August 5, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new 489-page book entitled “What Is the Emerging Church?”

This is a thorough examination of this movement, which involves a new approach to missions and church life among some “evangelicals” for these present times.

Nothing has made me more conscious of the vicious battle that is raging for the very life and soul of Bible-believing churches than my research into the emergent church. It is frightful, because so many are falling into devil’s trap and so many more will doubtless fall in the coming days.

Emerging church leaders have the objective of proselytizing our children and grandchildren. In his 2008 book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, Brian McLaren describes his plan to infiltrate churches and Christian institutions that are currently rejecting the emerging church. He says:

“But over time, what they reject will find or create safe space outside their borders and become a resource so that many if not most of the grandchildren of today’s fundamentalists will learn and grow and move on from the misguided battles of their forebears [Biblicist Christians]” (p. 133).

McLaren is saying that emerging church teachers will infiltrate Biblicist churches from without through “resources” such as books, videos, and web sites. That is exactly how New Evangelicalism has so deeply infiltrated fundamental Baptist churches over the past two decades and it is doubtless how the more radical emerging church doctrines will infiltrate over the coming decades. It is more imperative than ever that pastors train their people to discern the error of these heresies and that they exhort them to avoid the writings of false teachers. It is imperative that fundamentalist Bible Colleges and Institutes prepare their students to resist this tide of error. Too often it can be said of Bible-believing churches today what was said of Israel of old, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).

The average member of a fundamentalist Bible-believing church is not equipped to deal effectively with the spiritual dangers that lurk on the shelves of the typical Christian bookstore and on the airwaves of the typical Christian radio station. The average church member receives little practical warning from his pastors and teachers and has no interest in building a library of material that can help protect him from spiritual dangers. If this situation is not rectified, the Brian McLarens of this world will doubtless devour many of our children and grandchildren.

At the same time, it is exciting to study the emerging church, because it reminds us that the hour is very, very late and we need to be busy in the Lord’s service and always “looking up.”

At the Soularize gathering in 2002 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Brian McLaren said, “This is a small part of something very big and in its very early stages.”

We could not agree more, but when it reaches terminal velocity, the Antichrist himself will be at the helm!

I have made a great effort to understand the emerging church. In the past several months I have read more than 80 books and a great many articles by emerging church leaders and their teachers.

In a movement as complicated and diverse as this, there will be exceptions to the rules, but I am confident that the following review is an accurate representation of the emerging church movement as a whole.

In reality, the emerging church is simply the latest heresy within the broad tent of evangelicalism. When the “new evangelicalism” swept onto the scene in the late 1940s with its bold repudiation of “separatism” and its emphasis on dialogue with heretics, the door was left open for every sort of heresy to infiltrate the “evangelical” fold, and that is precisely what has happened. The Bible does not warn in vain, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).

Emerging church teaching tends to be complicated, convoluted, contradictory, and confusing.

Coming to grips with it is like trying to pin a glass marble to a table with an ice pick. It is movable and if forced to stand still and be consistent, it shatters!

In addition, it is evolving as I write, and there is a “conservative” side to the emerging church issue that further complicates things.

Regardless, we must deal with the emerging church because its influence is growing.

Brian McClaren, a prominent emerging church voice, was included in Time magazine’s list of “the 25 most influential evangelicals in America” in 2005

Emerging church books are published by evangelical publishers such as Zondervan, InterVarsity, and Baker.

The exceedingly influential Rick Warren is intimately involved with the emerging church, as is Bill Hybels and the Willow Creek Community Church.

And this is just the tip of the emerging church iceberg, as we have documented in the book.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

I. What Is the Emerging Church?

• The Emerging Church’s Influence
• Everything Is Changing
• The History of the Emerging Church
• Two Streams of the Emerging Church

II. A Great Blending and Merging

It is difficult to draw a strict line between the two streams of the emerging church, because there is a blending and merging going on that will cause all lines to be blurred eventually.

III. The Liberal Emerging Church

• Influential Voices
• A Magnet for Rebels
• Strawman Argumentation
• Misusing Scripture
• Errors of the Liberal Emerging Church
• Rejecting the Infallible Inspiration & Sole Authority Scripture
• No Clear Testimony of Salvation
• A Non-Dogmatic Approach to Doctrine
• Glorifying Doubt over Faith
• Contemplative Mysticism
• A Social-Justice, Kingdom Building Gospel           
• Rejection of Dispensationalism
• Low Key about Evangelism
• Worldliness
• Loving to Drink
• Ecumenism
• Tending toward Universalism           
• Downplaying Hell
• Weak on the Issue of Homosexuality
• Weak on the Substitutionary Atonement
• Female Church Leaders

IV. The Conservative Emerging Church

• Influential Voices
• New Evangelicalism Set the Stage
• Errors of the Conservative Emerging Church
• Worldliness
• Contemplative Mysticism
• The Incarnational Doctrine
• A Positive, Non-Judgmental Approach
• Ecumenicalism
• Traditional Evangelism/Church Planting No Longer Work           
• Anti-Fundamentalist
• Social-Justice, Kingdom-Building Emphasis           
• Rejecting “Agenda” of Winning Lost to Christ
• Only Major Doctrines Should Be Points of Division            
• Music Is a Matter of Preference
• Rejection of Dispensationalism           

V. Brian McLaren: The Emerging Church’s Biggest Mouth

VI. Cain the First Emergent Worshiper

VII. Charles Spurgeon Exposed the Emerging Church

VIII. Bibliography

IX. Index

485 pages

 

Price $19.95

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