The Emerging Church movement calls for biblical scrutiny by Missourians

Missouri Baptists had their first significant encounter with the “Emerging Church” in December 2005 when former Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) Executive Director David Clippard recommended a $200,000 loan to a new church plant in St. Louis, called The Journey. The loan was to “help facilitate a church planting center in St. Louis.” But the Executive Board, which approved the loan, was unaware of the issues surrounding The Journey. Soon, an intense debate over such issues as alcohol and the Emerging Church would ensue.

By the July 2006 board meeting, then-MBC President Ralph Sawyer requested that the board’s church plant workgroup investigate and report on mounting concerns regarding alcohol use among some church plants. The workgroup issued their report in August 2006 finding no evidence of alcohol-related issues at The Journey or among MBC church plants.

By the 2006 annual meeting of the Convention, Clippard declared in his executive director’s address that the Journey’s pastor, Darrin Patrick, was a modern-day Caleb and portrayed The Journey as a church plant model.

But by the December 2006 Executive Board meeting, everything changed: it was discovered that there were significant alcohol-related issues and that The Journey had a bar-room ministry in a St. Louis micro brewery for nearly two years called “Theology at the Bottleworks.” An advertisement for the bar-room meeting on The Journey’s website encouraged attendees to “grab a brew [and] give your view.” The Journey’s mission pastor stated on the church website that he and his wife enjoyed having drinks “at the almost secret bar beneath Brennan’s on the Central West End.” As recently as June 2007, The Journey’s website advertised the event stating: “This large and lively discussion combines cold beer and hot conversation on the relevant issues of our times.”

By January 2007, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published on the front page of the Sunday edition a story with the headline, “Beer and the Bible, it works for one growing St. Louis church. But it’s got Missouri Baptists hopping mad.” On March 4th, The Journey was featured on NBC’s “Today Show” in a report entitled, “Beer and Bibles: New Churches Lure Young Members.”

But the issues surrounding The Journey were much more significant than just a bar-room ministry. It was also discovered that Patrick serves as vice president of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network, a group of young, Emerging Church planters that plant likeminded churches across the United States, many of which are Southern Baptists, and a growing number of which are young Missouri Baptists.

On March 20, 2007, Baptist Press released another article entitled, “Alcohol, Acts 29 and the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention),” which only deepened the concerns that were already being raised across Missouri, especially with Acts 29’s status as approved ministry partner for the MBC.

The founder and president of Acts 29 is Mark Driscoll, named by Christianity Today as one of the most influential young preachers in America, with over a million downloads of his sermons each year. Also known by his peers as “Mark the cussing pastor,” Driscoll pastors Mars Hill Church in Seattle, which he planted in 1996.

Stating that, “I myself swim in the theologically conservative stream of the Emerging Church,” Driscoll claims to be “theologically conservative and culturally liberal.” Regarding the use of alcohol, Driscoll writes: “My Bible study convicted me of my sin of abstinence from alcohol,” at which time he “repented” and immediately began to drink alcohol. Driscoll’s church website notes that the church has “beer-brewing lessons whenever a large group of [Mars Hill] men get together.” This would be in keeping with Driscoll’s view of Jesus, who, according to Driscoll, began His public ministry at a wedding, where He “kicks things off as a bartender.” 

This past New Year’s Eve, Driscoll’s church hosted what they called a “Red Hot New Year’s Eve Bash,” which included a “champagne bar” in the church (ID’s were required for drinkers) and “bonus points” were offered for those whose attire was “RED hot.”

Driscoll is also founder of the Paradox Theater, a ministry of Mars Hill Church, which in its first few years, hosted about 650 secular rock concerts for underage kids in Seattle. According to Driscoll, “We have had only a few minor problems [at the Paradox Theater], like the Japanese punk band that got naked during their set for no apparent reason.”

