Allelon: Unity in the Church
or Unity with the World?
by Sandy Simpson,
12/08
Preface
I want to make it clear that my comments and apologetics (I do not call them polemics because the Emerging Church (EC) is outside the constraints of Biblical Christianity) are not aimed at participants in churches that are into Allelon (al-lay'-lone) and the EC except to warn them to get away from the false teachers who are the leaders of the movement. I do not doubt that there are many sincere Christians who have been sucked in by the diaprax of the EC leadership. My comments are a call to repentance, a turning away by the EC leadership from the unbiblical and in some cases heretical ideas they are plying into the churches. They are also to expose the false teachers for who they are in order to warn Christians away from them.
Tit 3:10 Warn a divisive
person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do
with him.
Eze 33:9 But if you do
warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die
for his sin, but you will be saved yourself.
1Ti 5:20 Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.
What is the history and mission of Allelon?
Short answer: There is no history of Allelon on its own history page. That is because they have little history to speak of except a history of reading books and listening to lectures by virtually every EC advocate out there. In a slickly produced video on the Allelon website they speak of their mission.. Brian McLaren, one of the main sources of teachings on the Emerging Church is featured on the video. The video was filmed at George Fox University and Fuller Seminary, two of the main schools advocating EC. They claim that they are introducing “something radical and transforming to the Church.” Isn’t Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross for the sins of men and the living and active Word of God radical and transforming enough for the Church? Chris Erdmen, D. Min, a pastor, writer, professor, blogger admits that the Emerging Church doesn’t know where they are going but “together we’ll find a way”. But we are not the ones who decide where we are going. The Bible is our map. Since McLaren took the EC “off the map” this is what you end up with … a type of religion marked by uncertainty and run by consensus. Dr. Eddy Gibbs, a professor at Fuller, states that their whole curriculum is now going to the EC missional model.
We have a particular burden for people involved in new forms of
missional communities (sometimes called "emerging"), people starting
new congregations within denominational systems, and people in existing
congregations, who are working towards missional identity and engagement. Our
desire is to encourage, support, coach, and offer companionship for missional
leaders as they discern new models of church capable of sustaining a living and
faithful witness to the gospel in our contemporary world. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Gibbs
also states that Fuller needs to look at “everything”, including the teaching
of Greek and Hebrew and Church history “through missional eyes”.
I’m not for the dumbing-down of theology. But I believe we need a missional theology. That means going through our total
curriculum, even to the way you teach Greek and Hebrew, and looking at that
through missional eyes. The way you
teach church history …” (Dr. Eddy Gibbs, http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
So, in essence, it
is the intent of the leadership of the EC to strain everything through the grid
of EC “missional” teachings and postmodern thought rather than looking at these
issues based on what the Bible and the Holy Spirit have and are teaching
us. EC adherent Dr. Leanne van Dyke
states on the video:
In sort of a “post-Christendom world”, missional theology paints the
“God picture” very big and then puts us, the Church, in relationship to that
God. (Dr. Leanne van Dyke, http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Just how big that painting is can already be seen in the promotion of God as being the “God of Japan”, the “God of the Hawaiians”, the “God of the First Nations”, etc. by people like Richard Twiss, Daniel Kikawa, and many other WCGIP promoters. Looks like the EC is in lockstep with the erroneous ideas spread by people like Don Richardson, C. Peter Wagner and a whole host of NAR proponents. The question is: which god is “that god” she is talking about? Dr. Mark Lau Branson of Fuller Seminary states this on the video:
“Now that you’ve figured out there is no plan, what’s
next? And simply having someone
articulate that, that we’re not real sure what the plan is, but there
are still leadership capacities, there are still ways to interpret your church
and your community, there are still ways to understand yourself better as a
leader …: (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Sounds
like they have deconstructed Christianity but are not sure just how to
reconstruct it. Dr. Craig van Gelder also states:
The word missional has become a catch phrase. An awful lot of energy, on
the one hand, but high ambiguity and confusion, oftentimes, on the other hand. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
What
would then make the scheme these people have cooked up attractive to any true
believer? When you get away from the
Biblical mandate and Biblical teachings, you end up with a lot of misspent
energy that leads to ambiguity and confusion.
To
understand the word “missional” you have to go to the source. Brian McLaren coined the term “missional”,
not in reference to traditional mission work in the churches, but in reference
to the praxis of spreading the concepts and ideas of the EC movement. His original” off the map” series ends the
dialectic with the praxis of a “missional” response to his EC teachings. Gary Gilley quotes McLaren in one of his
articles:
Brian McLaren, on the other hand, is not concerned about these matters (preaching salvation). In reply to his own question about who is in heaven and hell, he neatly sidesteps the whole issue by asking another series of questions, "Isn’t it clear that I do not believe this is the right question for a missional Christian to ask? Can’t we talk for a while about God’s will being done on earth as in heaven instead of jumping to how to escape earth and get to heaven as quickly as possible? Can’t we talk for a while about overthrowing and undermining every hellish stronghold in our lives and in our world? (as cited in The Kingdom of Emergent Theology - Part 2 by Gary Gilley, Think On These Things, 10/07, http://www.svchapel.org/Resources/Articles/read_articles.asp?id=140)
So Allelon is in full compliance and agreement with Brian McLaren and is the outworking of his and other EC leadership vision. This is bolstered by their recommendation of reading materials on their site with books by Brian D. McLaren, Alan Roxburgh, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Scott Boren, Craig Van Gelder, etc. (http://astore.amazon.com/allelon-20)
In the Allelon purpose statement they mix what the New Testament says about Christians loving one another in the context of the Church with loving the world.
The word allelon is a common but overlooked New
Testament word that is reciprocal in nature. Christian faith is not an
individual matter. Everything in the life of the church is done allelon
for the sake of the world. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
This
is a good example of taking the Bible out of context, which is another hallmark
of EC leadership. The passage they are
quoting, in part Col. 3:12-15 using the word allelon, is talking about love
within the context of the body of Christ, not love “for the sake” of the world,
and certainly not for its way of thinking.
Col.
3:14-15 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all
together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since
as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
The word “allelon” is used in the Bible, in every case
except one, with regards to the unity and love within the body of Christ, not
regarding unity with or love for the world. (http://net.bible.org/search.php?search=greek_strict_index:240) Examples:
2
Cor. 13:12 Greet one another (allelon) with a holy kiss.
