Janet Tu, who has written several great articles on emerging churches in Seattle, has written a piece for Northwest Weekend on Mars Hill Church. She focuses heavily on Mark Driscoll, whom I’ve mentioned before.
Often these [emerging] churches are small and less top-down, more like a gathering of friends. They value intuitive experiences of God, encouraging a vital relationship with him, rather than assuming people already have one. They are often culturally liberal (welcoming of, say, nose rings and expressing one’s love of God through punk rock) but theologically conservative, emphasizing early Christianity and the root meaning of Bible stories.But here, too, Mars Hill has become an anomaly. With its sheer size and orthodox theology ? far more conservative than most other emerging churches ? it no longer fits neatly into that niche.
Very good article.
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Mars Hill is far from an “emerging” church; it’s a FUNDAMENTALIST church.
An “Emerging” or “Emergent” church is distinguished by its courage to reclaim and embrace a gracious, loving, forgiving God in place of the stern, judgmental, often seemingly hostile God of Fundamentalism. The “Emergent” name reflects the fact that many (if not most) of its members have experienced Fundamentalism as oppressive, confining, and heavily focused on the negative and threatening aspects of the God–human relationship in general, and have left (emerged from) it as a result.
Like all Christians, Emergents believe that we all have sinned and are saved by grace through faith in Christ, but the Emergent understanding of God and Christ, and the living out of that understanding, differ radically from the Fundamentalist view. The Emerging church is made up of individuals and congregations working to move beyond Fundamentalism into a “bigger” Christianity emphasizing God’s gracious love for us in Christ, and the freedom granted to us by that love and grace to love God fearlessly and without reservation and, in turn, to love our neighbor as ourselves without reservation.
(Yes, that’s a lot of times to say “grace” and “love” in two short paragraphs, but it can’t be said often enough: Grace and love, not anger and condemnation, are the very definition of God’s gift of Christ to us.)
That freedom includes:
[1] “soul liberty”—the freedom to search the Scriptures and our own hearts and grow into an authentic relationship with God based on how God reveals God’s self to each of us, rather than on imposed interpretations, dogmas, or other formulas.
[2] “soul competency”—the wisdom and discernment God gives to each and every one of us to guide that growth process, without the interference of hierarchies or other human “authority.”
[3] the freedom (indeed, the obligation, for with every true freedom comes responsibility) to face our doubts and ask the hard questions, because only by asking those questions prayerfully and listening for God’s answers in our day-to-day experience can we continue to grow in understanding, faith, and grace.
[4] the freedom (indeed, the obligation) to express ALL our God-given abilities, free of restriction or stereotype, for in Christ “there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.” The church is a priesthood of ALL believers, not only of the pastor or other “official” clergy, or of the male half of the church only. No role in the church or the world should be closed to anyone whom God may choose to call.
[5] the freedom to experience the deep, wide, ever-expanding range of wonders, possibilities, growth, and other joys of the “life abundant” and to live that life courageously and with abandon.
An excellent example of Emergent/Emerging Christianity may be found at http://www.theporpoisedivinglife.com.