Another concern about Acts 29 churches like The Journey is their “film night” ministries where secular R-rated movies are viewed and then discussed. At the Journey, four of the five most recent films that could be documented were R-rated. According to Driscoll, his church also has a film and theology event that shows “an occasional unedited R-rated movie.” Driscoll also writes that some of his “sermons on sex were R-rated,” and notes that he gives “warnings to parents and sometimes saw whole visiting youth groups walk out blushing halfway through the sermon.”

Another concern about Acts 29 is the issue of gambling. Damascus Road Church, an Acts 29 church in the Northwest, advertises on its website their “Men’s Poker Night,” stating, “If you’re a man, and you have 10 bucks, here’s your chance to prove your poker skills or lack thereof.” The church also sponsors a “Men’s Bible and Brew,” and a “Men’s Movie Night.” 

With all this being said, it is critically important that Missouri Baptists understand that churches like The Journey, Mars Hill and Acts 29, represents the right-wing of the Emerging Church, which some SBC leaders insist that Southern Baptists should embrace. In fact, The Journey’s Patrick and LifeWay’s Ed Stetzer (who was an Acts 29 board member until recently) served as co-chairs of North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) Young Leaders Task Force. Driscoll was scheduled to speak at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary this month, although he has stated for the record that he will “not be drinking or cussing when he speaks at the seminary.”

While Driscoll has been a highly influential player among the right-wing of the Emerging Church, Brian McLaren would represent his counterpart among those who comprise the left-wing of the movement.

In November 2004, Christianity Today, identified McLaren as “the de facto spiritual leader for the Emerging Church.” McLaren serves as chairman of the board of Emergent Village, the group that occupies the far-left wing of the movement. This group claims to have everything from a Texas Baptist pastor to a New England lesbian Episcopal priest. 

McLaren has been strongly criticized within his own circles for some of his aberrant theological views. Driscoll has publicly stated some of his concerns about McLaren and other Emergent Village leaders which include: “referring to God as a chick, questioning God’s sovereignty over – and knowledge of – the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell … .”

Driscoll has been equally critical of McLaren’s call for a five-to-10-year moratorium against any pronouncements against homosexual behavior. Yet, despite Driscoll’s claim that he is distancing himself from the “Emergent” stream of the Emerging Church, he is a contributing writer in a new book on the Emerging Church with some of the same leaders from Emergent Village that he has so strongly criticized for their “liberalism.” In June, a “senior fellow” and a board member of Emergent Village were featured speakers at a conference on the Emerging Church hosted by Driscoll’s church. 

Providing a glimpse into the theological underpinning of the left-wing of the Emerging Church, McLaren writes in his book, Generous Orthodoxy: “… I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion,” arguing instead that we may just need to “help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts.” He further writes: “Ultimately, I hope that Jesus will save Buddhism, Islam, and every other religion, including the Christian religion, which often seems to need saving about as much as any other religion does.” 

While the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) is building strong relationships with the left-wing of the Emerging Church, some SBC leaders are calling on Southern Baptists to support and embrace the “theologically conservative and culturally liberal” wing of the Emerging Church – specifically Acts 29. They argue that our “kids are dropping out of church in droves … when they reach their 20s.” But churches like Mars Hill and The Journey, they say, “are attracting them!”

If Southern Baptists could just plant more “theologically conservative and culturally liberal” Acts 29-type Emerging Churches, where people can hang out in a bar and drink beer, learn to brew their own beer, dance in “RED hot” attire at special church events, smoke, cuss, tell off-color jokes, watch R-rated movies, listen to “R” rated sermons on sex, attend secular rock concerts hosted by our churches, play $5 hands of poker with our church buddies while we drink our beer, indulge in the arts of tattooing and body piercing, etc., then maybe our young people would come back to church. Or better yet, maybe they would stay in church.

It should come as no surprise that people are flocking to “Missional,” churches like The Journey and Mars Hill, but we should find it disturbing at best that some SBC leaders view the Emerging Church as a legitimate solution to the problems of encroaching worldliness and carnality within contemporary American Christianity.