1
Thes. 4:18 Therefore encourage each other (allelon) with these words.
Acts
4:15 But when they had ordered them to go outside the council, they began to
confer with one another (allelon),
Rom. 12:10 Be devoted to one another (allelon) with mutual love, showing eagerness in honoring one another (allelon).
The only exception is
Matt. 24:10 where Jesus talks about the apostasy and how people will betray one
another.
Matt.
24:20 Then many will be led into sin, and they will betray one another
(allelon) and hate one another (allelon).
Interestingly this is what the EC
is doing, turning Christianity on its ear with false doctrines that divide
families and churches.
So the basic premise of Allelon is in error from the start.
At Allelon, our overarching mission is to educate and encourage
the church to become a people among whom God can live, as sign, symbol, and
foretaste of his redeeming love and grace in their neighborhoods and the whole
of society- ordinary women and men endeavoring to participate in God's mission
to reclaim and restore the whole of creation and to bear witness to the
world of a new way of being human. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Nowhere in their mission statement do they mention the Gospel. It is also not the job of Christian or the
Church to “restore the whole of creation”.
That is Dominionism, which is another tenant of the EC showing that they
are teaching the same false doctrines as the New Apostolic Reformation, or
Latter Rain. The Gospel will, by the
Holy Spirit, “restore” a relationship to God in individuals who repent and
believe, and create in them a new creation. But Allelon is not talking about individuals but the “whole of
creation”. Only Jesus Christ’s return
at the beginning of the Millennium will restore creation, which is at the
moment in the domain of the evil one.
The mission of the true believer today is to continue to obey the Great
Commission, not get involved in schemes to save the planet.
Go here for the Longer Answer.
What is the Mission In Western Culture Project?
Short
Answer: The Mission In Western Culture Project (MWCP) is also a project of
Allelon. The diaprax of MWCP is evident
on their home page. Their “three
elements” or fundamentals are: “Our changed context, Mission is about the
Missio Dei (the mission of God), and Missional theology sees the Church (the
people of God) as a contrast society.” (http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm).
The first
element is a vilification of the Church.
We are now living in a changed social context, what
might be described as both postmodern and post Christian. … Modern
evangelism developed in a time when people assumed the Christian story was a
normal, regulative part of the culture within which they lived. Most folk
knew the basic Gospel story in one form or another. Evangelism fulfilled the
role of presenting an apologetic, which pressed for commitment. It worked
in a world where the culture-at-large understood the basic Christian story. This
is no longer the case. (http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm )
We are not living in a post-Christian world yet
unless the Rapture has already taken place.
We have always been living in a sinful world ruled by Satan that has no
interest in the things of the Spirit.
But that is nothing new. Nor is
postmodernism, which is basically relativism and subjectivism. That has been with us since the beginning.
Mission work was not the work of apologetics but the work of first time
proclamation in most cases. Only in the
Western world were people very thinly knowledgeable about Christianity. Even then the true Gospel message was and is
still a shock to most people if presented correctly. To say it is no longer the case is to say that Biblical
evangelism no longer works in this modern culture. It doesn’t work because EC
proponents have moved beyond it into a new map of their own making, one of
confusion and existentialism.
The second element states this:
Mission is
about the Missio Dei (the mission of God). If the West, including North America, is once again
a mission field where the central narratives of the Gospel are being either
lost or profoundly compromised by other values and stories, then the focus
of this mission is the God who has encountered us in Jesus Christ ? the One
whom we confess in the Trinitarian confession of Father, Son and Spirit. This
may seem such an obvious statement that requires no explicit comment, but
that?s not the case. In Western societies, churches have shifted their focus
from God to how God serves and meets our needs. Jesus Christ has been
packaged as a choice in the spiritual food court used to meet the private needs
of individuals. The result is a debased, compromised, sterilized
Christianity, which misrepresents the Gospel. The gospel is not just a
matter of personal salvation; rather, it is a call to participate in the
communal and global purposes of God. The biblical narratives revolve
around God?s mission in, through, and for the sake of the world. The focus
of attention is toward God not the other way around. The missio dei is about a
God-centered rather than a meeting-personal-need centered understanding of
Jesus? life, death and resurrection.
(http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm)
The Gospel is being lost not because there are so
many other religious “stories” abounding but because many churches are no
longer preaching the Gospel and have not been for some time.
If the Church would get back to the Gospel we would see more people
being saved. It is counterproductive,
in fact counterintuitive, to widen out our “story” to include other stories
just so we can fit in. It is true that
many mega churches have shifted their focus off of God to “felt needs”. But the solution to that problem is not to
declare that the Gospel is “not just a matter of personal salvation”. The whole point of the Gospel IS personal
salvation (John 3:3, 7). Without that a
person will not be light and salt no matter how well he interacts and agrees
with other “stories”, ie. religions.
God’s purposes, in this time, are not to take over the planet. His purpose is for people, individuals, to
recognize their sin, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as their only Savior
and Lord, then move on to serve Him by witnessing to others. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world
but it takes a personal belief and commitment to appropriate that price paid
for the wages of sin to each and every individual. The goal of the true Christian today is not to save the world or
the planet, but to be witnesses for Him (Acts 22:15, 2 Cor. 5:20) often
speaking as the vast minority (Luke 12:32, Matt. 7:14, Rom. 11:5). This “misso
dei” is, then, a misapplied term being used to serve a Dominionist agenda. Dominionism is clear false doctrine.
The third element states this:
Missional theology sees the Church (the people of God) as a contrast society. We recognized that our culture continues to move through massive levels of discontinuous change, which is rapidly de-centering the church from its former place at the center. This raises fundamental questions about the relationship between Christian life and the pluralist culture in which we live. In terms of the latter, the message of Jesus is the breaking-in of God?s Kingdom reign into the world. Therefore, the church is the called-out community of God in midst of the specificity of a culture. The church is an ecclesia, which means an assembly that has been called out in a public way as a sign, witness, and foretaste of where God is inviting all creation in Jesus Christ. The church, in its life together and witness in the world, proclaims the destiny and future of all creation. The God we meet in Jesus calls the church to be a community of people who no longer live for themselves and their own needs but as a contrast society whose life together manifests God?s future for the whole of creation. (http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm)
The church has never been the center of society, not by a long
shot. God is not in the process of
“breaking in” His Kingdom. He is in the
process of redeeming sinners who will participate in His Kingdom when it is
established. If people are busy
“breaking in” what they perceive as God’s Kingdom they will be shocked to find
out they were not living in obedience to the Lord when He comes (as a
thief). We are to do more than be a
community of contrast. We are to be a
community of truth proclamation and truth life. If the truth of redemption is not clearly proclaimed all our
Christian machinations will have been in vain.
