning, right? And once in a while the Holy Sprit grants such grace in the midst of prayer that the planned service must give way to a great and Christ honoring season of prayer which becomes a testimony to our children that this is what we believe in and what God desires. And when we get home our children ask us why everyone was crying and how come people were kneeling and lying stretched out on the church floor and we can take that opportunity to tell them about the privilege and power of prayer. You see, children, that is how the churches prayed in the early years and God did many great things among them and we are begging Him to do it again.

Or, when you get to the church are people greeting one another politely as they scurry to the worship center. And as you enter the auditorium people are chit chatting and perhaps the instruments are practicing. Quietly most are sitting looking around or perusing the bulletin and generally letting their minds wander. Now perhaps as the service begins there is an opening prayer or a prayer in the midst of the service, how nice. You call that orthodox in light of the early church? We are hypocrites with giant motes in our own eyes and while the evangelical world departs for greener pasture we have long since departed from powerful pastures that from time to time shook continents. And after approximately two hours we again greet one another as we head for a favorite restaurant for a Sunday meal. Most of the time our services are tearless as well as prayer less (they are related). Why? Have we no tears for our captured brethren? Have we no tears for the lost? Have we no tears over our own lethargy? Oh, but we are orthodox!

Orthodox in what? Does your prayer closet resemble that of Praying Hyde? Would your children remember you as man or woman of prayer, and if so, doesn’t it grieve you that there are more announcements than prayer? Ladies and Gentlemen of the Orthodox church, we have left our own spiritual roots. Our forefathers in Thessalonica would consider our meetings a convenient gathering to soothe our consciences and designed to make us think or bless us or even learn something but certainly not designed to offer up a collective voice of elongated intercession into the very throne room we doctrinally believe we have access into. So if we are going to loudly point out the departure of our brothers and sisters today, let’s not forget to loudly confess to anyone who will listen that we have departed ourselves. Don’t you just love this? Does it scratch your orthodox back?

I know you’re thinking “When is he going to get on the emergents?”. I just did but maybe you weren’t listening. Don’t you see it? We are the emergents who emerged from a first millennium culture and made our churches relevant to the culture of this new millennium. We have jettisoned the prayer and the Lord’s Supper and the reading of God’s Word and the eating together in favor of a new culture that must get on with their own business so we will lend God two or three hours which doesn’t include much time for those things. So we’re orthodox? In our own minds.

When a segment of God’s church repents and falls on their faces before our Lord in many sacrificial times of prayer and fasting, then and only then, may God grant us the power that will mirror the great swelling words that so easily drip off our pens and mouths. Until then, the great crowds will continue to walk away and we will pat ourselves on our backs, glad that we are not like other men...

You see, we’re orthodox.