Equally disturbing is the failure of some to see that drinking at a church “ministry” and hanging out in a bar is the path that leads some to the rehab center, some to prison and still others to an early grave.

Likewise, isn’t watching sexually explicit R-rated movies the path that takes some to the pornography websites in the privacy of their homes and offices? (Let’s not forget that pornography is a serious problem among evangelical Christians.)

And isn’t $5 and $10 poker games at church the path that will take some to the gambling boats and casinos?

When “right believing” produces wrong living, of what value is our theological conservatism? Have we forgotten that the demons of hell believe – and tremble. One could argue that the great tragedy for those whose passion is to be “cool” and “culturally relevant,” is that in the end, we will find ourselves increasingly irrelevant. The more the church tries to look like the world and act like the world in order to win the world, the less we will have to offer the world.

But there’s another important question that deserves an answer: Beyond things like drinking, smoking, cussing, hanging out at bars, watching dirty movies, gambling, rock concerts, etc., what else beyond such “legal” behavior does the “world” clamor for in its desire to fulfill the passions of its sinful fleshly nature?

Have we forgotten the most fundamental of all biblical principles, that whichever nature we nurture becomes dominant in our life – that when we feed the flesh, the flesh grows stronger?

“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness,” the Bible commands, “but rather expose them,” as we strive to keep ourselves from being “polluted by the world.”

“Friendship with the world,” we are warned in Scripture, “is hatred toward God.” And Jesus tells us, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.”

But far from “hatred,” the world is fascinated with preachers and deacons and church members that look, act and talk like the world.

The Bible is clear that we are in the world but not of the world. Any Christian movement that assaults either the truth of God’s Word or our biblical understanding of the seriousness of sin, is a movement that warrants our very close attention. (Roger Moran is research director of the Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association.)

Books by leaders and analyzers of the Emerging Church movement are coming off the presses at an amazing clip. Christianity Today (CT) Magazine recently featured Donald Miller on its cover. Miller’s campus sensation, Blue Like Jazz, reached the remarkable rank of “4” on Amazon.com. The September issue of CT offers an excellent article on the man Miller dubbed the “cussing preacher,” Mark Driscoll, pastor of the 6,000-strong-and-growing non-denominational Mars Hill Church in downtown Seattle. Driscoll, founding president of the ACTS29 church-planting network, then known for the occasional utterance of profanity also makes no bones about the compatibility of evangelical and baptistic Christianity with the consumption of alcohol.

Why should Missouri Baptists and, indeed, Southern Baptists care? Not least because significant numbers of churches variously associated with the emerging movement are now Southern Baptist and wish to remain so. The Journey church in St. Louis, whose pastor Darrin Patrick serves as vice president of ACTS29, is one such congregation.

What are Missouri Baptists to make of all this? What hath Mars Hill to do with Nashville? Can an authentic Emerging Church make its home within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)? The Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC)?

The Emerging Church movement seems to include some pretty strange bedfellows. First we have Brian McLaren. Note the subtitle to his bestselling book A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN. If the breadth of the group hug aspired to measures ecumenical seriousness, McLaren does seem to be swinging for the fences with that sub-title. Yet Calvin Miller opined thus to McLaren himself: “as an evangelical Baptist I found your book not very generous and not very orthodox.” For my part—ditto.

But then there is Mark Driscoll. His Mars Hill sermons offer blunt but humor-laced conservatism, replete with the depravity of humanity, eternal punishment, and the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ as the only Savoir for sinners. In sync with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, only men serve as pastors at Mars Hill. In a recent book, Listening to the Beliefs of the Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives, Driscoll packs over 600 Bible references into 13 pages in contrast to the culture and philosophy fixated contributions of the other emerging authors.