It is true that our culture should be that laid down by Christ and the
Apostles. But we cannot do that by
compromise with the world, only by contrast and the real contrast are the
exclusive claims of Christ in a world that does not believe.
Joh
14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one
comes to the Father except through me.
Ac
4:12
Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under
heaven given to men by which we must be saved."
It is already a hate crime in some countries to make exclusive claims
of salvations against the truth claims of others. If EC followers cannot distinguish between the exclusive claims
of Christ and the “truth” claims of other religions because the EC leadership
is enamored with those other “stories” and “truths” then how can they call this
progress? Where there is no
understanding that the Bible is THE Truth (John 17:17) , that Jesus Christ is THE
truth (John 14:6), there can be no truthful dialog or salvation, for that
matter.
True Christian leadership are not concerned with indwelling “space”. They are concerned with obeying the Word of God and not running away from it.
Heb 2:1 We must pay
more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not
drift away.
1Ti 1:6 Some have
wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk.
The EC leadership are using
strange unbiblical language that lead to unbiblical ideas. True believer will recognize strangers who bring
a different Word.
Joh 10:5 But they will
never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do
not recognise a stranger’s voice."
As in the time of John, these new teachers want to lay down the new game plan, but they do not know what they
are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
“In these biblical narratives God is constantly present in places where no one would logically expect God’s future to emerge and yet it does over and over. There is nothing in these stories about getting the wrong people off the bus and the right people on to accomplish great ends and become the best organization in the world. This God who calls us is always calling the wrong people onto a bus that isn’t expected to arrive.” (Missional Leader, A. Roxburgh, Pg 18, http://www.backyardmissionary.com/)
God is only “present”, in other word at work, in places where the Church is present. This implies that God is at work in pagan cultures through pagan religions in lieu of His Church and the Gospel. If the bus is the bus of false religion, truth laid alongside error, and pagan culture then it is the wrong bus and no believers should be on it. If they are called and sent by God to those places they will be riding the bus of orthodoxy, of the Gospel, of compassion, and of truth.
Alan Roxburgh was up next. He addressed the question of the conference, “What
is a missional leader?” And then he gave us his standard responses: “I don’t
know,” “Does it matter?” “Who cares?” Why do we want a definition so
desperately? Because we are moderns. Definitions are modern constructs. The
need to define the missional church and missional leadership is a modern need
to define, name, control and plan. So, if I do what I’m not supposed to do
(create a definition), the best I could say is, “a missional leader is one who
can change as the world changes around him/her.”
(http://timneufeld.blogs.com/occasio/2007/06/index.html)
So there need be no definition for “missional”? Could this be a bad excuse for having none? There is always a definition for everything, unless you are a subjectivist who believes that “truth” is always in a state of flux. If definitions are impossible to nail down, then truth is also.
As our culture changes our
perceptual maps become dated and the lenses we use become less and less
helpful. When this occurs we tend to work harder at our frameworks.
Many leaders assume that simply adjusting the map will provide the answers
needed. These men and women have not recognized that we are dealing with
"discontinuous" change. The old lenses are not allowing them to see
things "as they really are." Roxburgh quotes from Surfing the Edge of
Chaos, that in times of discontinuous change "equilibrium is
death." (Alan Roxburgh, The Sky Is Falling !?!,
http://www.nextreformation.com/wp-admin/reviews/falling.htm)
I would completely disagree with Roxburgh’s quote of “Surging the Edge of Chaos”. There is nothing more necessary during time of change than equilibrium, the equilibrium of the never changing, eternal Word of God. The problem is the lenses EC leadership are looking through are the lenses of culture rather than the lenses of Scripture. If they want to understand modern culture all they have to do is look at it through the lessons of history and theography of the Bible. It is there we can find answers on how to reach people, not with new programs set on top of new programs which never work and only confuse the core issues.
Go here for the Longer Answer.
Who is Alan Roxburgh and what is his connection to Allelon and the
Mission In Western Culture Project?
Short
Answer: Alan serves as the Vice President for Allelon Canada. He is the
Director of Educational Resources throughout North America and serves as the
coordinating team leader for the Mission in Western Culture Project. (http://www.allelon.org/roxburgh/?page_id=2)
formerly pastor of churches in
Toronto and Vancouver, completed a Master of Theology at the
University of Toronto in
philosophical theology, and the Doctor of Ministry degree at Northern
Baptist Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. (http://www.percept1.com/pacific/PDF/CrossingBridge.pdf)
Northern Baptist Seminary is now teaching and endorsing the Emerging Church. (http://www.seminary.edu/cur.student/documents/DMIN7615-KUHL.july.18.22.2005.pdf) The University of Toronto is a completely liberal school. In their course descriptions one of their courses is “Cultivating a Culture of Generosity” offered through Emmanuel College which promotes the Emerging Church. (http://www.utoronto.ca/knox/pages/Continuing%20Education/ConEd%202008%20brochure.pdf) So apparently the type of “theological” education Roxburgh received has influenced or been influenced by the paradigm of the EC. Of course Fuller Seminary offers Roxburgh materials. (http://www.fullerseminarybookstore.com/search_results.php?id_author=726) Roxburgh is of course the VP of Allelon and heads the Mission in Western Culture Project under Allelon.
Go here for the Longer Answer.
