Clones/Chameleons **Updated**

I ran into a guy I used to go to church with the other day. We hadn't seen each other in over four years, yet he immediatelyl knew me and I immediately knew him. Even more interesting, I immediately knew WHAT he was. But just to comfirm my suspicions, I asked him: "Where are you going to church now?" I wasn't surprised by his response. "LifeChurch!"

LifeChurch is one of those "emergent" type churches that appeals to people that have become disinchanted with "traditional church." They tend to draw younger, 20 to 30 somethings that prefer a more casual worship in styles and content. Music more closely resembles a secular, contemporary style rather than the traditional hymns; preaching is replaced with "talks" or "dialog" and the idea of absolute truth is looked down upon. For a detail critique of the "emerging church," check out The Truth War by John MacArthur, available here.

So what tipped me off? Well, this guy is my age (45-50). When I last saw him he had salt-and-pepper hair, wire-rim glasses and a paunch around the middle. When I saw him today, he had lost some weight, colored his hair with blonde highlights, and was sporting some of those small, rectangular shaped plastic frames. He was also wearing a bland colored shirt opened to show off a small leather necklace with a silver cross. He looked like this guy!

The man in the picture (link in previous paragraph) is Rob Bell. He is the senior pastor of Mars Hill, a church he and his wife founded that is one of, if not THE, models held up as the emergent church success story. So what does he have to do with me meeting my "friend?"

Well, inevitably, when discussing the emergent church with its supporters, at some time the conversation will turn to attire--emergents don't like anything that looks traditional, especially suits and ties. They will usually say something like: "All you talk about is the way we dress! What makes wearing a suit and tie better than a t-shirt and jeans?! Our church isn't about the way we dress!" But--and this brings me back around to my "friend"--if that is the case, why is it that THEY ALL look and dress alike?!

Emergents pride themselves in what they believe are unique, innovative, relevant and new methods of sharing the Gospel/teaching the Bible/reaching the lost. If they have such "new" ideas, how come everyone in their church fellowship¹ is a "clothing clone" of the each other?!

** UPDATE ** : You may be "emergent" if...

¹ Emergents don't like the word "church," either. They prefer "fellowship" or "community." Again, I think THEY think it makes them less conspicious, less offense-sounding within the culture. That's their big thing: melding into the culture to reach the culture. But what usually happens is they just look more like the culture instead of changing it.

What's In A Church Name?

We usually drive when we go to my parent's home in Florida. They live in the Florida panhandle, so it's about a 14-15 hour drive when the whole family goes. I made it in approx 13 hours once when I went by myself--not nearly as many potty stops. Anyhooo, along the route we go (Tulsa-Arkansas-corner of Louisiana-Mississippi-panhandle of Alabama-Florida), we pass through some pretty small towns; some of them REALLY small. What's interesting is to see some of the names of the churches in those small towns. Like any good small town, there are always at least two churches--one for each corner.

There is the usual First [Second, and even Third] Baptist, First [United] Medodist, First Assembly of God. There are quite a few A.M.E. churches along the way, especially in the lower parts of Arkansas. Some of the church names are a little more creative or out of the ordinary than others. Mt. Zion Baptist Church seems to be pretty popular. Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church is another good one. There's Morning Star Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul AME churches (I hope one is not robbing one to pay the other). I even heard of one church in Arkansas called Lily of the Valley Church of God in Christ--that pretty much covers it! One of my favorite church names is King Solomon Baptist Church. I don't know, but I just have an aversion to naming a church after a known womanizer.

So what does the name of a church say about its congregants? What does it say about the church's doctrine or beliefs. The Baptist, Methodist, AG, or AME churches should be pretty easy. But what about the more obscure names. The trend lately seems to be finding a name that still sorta says "church," but doesn't really commit to any one system of theology/doctrine. I'm talking about churches named "Woodlake-A Christian Community" or "Compass Pointe Fellowship." There's one church named "Oak Leaf Church" (they went ahead and used the "C" word); I heard they refer to the church as "The Leaf." Hmmm. I wonder if I can find a church named "The Bark" or "The Stone" or...I digress.