Any movement capable of including the likes of Driscoll and McLaren must be one complex animal to say the least. And so it is. The Emerging Church movement is a relatively new, growing and still changing phenomenon. Quick and dirty caricatures aimed at either gushy embrace or dismissive condemnation of the Emerging Church movement cannot help us. During a recent address to the faculty of Midwestern Baptist Seminary, Missouri Baptist Interim Executive Director David Tolliver captured something of the considered caution and modesty appropriate to ongoing analysis of emerging: “No one seems to be able to define the Emerging Church. If you cannot define it, it’s hard to see how you can be for or against it.” Indeed.

So, are Southern Baptists and the Emerging church on a common path or a collision course?The contrast between Driscoll and McLaren drives home at least one fact we can take to the bank: if the Emerging Church includes both these men, then what unifies it cannot be theology. Driscoll and ACTS29 are unabashedly theological, embracing a fully-orbed, orthodox, reformed and baptistic confessional statement – in the case of The Journey, the Baptist Faith and Message (2000). The authority of the Bible is not questioned and where politically incorrect cultural values are perceived to clash with Holy Scripture, culture loses. From the identification of homosexual behavior as sin to the insistence that only Jesus saves, ACTS29 takes its stand within orthodox, reformational evangelicalism.

Scott McKnight argues that emerging should be viewed as a movement, not theological but ecclesiological. I think McKnight is on to something. A discernible “protest” element shapes the posture of many Emerging Church leaders—protest against communities of faith from which these leaders have emerged. Leaders of both doctrine-friendly and doctrine-wary types have found existing models of church wanting for one reason or another. Both sides attempt to build alternative models of church.

And both groups care much about culture. Culture, they insist, must shape the kinds of churches that are planted and the methods of evangelism employed. But, culture functions very differently on opposite sides of the doctrine divide. Culture matters to the doctrine-friendly folk because we live within culture and communicate according to culturally conditioned means. But culture is not a source of truth, and culture must not trump the revelation of God in Holy Scripture. Male-only elder leadership and bold recognition that homosexual behavior is sin flies in the face of Seattle values, but has not kept over 6,000 of its citizens from the worship at Mars Hill.

If the doctrine-phobic leaders continue down the path of cultural accommodation, their relevance to the church will surely wane. Indifference to doctrine usually precedes loss of protectiveness even for the adjective “Christian,” as this quote from emerging leader of the Sanctus1 community in the UK Ben Edson displays:

“We had a guy from the Manchester Buddhist center come to Sanctus1 a couple of weeks ago and talk about Buddhist approaches to prayer. We didn’t talk about the differences between our faiths. We didn’t try to convert him. He was welcomed and fully included and was really pleased to have been invited.”

Gibbs and Bolger account for this mindset thus, “Christians cannot truly evangelize unless they are prepared to be evangelized in the process.” Few developments herald the decline and eventual demise of Christian vitality as certainly as the loss of a good conscience regarding proselytizing. ACTS29 looks very different. Here evangelism and church planting are front and center while core doctrines animate the heart of both preaching and church life. 

The doctrinally sound Emerging Churches could contribute something significant to the SBC just now. While the vast majority of our Baptist churches are in decline, some of these churches, such as The Journey in St, Louis, are not only growing, but are reaching populations perhaps most resistant to the gospel and least reachable by existing Baptist models, the 20 and 30-somethings. Another strength of the movement also points to a possible vulnerability—its youth. But if some emerging bloggers exhibit an almost delayed-adolescent giddiness celebrating the consumption of alcohol, the ACTS29 website contains very strong, Bible verse-referenced warnings against drunkenness. They hesitate to embrace an alcohol abstinence policy because (1) they do not find such teaching in the Bible and (2) the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) makes no mention of the matter. I think I spy a likely solution to immaturity just around the corner. Yes! Its called aging and maturing. Mark Driscoll now regrets being tagged “the cussing preacher.” And these 30-something leaders do seek out older, more seasoned models and mentors like John Piper and Tim Keller.  

