“Emergent” means people that engage the world, not people who sell out to it.
Currently playing: Tommy Bailey’s podcast. It’s not very good.
I was watching some video recently on podcasts and decided to check the Web to see if any were worth listening to. This guy’s abstract suggested that he would be worth my time. He’s really not.
Apparently he’s recently discovered Richard Foster. I love Foster’s stuff, but I’m not a big fan of people who gush about other people’s books. The way some people get into a lather about the latest devotional they’ve read, you’d think the Second Coming came early. Anyway, this dude’s on a mission to spread the gospel of Richard Foster… and since he likes Moby and Relevant magazine, he thinks he’s emergent.
If you don’t know what “emergent” or “the emerging church” is, it’s one of the latest Christian fads. It’s meant to be a discussion about how the church can speak to the wider culture. Christianity is largely a subculture in America; people outside the subculture have no clue about what’s going on in it. Many, fr’instance, have no clue who Rick Warren is, have never heard a Third Day song, and think Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell speak for all Evangelicals because they don’t know of any others. This is because Christians have so successfully isolated our endeavors that we go beneath the radar… and then we blame the regular media for not knowing about it because of its “anti-Christian bias.” Thus, we are to emerge from the subculture and dialogue with the wider culture. We’re to deal with it, work with it, fuse our stuff together with it, and try to bring about positive change in it. It can be argued that popular culture is the cesspool it is because the Christians abandoned it; this must be undone.
But a lot of Christians are using the “emergent” fad as an excuse to absorb all they can of the ickier aspects of the wider culture. Fr’instance, in the church we have people who are too immature to watch certain TV shows or movies, or listen to certain bands, without having these things greatly affect them in negative ways. Yet they’re watching these shows or listening to this music with the excuse, “But I have to know what’s going on in our culture if I’m going to relevantly speak to it!”
That would be a good argument… if they actually spoke to our culture about Jesus. But it’s more likely they’ll speak to our culture only about South Park. If Jesus ever comes up, it’ll only be because he made a funny comment on his talk show, and that’s the extent of the Jesus discussion. For many a Christian, this “emergent” discussion is an excuse to immerse their minds in the very things that they should be avoiding (or at least analyzing instead of mindlessly absorbing).
Emergent Christians are not people who decide they’re going to watch R-rated movies because they’re not fuddy-duddies like their parents. Emergent Christians are not people who listen to hardcore Christian rock on their iPods and sport Christian tattoos. Emergent Christians are people who actually go out into the cold, cruel world and live as Christians in a largely uninterested non-Christian world. This is why I want to teach in the public schools; a lot of those kids aren’t going to encounter any Christians they can look up to (especially if those Christians are high schoolers) and dangit, someone competent has gotta go into that mission field. And in order to speak with them, I have to know what they’re watching and who they’re listening to. I don’t have to watch or listen to it; I just have to know enough about it to be able to talk intelligently about it.
Kent’s Recommended Read:
Richard Foster:
The Challenge of the Disciplined Life
Rant aside, I’ll say a few nice things about Foster. Like every good Christian writer, he simply takes what Christianity has preached throughout the centuries, puts it in contemporary language, and leaves it up to his readers to do with it what they will. He doesn’t ram it down your throat; he doesn’t threaten you with disasters or damnation if you don’t follow his teachings; he doesn’t even ask you to be purpose-driven. He presents, and leaves any subsequent convictions to the Holy Spirit’s more-than-capable hands, as he should. God bless him.
My classroom observation is done. It didn’t go as well as I had hoped… but I tend to be harder on myself than my observers are.
Now I have some papers to write. (And I’d better do it in Santa Cruz. It’s been ridiculously hot in Scotts Valley lately. I’m looking forward to the rain on Friday.)