I'm thinking about all this church name stuff because I recently encountered a church--whose privacy I will respect because they obviously WANT to remain anonymous (you'll see in a minute)--that exercises an interesting "method" regarding their name. It all started when I stumbled upon this church's website. They were planning a big Easter service, complete with easter egg hunt for the kiddos AND a motorcycle to be given away to one lucky adult attendee! The church name, [-----] Christian Church, implied the congregation was part of what is known as the Restoration Movement (Christian Church/Churches of Christ) churches. I recognized that several of the staff had attend CC colleges. When I checked out their "what we believe" page, I noticed a couple of things that appeared to be missing.

If you know anything about CC's, you know that they refer to themselves as New Testament churches or sometimes Bible Churches. They have no national governing body and no national convention where they "vote" on resolutions, etc. A couple of things they do believe is that baptism is not only an integral part of salvation, it is THE point and time in which one receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. In fact, you rarely hear of someone being "saved" in a CC; they are "baptized." The words are used interchangably because they believe baptism is the point and time one IS saved. They also believe that an individual can lose their salvation. I've heard some refer to it as "divorcing" God--simply deciding one does not want to be saved any longer. Neither of these things were mentioned on the website. (Just for the record, I attended a CC for 16 years; even served as an Elder before leaving four years ago. I never believed either of these doctrines. I just attended the church because it was the one my wife was raised in. I eventually grew weary of their infatuation with Rick Warren and Bill Hybels.)

So I contacted the church and asked if they were indeed affiliated with the Restoration Churches and if so, was the omission of the two "doctrines" I mentioned above intentional. Their response? "Yes, are a Restoration Movement church and yes, those doctrines were purposely omitted from the website." Why? "Several of our staff lean more toward 'Baptist' doctrines/beliefs.'"

My question is: How can you say you're part of a church/organization, but are not willing to publicly align yourself with their historically accepted doctrines? The answer: contextualization. It's all about making yourself as appealing as possible so that you don't offend or scare anybody off. It obviously works.

Let It Be...Christmas?

Granger Community Church (Granger IN) recently announced a new sermon series entitled Let It Be...Christmas, obviously based on the Beatles album. They are sending out mailers announcing the series. I took the liberty of creating some additional artwork for them, just in case they're interested (see below). I put an elf hat on John Lennon because he really doesn't believe in anything that's real (except that he was more popular than Jesus)...although Santa Claus isn't all that real either. Anyway--thanks to Slice of Laodicea for the heads up.

You can probably guess where I am on this one.

Hot Church

According to this video (it's real), the way to determine if your church is "hot" and doesn't s**k :

• The pastor is good looking
• The pastor can play ball
• The pastor's wife "is too hot for him to have."
• YOU can find a "hot wife!"

Thanks to A Little Leaven for the video link.

Jesus came to seek and find a really hot wife. -- First Emergent 3:16 (from the New We Do Church More Relevant Than You version. Coming to a bookstore near you.)

Pornographic Bible

In this previous post, I decried the use of what I considered a crude/crass euphemism attributed to Mark Driscoll to describe (in part) the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth. In recent days, I have interacted via the internet with several individuals that basically take the stance:

• "There's a lot worse in the Bible!"
• "I think Mark is closer to things the way he is stating it."
• "I love it when people apply a particular contemporary sub-culture’s stringent understanding of language to their readings of pre-modern (read: ancient) texts of Holy Scripture."
• "What I do have a problem with is denying the circumstances of the Biblical narrative out some misplaced sense of propriety. I don’t care if you think the bare facts laid out by Driscoll are somehow shameful and unworthy of Jesus to the point where we have to clean up or deny what was actually going on."
• "The quote, “At least we know who our father is…” comes to mind. Now, what could they have meant by that?"

When I think about it, to some degree these people are right. Seriously, why should we shy away from things in the Bible that we find offensive--only because we are applying some modern-day criteria of what is and what isn't appropriate?

We're not living in the days of the Puritans! For whatever reason, God deemed it necessary to include EVERYTHING we have in our Bible, including passages such as Ezekiel 23:18-23 which was noted by several people in our conversation. (WARNING: This could be considered very graphic language by some.)