We Southern Baptists find ourselves at a crossroads just now, and I think we would do well to consider the Emerging Church phenomenon in the light of this turning point in the life of our denomination. We live now in the wake of the triumphant conservative resurgence that began in 1979, epitomized by the adoption of the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) and the staffing of all six seminaries with professors committed to the inerrancy of Holy Scripture. Bible-loving Baptists have cause for rejoicing at these extraordinary developments. But something else is happening among us. We seem to be shrinking. Hardly a month passes without some new alarming statistic tracking the decline not only of Christianity in North America but of Southern Baptists within the lower 48 states. And unprecedented loss of denominational loyalty among younger generations accompanies this downturn.

Add to the mix the little booklet, Building Bridges, distributed to messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention in San Antonio this past June. Put forth by Charles Colson, Thom Rainer, Morris Chapman, David Dockery and Timothy George, I consider Building Bridges 64 narrow little pages of dynamite.

Rainer writes “I was and still am a firm supporter of the conservative resurgence. I knew we could not continue headed down the path we were headed. But it seems as if we just can’t stop fighting even though the battle for the Bible is over and won . . . Though I may disagree with you on secondary and tertiary issues, I will not let those points of disagreement tear down bridges of relationship between brothers and sisters in Christ.” Dockery offers a new x-ray of the current Southern Baptist family that replaces the now obsolete four-dimensioned moderate/liberal vs. fundamentalist/conservative divide with an astounding 14 distinguishable segments of Southern Baptist sensibility. Whatever else Dockery’s updated taxonomy portends, the heightened fracturability of our fellowship appears frighteningly obvious.

In Romans 14 and 15, Paul rebuked those who thought the carnivore/herbivore and sabbtarian/non-sabbatarian controversies involved fundamental issues of faith and fellowship. Paul did not consider the matters as tertiary but as secondary. Thus, he instructed the warring factions to act according to conscience in the disputed matters but also to maintain fellowship with those of contrary conviction and practice. This from the same Paul who insisted that if anyone, even an angel from heaven, should teach the Galatians a gospel other than the one he taught, let them mutilate themselves and be anathema. Distinguishing between primary, secondary and tertiary matters in the church might not be easy, but it is biblical and necessary.

Default capitulation to whoever is strictest or boasts the longest list of litmus test issues where Christian fellowship is concerned is not only unloving, but also unbiblical and unspiritual. Not every purity postured willingness to divide the Body of Christ wins the favor of our Lord.

Screening committees whether at the International Mission Board or North American Mission Board or the MBC must be entrusted to disqualify candidates for denominational service on matters unmentioned by the Baptist Faith and Message (2000). If a would-be missionary belongs to a sect requiring the crucifixion of cats over a pyre on Saturday nights, I want him disqualified and I don’t want our confession amended. But if the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) comes to serve not as statement of broad and deep consensus among the people called Baptist, but rather as a running record of who won the latest controversy, it will cease to be the stabilizing, unity-nurturing anchor we need and instead become a stone upon which we shatter into a thousand pieces.

One bright day in Bangkok Thailand, Judge Paul Pressler handed me a signed copy of his book A Hill on Which to Die. The title highlights Pressler’s awareness that not every issue warrants the kind of praying, planning, and politicking that secured victory for SBC conservatives. But the fight for the nature and authority of Holy Scripture did so warrant. Recently, we Baptists have found ourselves at logger heads over private prayer language, the consumption of alcohol, and now an array of issues related to the Emerging Church. Let us be careful in these days of declining Christianity and the diversification of the Southern Baptist family. Let us pray to God for wisdom to discern those hills worthy to die on and those not so worthy.

I was happy to learn that Southeastern Baptist Seminary is hosting a conference dominated by ACTS29 leaders. Given the deep biblical and missional affinities we share with these young pastors, should we not apply some patience and extend the benefit-of-the-doubt to these young leaders, many of whom want be part of the SBC? Is the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) so weak, so inadequate that even those who affirm its articles pose some imminent threat? I don’t think so. Remember, the same truth-loving but also unity-loving apostle authored both Galatians and Romans 14 and 15.
(D. Mark DeVine is associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.)