I've refrained from comments on this controversial meeting, but Rick Warren's talk on what a church should be should be useful to anybody not listening for media-hyped "issues." Really refreshing if you are a church leader at the local level. What is offered by congregations of different traditions and sizes all over South Dakota does have meaning and value to God. Our work is to see what God values (people, most of all) and do our work accordingly. Anyway, it's all in the video from Anglican TV. Let's hope the folks who heard his address will act on some of it.
The Episcopal Church's General Convention meets next month, and their guest speaker is no slouch: "Emerging Church" advocate Brian McClaren. Unfortunately, the Episcopalian mania for money, bureaucracy, titles and entitlements, ideological rigidity and other harsh features will likely blunt any of the insights McLaren will try to share. McLaren's made the mistake of looking at Episcopal press releases rather than the actual behavior of the denomination.
3 comments:
Not surprised that TEC has invited McClaren. His views will be attractive to most who attend teh convention. The emergent church, and the cooperation of Muslims, Jews and Christians for peace and justice (he's on the board of Abrahamic Peace). But he doesn't seem to realize that the church isn't emergent. In as much as it is the Body of Christ being "in Christ" it is ontologically ever present in His fullness (pleroma).
I'm blessed to know a few young pastors who might be described as "emergent." It is a slippery term - but mainly they are about dumping some of the ideological approaches that have subordinated the church to both right and left politics and cultural trappings. They seek serious engagement with Scripture, are interested in the early church thinkers, are examining liturgical worship, and try to drop old denominational slogans and unexamined practices. McLaren was one of the first folks I read who pointed out the ghastly Evangelical equation of "worship" with "and now our band will sing..."
But there are many good critiques of emergents (mainly that their theology has no solid grounding and flirts with "postmodern" messiness and individualism.)
My comment above is that McLaren is totally missing the boat if he thinks that the Episcopal Church is emergent. TEC is ideological, legalistic, bureaucratic - everything young emergents in particular hate about "churchianity."
And let's not miss the fact that Rick Warren weaves warnings into his message to the new Anglican body. "Don't be reactive" he says toward the end.
North American Anglicanism has become very sick and this didn't happen overnight. It might not even survive and, if it is to find new life, its adherents will have to be "doers of the word, not just hearers."
I was blessed to be there "in the tent" to hear Rick Warren this morning. He is genuine in his message and in his concern for Anglican Christians. He said some of the same things that he shared in Pittsburgh (at A Hope and a Future) but it was a timely and relevant message for all.
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