Roxburgh Teachings
Short Answer:
There’s been a dis-ease in the back of my
mind for a while about the directions of the missional conversation in North
America. I’ve written about one: it’s too ecclesiocentric. Most of
what I read with missional
in its title is about the church and making the church work with new formulas
and programs. The missional conversation is about what God is up to in the
world; church conversations are a sub-set we’ve turned into the main thing. (Alan
Roxburgh, Seeking a Missional Imagination, http://www.allelon.org/roxburgh/?p=60)
I am not saying everything Roxburgh teaches is false. What I am saying is that he is laying error
alongside truth, which ends up nullifying the true things he is saying by
leading people into error. That is the
case with all false teachers. Not all false teachers start out that way, but
some start out good then fall into the apostasy, which is rife with false
teachings. If he would only take his
own advice about his “dis-ease” with missional teachings maybe he could find
his way back out. But even his dis-ease
is based on a false idea. The Church IS
what God is up to in the world, therefore “church conversations” are of
paramount importance and the “main thing” if Christians are to preach the Gospel
to the world. The main focus of the
Lord is on His Church first (1 John 4:4-5, 5:5). The Church is then set with the task of reaching the world, but
not by pretending that the world knows anything about God, which is what EC
leaders mean by “what God is up to in the world”. The
Bible is clear that the world rejected God (1 Pet. 2:4), were without God (Eph.
2:12) and did not know God (1 Thes. 4:5, Gal. 4:8). God was a mystery to them
(Col. 1:27), they had no hope (Eph. 2:12) and they continued in idolatrous
worship (1 Cor. 10:20, 12:2).
Roxburgh goes
on to indict the church and teach an idea that is not biblical.
I read books that, basically, retreat into the
realm of some ideal imagination that is supposed to provide formulas and methods
for the ailing mission of the church in the West. We
haven’t got past our Cartesian dualism with its romantic idealisms about the
nature of God’s mission in the world. We need a different
imagination. (Alan Roxburgh, Seeking a Missional Imagination, http://www.allelon.org/roxburgh/?p=60)
First of all, the only reason
mission work is ailing is because of the false teaching going on around the
world in churches these people had no part in planting. Now people from those churches are being
diapraxed to have a bad attitude toward Christan mission work so that they will
follow these unbiblical latecomers who use their imaginations instead of follow
the easily understood commands of Jesus Christ and the Apostles. They have gone beyond what is written and
instead are building a new paradigm based on their own ideas.
1Co 4:6 Now, brothers, I
have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you
may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is
written." Then you will not take pride in one man over against
another.
Isa 65:2 All day long I
have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good,
pursuing their own imaginations—
Eze 13:2 "Son of man,
prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to
those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the LORD!
What we need is not a new paradigm based on the
imaginations of men, but a clear understanding and application of the eternally
relevant Word of God.
This series offers frameworks for understanding how our
metaphorical maps have changed. It proposes ways of developing maps for
cultivating local communities of witness and mission. (Missional
Map-Making: Chapter Five, by Alan Roxburgh, February
15, 2008, http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=741)
This teaching shows that the foundation laid by Brian McLaren in his “Off The Map” series is being carried to fruition by other EC leaders like Alan Roxburgh. The maps have not changed, nor is postmodernism anything really new. The Bible states that even back in the times of the Judges “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6) All you have to do is look at the resources for sale in the Allelon store to see that they are promoting the books of other EC leaders. The board of advisors for Allelon includes EC leaders such as Leonard Sweet and Brian Mclaren.
One of the most basic rules of good leadership is to do
all that cultivates trust in your leadership. Trust is critical for innovating
a culture of missional transformation.
Leaders who have become aware of these issues need to spend the time
understanding what the alternatives to strategic planning involve, as well as
what might be the appropriate places for using strategic planning. Therefore, the initial
step is to develop a reading list that will assist you to begin reframing your
own understanding. What is involved quite literally, is a changing of our maps.
Strategic planning represents a specific map of how we see reality, understand
people and the nature of change. Time
is required to understand and dwell in an alternative map. It is imperative to take this time. People in
congregations will leaders this kind of time, as we continue to build and
develop trust among our people. (MISSIONAL MAPMAKING -- An Art of the Mission-Shaped Church by Alan Roxburgh, Allelon Publishing, 2008,
http://www.allelon.org/pdf/MAPSchpt5.pdf)
The questions we need to ask about missional, therefore, are not drawn from the world of business or the social sciences, nor are they about how to apply supposed New Testament patterns to the contemporary church. Questions about what God is up to in the world require us to ask what kind of space church leadership must indwell at this moment in late modern societies. (a quote by Alan Roxburgh in Spaces Between by Len Hjalmarson, http://www.allelon.org/missional_journey/?p=158)
Again, well intentioned as it may seem, Roxburgh admits that he does not want “missional” church shaped by the “world of business or the social sciences” though, if truth be told, that is where much of the material of the EC has been culled. But then he goes on to state that churches should also not “apply supposed New Testament patterns to the contemporary church”. But as I see it this is one of the main problems with churches today … that they often stray way too far away from the early church model. That model is a model that has been almost entirely done away with by mega churches with their postmodern poling and throwback traditions that emulate the early Roman Catholic Church instead of the early New Testament church. But then his solution is to require churches to “ask what kind of space church leadership must indwell at this moment in late modern societies.”
Go here for the Longer Answer.
What is the Nazarene connection to all this?
Short
Answer: The Allelon Missional
Schools Project was launched after papers were written to explain the
teachings of Allelon. The four papers
what were written were by Dr Dean Blevins: Nazarene Theological Seminary -
Kansas City, Dr Mark Lau Branson/Dr Ryan Bolger: Fuller Theological
Seminary, Pasadena, Dr S. Mark Heim: Andover
Newton Theological School, Dr J. Nelson Kraybill:
Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana (http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=335)
The tradition of the Church
of the Nazarene is best described as Methodist, or
“Wesleyan” to acknowledge Holiness and some Pentecostal
movements often framed as renewal movements inside Methodism. … As will be
seen; missional proclivities remain woven, to some degree, into the DNA of
Wesleyan praxis. (http://www.allelon.org/ARTICLES/article.cfm?id=327)
Of course one has to wonder how you can have a “missional
proclivity” long before that concept was even being used. But this shows that the EC leadership is
using the emphasis on praxis already in the Wesleyan churches like the
Nazarenes to attempt to ride their false ideas in on that bandwagon.
The 2006 ALLELON SUMMER
LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
-- Training
and Formation for Missional Leaders was held at Eagle Nazarene Church, 1001 W. State St.,
Eagle, ID, cost $250. (http://www.churchinnovations.org/05_news/pii_v6_i1/pii_v6_i1_lewis.html)
Notice
that Alan Roxburgh was a teacher at this Nazarene church seminar. Here is part of what they presented.