When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her nakedness, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled. (NIV)

A little rough? Yes. Biblical? Yes. Should we be offended? Not according to the emergents! God is simply describing how wretched and defiled the people had become. I have to admit, it certainly drives the point home.

I'm working on a flannel-graph of these verses for our 8-year-old Sunday School class. I hope I can get it finished before Sunday...

This post has been rated "S" for heavy sarcasm.

What Did He Say?!

I've never listened to a single sermon by Mark Driscoll. If he really said this, I don't believe I ever will...especially if he thinks this is appropriate content for a sermon:

Roughly two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in a dumpy, rural, hick town, not unlike those today where guys change their own oil, think pro wrestling is real, find women who chew tobacco sexy, and eat a lot of Hot Pockets with their uncle-daddy. Jesus' mom was a poor, unwed teenage girl who was often mocked for claiming she conceived via the Holy Spirit. Most people thought she concocted the crazy story to cover the fact she was knocking boots with some guy in the backseat of a car at the prom.

Steve Camp attributes this comment to Driscoll. The original post is here.

I think this is what those in the "emerging" or "emergent church" movement call cutting edge or relevant. I call it smug and potty-mouthed.

Thin Skin

One of the blogs I frequent created some satirical posters a while back, pointed specifically at the "emerging church" movement. I thought they were funny, clever, and showed a lot of creativity. At the same time, the posters pointed out some of the silly arguments and activities of a group that believes THEY have "discovered" how church is to be done. I can only assume that many of them have not heard of the Regulative Principle nor taken the time to read and understand the Scriptures from which the Principle is derived. Our pastor is currently taking us through a study on this very topic. Very interesting and informative.

A commentor on another blog (just to be fair, here's the blog link) had this to say about the posters:

I think the photos chosen are telling. First, there is a strong prevalence of dreadlocks in the photos. While the individuals sporting them are white, the implication is clear: dreadlocks are “weird” and definitely not normative. (I think of the justification for mocking “weird” people: we aren’t to give an appearance of evil. So maybe dreadlocks are evil.) Unfortunately, dreadlocks are a big part of the black culture in this country. It’s in poor taste to mock a style of hair that is so closely linked to the black community.

Second, the posters, ironically perhaps, are more diverse, presumably, than the churches these men attend. There is at least one man of Asian descent and several that appear to be Latino.

Tackling the simpler--and maybe sillier comment re: the "diversity" of the posters: I have personally attended the church where Phil Johnson ministers and actually **gasp** sat by person "of Asian decent." I also not only SAW several Latinos in the congregation, the gentleman sitting on my other side was Latino! We had ourselves an ETHNIC people sandwich going on there!

As far as the "dreadlocks" comments, below are three posters (out of my count of 54) that feature individuals sporting dreadlocks.

First of all, 3 out of 54 doesn't add up to a "strong prevalence" (5 percent of the total ain't gonna win an election, fella!).

Second, the charge of "racism" isn't going to fly either. I don't think the point of the posters is dreadlocks are “weird” and definitely not normative. (I think of the justification for mocking “weird” people. I don't believe the creators of the posters were making any statement about any particular race of people...other than WHITE people that THINK they look good in dreadlocks! I made the following comments to the blog re: this bogus accusation:

...it’s not the dreadlocks that look/are weird–it’s the WHITE folks sporting them, trying to look like something/someone they are not that looks weird! It’s almost as painful as listening to an all-white choir trying to sing backup for Larnelle Harris (showing my age) or Kirk Franklin!

My sister-in-law is a “person of color;” My wife and I are not. My sister-in-law can and does wear clothes/hair styles that look great on her, that would never work for my wife (or me). Her skin color and features are such that she can wear those things and bring a beauty to them that whites/caucasians cannot.

We can’t jump and we shouldn’t wear dreadlocks!

Some people just look for something to complain about. And when they can't find it--they make it up. Grow some thicker skin, people!

I noticed there there are SIX posters featuring bald people. Maybe we should get our BVD's in a wad over that! Bald people of the world UNITE! Maybe they are saying bald people are weird and evil! I say: BUFFALO BAGELS!!! (aka bovine excrement).

See all of the emergent posters here.