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McKinley’s Thoughts on Emerging

Posted by Chris Case | December 4, 2007 .

Rick McKinley of the Imago Dei community in Portland recently posted his ‘thoughts on the emerging church.’ He started his post by talking about the desire people often have to place people instantly into ‘categories’ to decide whether we agree with them or don’t, often without delving into their writings or work. To this, I wholeheartedly agree. This has been done by people on all sides of the Emerging movement. I think there are individuals in the Reformered or conservative camps who instantly label emerging folks as liberal or unorthodox. Individuals within the emerging movement also instantly label its critics as ‘modern’ and not ‘forward-thinking’ just because they disagree with where they perceive the emerging church headed.

Just because we have difficulty putting expressions of the emerging church into categories, that does not mean we should just throw out testing these expressions against scripture. It seems like McKinley does not agree.

There are some beautiful expressions that are sprouting up all over the place, they are organic works of the Spirit of God living in and through the life of his followers. We should be very cautious to squelch this. It is a young and fragile thing that if we fail to create a safe context for it to grow it will either shrivel up and die, or become high jacked by the more mature plants and therefore will not really be a fresh move of God at all.

I wholeheartedly endorse creative and spirit-filled manifestations of God’s movement in His people here on earth. But, I also understand that there’s a biblical precedent set to seek sound doctrine. We are called to “encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Titus 1.9) and Paul a warning that there will be a “time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Tim 4.3). I cannot ignore these scriptures and wholeheartedly endorse the full span of the movement, although McKinley states, “This is a new thing that God is doing and we should respect it as such.” I don’t know on what authority anyone can necessarily make a wholehearted endorsement like that.

McKinley quickly tries to recover and say that this is not to ignore 2000 years of orthodoxy. First off, whose orthodoxy? Orthodox Catholics believe something entirely different than orthodox Reformed people. To simply say that some parts of the emerging church will rightfully follow the historic church orthodox beliefs and some will not does not in any way help clarify. At the end of the day, many of those that I hear critiquing the emerging church are not criticizing the movement as a whole, but are criticizing parts where they believe the church is ceasing to be biblically orthodox. They would do the same of any movement, but emerging is the new buzz group.

The goal in critique is not to establish emerging churches into what theological camp they sit in, but to help trim the growing vine of the emerging church so that it is in line with biblical orthodoxy.

McKinley wraps up his article with talking about new ways of looking at the trinity as well as the pioneering church, but I’m not so sure any of what he’s trying to establish is revolutionarily new. Regarding the trinity, he says, “I hope that we can expand our theology of the Trinity from a static doctrine to a dynamic and living theology of community and transformation.” I don’t know about you, but I always thought that was essential in the Trinity, both community and transformation. I am not sure what static doctrine he is referring to. Secondly, regarding the church he states, “Perhaps God is emerging something that is counter cultural to the way we have been doing it.” Movements are always doing this, from the Willow Creek seeker model to the Great Awakening, people have always been rethinking how to actually practice church, which is not necessarily counter-cultural, but in response to how to engage culture. The culture at the time of Edwards connected with how Edwards did church. The culture in the 80s and early 90s connected with how Willow Creek did church. Maybe the movement is more cultural than it is counter-culture. Its response is not to the traditional church, it is to the secular world.

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1 Comment so far
  1. Allen March 4, 2008 8:58 pm

    Chris,
    I always enjoy your thoughts. Keep blogging. I recently watched a sermon by Driscoll from his “Religion Saves” series about the emerging church where he used a great analogy about open and closed hands with doctrine and methods. It might not be new, but it was helpful for me in clarifying this type of stuff. You should check it out.