Forming
Missional Leaders
Alan Roxburgh and Mark Priddy will provide participants with a clear,
well-tested process for identifying the skills and capacities needed to
innovate missional life in an existing leadership context. Because
pre-course work is involved, the registration deadline for this course is April
30.
So they are not teaching Biblical concepts but “innovating” missional ideas among the leadership of churches.
Forming a
Missional Order
This course, led by Tim Keel and Gary Waller, will provide a primer on basic
thinking (theology, history, and cultural reflection) about the movement
toward ordered communities, the communal considerations, and commitments needed
to develop missional environments and the habits and practices necessary to
birth missional communities. (http://www.churchinnovations.org/05_news/pii_v6_i1/pii_v6_i1_lewis.html)
They are moving toward
“ordered communities” with “communal considerations”? Sounds like Utopian hippie talk to me. The term “birthing” is taken right out of the New Apostolic
Reformation. Do Nazarenes want to be
innovated into communities where the leadership has total apostolic control
over their thoughts, “habits and practices”?
If I were a Nazarene I would be really skeptical of this movement at
this point.
On the web site “Emergent
Nazarenes” there are a whole list of contributors from the Nazarene
denomination who are urging the Nazarenes into the EC. (http://emergentnazarenes.blogspot.com/)
The current
general superintendents, elected in 2005, are the following: Paul G. Cunningham, James
H. Diehl, Nina G. Gunter, Jesse C. Middendorf, Jerry
D. Porter and J. K. Warrick. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Nazarene) As far as I can tell all of the above are
allowing the Emerging Church into the Church of the Nazarene. On the official Church of the Nazarene site,
http://www.nazarene.org they have a
whole subset of the site dedicated to Emerging
(http://www.nazarenemissions.org/10002/story.aspx). Even their banner on the
nazarene.org site uses the words Christian … holiness … missional. Missional is a term of the Emerging Church,
not of Biblical Christian churches. The
Global Mission Conference, though exposing youth to other cultures, is using
the terminology of the EC to bring the young generation into line with EC
ideas. (http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/MediaView.aspx?mediaId=347e0fe9-5e3f-46e6-8e1a-743ce8db1be7) Terms like “encountering stories” and making
them part of yours, “a conversation in God’s global story”, “experience global
prayer”, “discuss responsible compassion”, “engage in conversation”, “join the
coversation”, and “join the story” are all expressions that are being used in
EC conferences. The “missional church”
is also expounded upon on the Nazarene main site on this page: http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/
using the search term “missional”.
An article by Ron Benefiel who is
president of Nazarene Theological Seminary is posted on the Allelon site. (Response
to Craig Van Gelder’s - “ENGAGING THE MISSIONAL CHURCH CONVERSATION AS A
FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPING MISSIONAL THEOLOGY” by Ron Benefiel, President,
Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO, http://www.allelon.org/projects/Benefiels_response_CVG.pdf) In that article he states: “I have jotted down some of what I
understand to be some of the theological and sociological challenges in moving
from the church that “is” toward the missional church that I understand we are
called to be.” The problem is that
The Bible has not called us to be “missional”, at least not the way it is being
defined in the EC. We are called to
carry out the Great Commission and to encourage and build one another up in the
Faith, that is in sound doctrine. We
are to be light and salt to the world, but we are not called to work with every
nere-do-well who comes wafting through our churches, denominations or
organizations with a “new map”. But it
is obvious to me that Nazarene Theological Seminary is being guided by the EC,
not solid Biblical teaching. Maybe they
should just rename the school “Nazarene Missional Semniary” or “Nazarene We
Love McLaren Seminary” or some more appropriate name because they are now
spouting the same new unbiblical ideas as the EC and have little interest,
apparently, in what the Bible says about how we should carry out the task of
evangelism or the teaching of sound doctrine.
To be “theological” we must follow what God says, not men who use their
imaginations to come up with ways to empower, enrich and make a name for
themselves.
So it appears that EC is a done deal in the Church of
the Nazarene as it is in many other mainline denominations. Why churches allow individuals with false
teachings to come in from the outside and bombard their churches with unbiblical
ideas is beyond me.
Go here for the Longer Answer.
.
How is Leonard Sweet teaching that Emerging churches need
to address Postmodernism?
Short Answer: In
his video series The Double
Ring Video by Leonard Sweet, Sweet's SoulCafe, 1998, Vol. 3, Sweet uses
diaprax to try to prove that the church no longer is effective in reaching
postmoderns. But instead of trying to
teach them the difference between postmodernistic relativism and subjectivism,
he actually tries to prove that the Bible and Christianity are postmodern and
oxymoronic. He gives a number of
examples in the video that are not oxymoronic at all and misuses that term. For instance he claims that the Lion and the
Lamb in reference to Jesus Christ is oxymoronic. The Lion and the Lamb symbolism is neither oxymoronic nor
antinomic. It is a typology of the attributes of Jesus Christ, Who is
Himself neither an actual lamb or lion, but a glorified Man in Heaven with His Father
at His right hand. What he ends
up teaching ends up being a form of eastern mystical nonsense. He teaches that basically good and evil the
reverse sides of the same coin. It
reminded me of watching Baghwan Shree Rajneesh on TV in Oregon stating that "good
is evil, and evil is good". There
is much more to his video I discuss in my article called “Ding Dong, Ding Dong, Wake Up Leonard Sweet!”.
Basically Sweet is teaching that we need to redefine Christianity and the Bible
as postmodern rather than reprogram this generation with Biblical objective
truth. Sweet wants to make the church
worldly so that it will appeal to the world instead of setting the church apart
from the world by standing for the truth of God’s Word.
Long Answer: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/dingdong.html
Is Brian McLaren using the Hegelian Dialectic and praxis (diaprax) to get people to agree to Emerging Church "theology"?
Short Answer: Yes. The Hegelian
Dialectic and praxis are called diaprax.
The dialectic, invented by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, is employed
when a person sets up a thesis, then presents and antithesis, and finally
brings the audience to his place in the middle called synthesis. This is done by vilifying the old, making
fun of the extreme other side of the issue, then bringing people to a middle
“balanced” point of view, thus beginning the change of worldview. But the balanced middle is almost always
nowhere near any balance at all. A good
example of diaprax is employed by Brian McLaren in his “An New Kind Of
Christian – Part 1” video series. He
opens the series by stating that:
“if you’re
going someplace where no one has ever been a map cannot help you. That’s where
the name “Off The Map” comes from in part.
But another problem with maps is that sometimes they change.”
McLaren proposes by inference that Christianity can no longer reach this generation because the map of culture has been flooded and changed by postmodernism. Of course the “map” for Christians is the Bible but McLaren and many of the EC leadership believe that we are now writing our own new revelation of Scripture through the lens of culture.
“Scripture is
something God had ‘let be,’ and so it is at once God’s creation and the
creation of the dozens of people and communities and cultures who produced
it.” ––Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 162
The Bible is diapraxed to set it up for no longer really addressing the current worldview most people hold, ergo we need a new map, in fact McLaren does it one better by saying we have to go “off the map”. For a full example of the subject of how diaprax is being used by the EC leaderhip to brainwash people with unbiblical ideas, you can find it at http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/mclarenperfectdiaprax.html
I want to help those who are watching this series to be able to identify the use of diaprax. Once you know what it is you will begin to hear it all over the place, in politics, in advertisements and in the churches. Here is how a false teacher gets people to believe what he is saying and substitute his mindset for theirs. Those who use diaprax commonly preface it with a lot of talkstory including a host of mundane facts that almost everyone already knows to make them look authoritative. But this is done mainly to set the stage for people to trust the speaker when he inevitably moves beyond the facts. The facts presented are also used in an allegorical way with relationship to the material and brainwashing to come. The next step, once the audience trusts the diapraxer, is to vilify the old, which is usually classic orthodox Biblical Christianity, the Bible itself and church and mission outreach. The speaker then throws in a couple of jabs at new programs that don’t work either. It is then the speaker can begin to draw people into his own new revelation and make it seem like it is a good idea. That is the point where synthesis kicks in if people accept it. After a number of things have been vilified or mocked and the synthesis has been defined, the speaker moves into the praxis phase. This is where people are encouraged to discuss and repeat what has been presented by the speaker and make their own justifications for the new synthesis. With this “group think” people are led to consensus. The casual uninformed and undiscerning listener, if they have followed the course charted by the leader, is now ready to give up their own paradigm for the new paradigm. They are then encouraged to put these new ideas into practice (which is the classic definition of praxis) and are given assignments to do so. They may even be coerced into signing covenants that agree to the new agenda and ideas, but will be criticized, ostracized or demonized if they are found to be going back to their former mindset in opposition to the new group dynamic.
Now that you know how diaprax is being used by EC you will also find it being used in a majority of churches today that formerly used to teach the Bible without these techniques. Diaprax, however, is what cults for decades have used to brainwash and gain followers.
Long Answer: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/mclarenperfectdiaprax.html
Why are the beliefs of postmoderns not really new? Who was the first
Postmodernist?
Short Answer: Relativism and subjectivism have been around since the creation of this world, and in fact before. In the Old Testament during the times of the judges the Bible tells us that every man “did what was right in his own eyes”. This is a hallmark of postmodernism: a rejection of objective reality and the creation one’s own reality that may or may not have any relation to objective truth. But the postmodern paradigm ultimately goes back to Satan. Lucifer was the guardian cherub in heaven, the most beautiful of all the angels, the star of the morning. Yet faced with the objective reality of God, he declared himself to be a god to be worshipped. He was thrown down to earth along with a third of the angels who followed him in his rebellion. He then tempted Adam and Eve with that same postmodern sensibilities. Was it really fair that God has restricted them? Did God really say what He has said about not eating from the tree in the middle of the Garden? Eve then chose to create her own rules, her own reality, by disobeying the Lord and listening to the diaprax of Satan.
Long Answer: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/satanpostmodernist.html
(Follow up to above question) Did Satan use diaprax?
Short Answer: There are a number of examples of Satan, the first postmodernist, using diaprax. He used it in the Garden on Adam and Eve. He vilified the old (God) in order to bring in the new (sin & Satan). He also attempted to use diaprax on Jesus in the desert. He tempted Jesus three times, and in his second temptation he pulled Scripture from its context in order to try to convince Jesus to think his way. But Jesus, the author of the Word, the Word incarnate, answered the devil with Scripture in context, rebuking him and reminding him that only God should be worshipped. One of the marks of postmodern false teachers is that they twist Scripture out of context to try to diaprax people into their false worldview. So there are many aspects of diaprax in Satan’s temptations and they continue to be so today in this postmodern world.
Long Answer: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/satanpostmodernist.html
Can you summarize the teachings of Allelon and Alan
Roxburgh?
The EC including Allelon is full of the teachings of false teachers who have introduced ideas and practices that are not Biblical. Here is a partial list:
Pantheism
Anointing "in" objects, cities, nations
Veneration of objects/icons used to visualize
Slain in the "spirit"/Drunkenness in the "spirit"
Synergy
Globalism
Dominionism/Save the planet
Contemplative Prayer/Labyrinth
Visualization
Centering down
Spiritual mapping
Yoga
Martial arts
Repetitive music/mantra
Automatic writing/journaling
Interfaithism
Universalism
Female deities
Astrology
Auras/personal prophecy
Portents/signs
Postmodernism/Relativism
Feelings based discernment
Other false doctrines such as disdain for the Rapture and
Second Coming, a low view of the Bible and high view of new revelation, a
vilification of the Church and mission, a disdain for the Gospel which includes
teaching on hell and judgment, and a putting down of Christ’s death on the
cross.
For a further treatment of this subject, go to: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/newageinthechurch.html
Here is a summary of some of the specific false teachings of Allelon:
Spirituality refers first of
all to the universal gift of aliveness that exists within all religions and
outside of religions. (Leonard
Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, pg. 253)
A surprisingly central feature of all the world’s religions is the
language of light in communicating the divine and symbolizing the union of the
human with the divine: Muhammed’s light-filled cave, Moses’ burning bush,
Paul’s blinding light, Fox’s “inner light,” Krishna’s Lord of Light, Böhme’s
light-filled cobbler shop, Plotinus’ fire experiences, Bodhisattvas with the
flow of Kundalini’s fire erupting from their fontanelles, and so on. Light is the common thread that ties together
near-death experiences as they occur in various cultures. (Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, pg. 146)
… A New Light
movement of 'world-making' faith have helped to create the world that is to,
and may yet, be. Then, and only then, will earthlings have uncovered the
meaning of these words, some of the last words
poet/activist/contemplative/bridge between East and West Thomas Merton
uttered: "We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we
have to recover is our original unity." (Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, pg. 10)
"Fourth, New Light embodiment means to be 'in connection' and
'information' with other faiths. To be in-formation means to know each
other’s songs almost as well as one knows them oneself, and to enlarge the
community to include those whose conceptions of God differ from ours in form.
To be in connection means to be able to sing, not only selected stanzas, but
all the verses" … "One can be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ
without denying the flickers of the sacred in followers of Yahweh, or Kali, or
Krishna. A globalization of evangelism 'in connection' with others, and a
globally 'in-formed' gospel, is capable of talking across the fence with Hindu,
Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim--people from other so called 'new' religious traditions
('new' only to us)--without assumption of superiority and power."(Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, p. 129-130)
ALAN JONES (Author of Reimagining
Christianity) "The Church's fixation on the death of Jesus
as the universal saving act must end, and the place of the cross must be
reimagined in Christian faith. Why? Because of the cult of suffering and the
vindictive God behind it" (Alan Jones, Reimaging
Christianity, p. 132).
“Universalism is not as bankrupt of biblical
support as some suggest,” (Brian McLaren, The Last Word and the Word
After That, ( San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), pp. 103 (cf. pp. 182-183)
“It may
be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers
of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts,"…
"Is our religion the only one that understands the true meaning of life?
Or does God place his truth in others too? ... The gospel is not our gospel, but the gospel of the kingdom of God,
and what belongs to the kingdom of God cannot be hijacked by Christianity"
(p. 194). (Brian McLaren, An Emergent Manifesto, Baker Books, referenced http://simplyagape.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html)
"I
don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'?....
I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right
either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy."––Brian McLaren, The Emergent Mystique,
Christianity Today, 2004
"I
must add, though, that I don't believe making disciples must equal making
adherents to the Christian religion.”---Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 260
The phrase ‘the Second Coming of Christ’ never actually
appears in the Bible. Whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers deserves
rethinking, a popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and rejected. (McLaren,
Everything Must Change, Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), pg. 144.)
And yet, all the time I
could feel myself drifting toward acceptance that gay persons are fully human
persons and should be afforded all of the cultural and ecclesial benefits that
I am. (”Aha!” my critics will laugh derisively, “I knew he and
his ilk were on a continuous leftward slide!”) … In any case, I now
believe that GLBTQ can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at
least as much as any of us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be
sanctioned and blessed by church and state. (Tony Jones, Same
Sex Marriage Blogalogue: How I Went from There to Here, Online
source, bold theirs)
Go here for the Longer Answer.
LONGER ANSWERS
What is the history and mission
of Allelon?
Long Answer: On the “history” section of the Allelon site (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm) there is no real history of the movement presented. That is because I suspect they do not want people to know too much about the dubious the history of the movement. The leadership of the EC is currently Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet, Richard Foster (McLaren said of Richard Foster, “with (his) emphasis on spiritual disciplines, (he is a) key mentor for the emerging church” … his organization is called Renovare), Doug Paggit, Alan Jones, Dan Kimbal, Erwin McManus, and many others. Their influences are Thomas Merton (Roman Catholic mystic and one of Richard Foster’s chief mentors along with George Fox), Morton Kelsey (a certified Jungian analyst), Basil Pennington (who promoted Christianizing Eastern mysticism for use in the churches), Benedictine Monks (Roman Catholics), Ignatius Loyola (Benedictine monk), Madeleine L'Engle (New Age author), Thomas Keating (originator of “centering prayer” taken from Zen sesshin), Harvey Cox (an activist for the syncretism of all religions), Agnes Sanford (of the Inner Healing movement and promoter of occultist Carl Jung), Madame Guyon (pantheist), John of the Cross (a Roman Catholic Desert Father), Evelyn Underhill (authored Practical Mysticism, an expression of Hindu/Catholic “spiritual” exercises), Thomas Kelly (contemplative and Universalist), Tilden Edwards (contemplative prayer and East/West mystical “bridge” promoter), William Vaswig (Renovare member who, like Foster learned his meditation from Agnes Sanford and a great admirer of occultist Carl Jung and his “sitting in silence” therapy), Karen Mains (Jungian adherent who has a spirit guide), Lynda Graybeal (promoter of Spiritual Formation and the Renovare Bible), Jean-Pierre de Caussade (Roman Catholic Jesuit monk), Meister Eckhart (pantheist), George Fox (Quaker founder, contemplative and Universalist), Henri Nouwen (Buddhist sympathizer and New Ager), Teresa of Avila (Desert “Mother” contemplative who practiced centering prayer), Brother Lawrence (who taught the emptying of the mind), Julian of Norwich (pantheist), Siang Yan Tan (psychologist), Lao-Tse (Taoism), Zarathrustra (Zorastrianism), David Spangler (New Age teacher), Matthew Fox (apostate ex-priest of the Catholic Church), John Main (a Roman Catholic priest and monk of the Order of Saint Benedict, a contemplative), Brennan Manning (author of The Ragamuffin Gospel and promoter of contemplative prayer), Marianne Williamson (New Ager), Ken Wilber (New Ager and author of A Theory of Everything, a term Leonard Sweet says is his idea), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (African Anglican Archbishop who promotes Interfaithism and the UN), Mark Mossa (RCC Jesuit scholastic), Leo Tolstoy (Russian novelist baptized as a Mormon), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian novelist and founding father of Existentialism), Walker Percy (novelist and Catholic existentialist) and the list of New Agers and false teachers goes on and on. (http://web.archive.org/web/20080212062607/http:/www.abrahamic-faith.com/James/Richard-Foster.html and other sources such as Wikipedia.)
This should make people suspect because of the fact that one of their adherents, Eddy Gibbs, claims that Church history needs to be redefined through the lens of EC ideas. If they cannot present their own history, on what basis should people have confidence that they can or should be redefining Church history?
In a slickly produced video on the Allelon website they speak of their mission, not their history per se (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm). Brian McLaren is featured on the video so one can see clearly that the history of Allelon is directly tied to that of the Emerging Church (EC) leadership, since McLaren in one of the founders of the movement. The video shows one of the Allelon “Summer Institute” sessions were held at Fuller Seminary in CA. Fuller is the biggest promoter of every false doctrine out there, which started with C. Peter Wagner and John Wimber and their “signs and wonders” classes and continuing in featured speakers from every false Latter Rain revival movement. Now they are one of the biggest promoters of the latest “new thing” by sponsoring EC “dialogs” with the likes of McLaren and others featured on the video. George Fox University, a Quaker (Friends) institution, is also mentioned on the video and many segments were filmed there. GFU is another hotbed of EC ideas partly because of the influence of Richard Foster and Leonard Sweet there. They claim that they are introducing “something radical and transforming to the Church.” Isn’t Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross for the sins of men and the living and active Word of God radical and transforming enough for the Church? When you get away from these things is it really “radical and transforming” or is it just another type of Gnosticism or new revelation? One of the participants on the video, Steve Taylor, PHD, who it says is a pastor, author, teacher, blogger, states this:
“So much of the emerging/postmodern conversation, which I’m part of and I’m committed to …” (Video, http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Looks like commitment to EC and postmodernism may be more important than the Gospel. Chris Erdmen, D. Min, a pastor, writer, professor, blogger says admits that the Emerging Church doesn’t know where they are going but “together we’ll find a way”. But we are not the ones who decide where we are going. The Bible is our map. Since McLaren took the EC “off the map” this is what you end up with … a type of religion marked by uncertainty and run by consensus. Dr. Eddy Gibbs, a professor at Fuller, states that their whole curriculum is now going to the EC missional model.
We have a particular burden for people involved in new forms of missional
communities (sometimes called "emerging"), people starting new
congregations within denominational systems, and people in existing
congregations, who are working towards missional identity and engagement. Our
desire is to encourage, support, coach, and offer companionship for missional
leaders as they discern new models of church capable of sustaining a living and
faithful witness to the gospel in our contemporary world. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Gibbs
also states that Fuller needs to look at “everything”, including the teaching
of Greek and Hebrew and Church history “through missional eyes”.
I’m not for the dumbing-down of theology. But I believe we need a missional theology. That means going through our total
curriculum, even to the way you teach Greek and Hebrew, and looking at that
through missional eyes. The way you
teach church history …” (Dr. Eddy Gibbs, http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
So, in essence, it
is the intent of the leadership of the EC to strain everything through the grid
of EC “missional” teachings and postmodern thought rather than looking at these
issues based on what the Bible and the Holy Spirit have and are teaching
us. This represents a form of cultural
fairytale hermeneutics instead of contextual Biblical hermeneutics. Apparently the diaprax is complete among the
EC promoters and they intend to get all the churches in line with their “new”
paradigm, rewriting the Bible and history in the process. We see this process already being played out
in the Indigenous Peoples Movement (WCGIP), Bible societies, and in
organizations tied to the New Apostolic where history is being rewritten to
offer a “god” who has always been at work in every culture, has left enough
evidence in those cultures for people to be regenerate, and makes God into a
pantheistic, postmodern, culturally based and understood, god. This is evidenced by EC adherent Dr. Leanne
van Dyke when she states on the video:
In sort of a “post-Christendom world”, missional theology paints the
“God picture” very big and then puts us, the Church, in relationship to that
God. (Dr. Leanne van Dyke, http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Just how big that painting is can already be seen in the promotion of God as being the “God of Japan”, the “God of the Hawaiians”, the “God of the First Nations”, etc. by people like Richard Twiss, Daniel Kikawa, and many other WCGIP promoters. Looks like the EC is in lockstep with the erroneous ideas spread by people like Don Richardson, C. Peter Wagner and a whole host of NAR proponents. The question is: which god is “that god” she is talking about? Dr. Mark Lau Branson of Fuller Seminary states this on the video:
“Now that you’ve figured out there is no plan, what’s
next? And simply having someone
articulate that, that we’re not real sure what the plan is, but there
are still leadership capacities, there are still ways to interpret your church
and your community, there are still ways to understand yourself better as a
leader …: (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Sounds
like they have deconstructed Christianity but are not sure just how to
reconstruct it. This shows the fallacy
of the diaprax that Christianity is and has been for some time ineffective at
transforming people’s lives. The EC
promoters were so stuck in vilifying the Church they forgot that getting “off
the map” would get themselves lost in the chaos of existentialism. That is exactly what is happening according
to Dr. Craig van Gelder.
The word missional has become a catch phrase. An awful lot of energy, on
the one hand, but high ambiguity and confusion, oftentimes, on the other hand. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
What
would then make the scheme these people have cooked up attractive to any true
believer? When you get away from the
Biblical mandate and Biblical teachings, you end up with a lot of misspent
energy that leads to ambiguity and confusion.
Why is it that Gelder is not heeding his own words and getting out of
this movement?
We have to find a way of being church were people are in a way that’s
authentic to the Gospel but helpful and transformative to their lives.
(Bishop Graham Cray, http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
It becomes quite apparent
when listening to Cray do his diaprax on the failings of the Church, that he
knows little or nothing of Church history, which he and his associates are
desperately trying to rewrite. I happen
to be a PK and MK and I know what it is like to give up everything, move to a
far away place, learn the language, and give your life as an example in both
caring for people beyond your own country and preaching the Gospel at the same
time. Shame on the EC leadership for
suggesting that this has not been done before they came along with their “new
paradigm”. Again I stress that
“missional” has nothing to do with mission work.
To
understand the word “missional” you have to go to the source. Brian McLaren coined the term “missional”,
not in reference to traditional mission work in the churches, but in reference
to the praxis of spreading the concepts and ideas of the EC movement. His original” off the map” series ends the
dialectic with the praxis of a “missional” response to his EC teachings.
Brian McLaren, on the other hand, is not concerned about these matters (preaching salvation). In reply to his own question about who is in heaven and hell, he neatly sidesteps the whole issue by asking another series of questions, "Isn’t it clear that I do not believe this is the right question for a missional Christian to ask? Can’t we talk for a while about God’s will being done on earth as in heaven instead of jumping to how to escape earth and get to heaven as quickly as possible? Can’t we talk for a while about overthrowing and undermining every hellish stronghold in our lives and in our world? (as cited in The Kingdom of Emergent Theology - Part 2 by Gary Gilley, Think On These Things, 10/07, http://www.svchapel.org/Resources/Articles/read_articles.asp?id=140)
So Allelon is in full compliance and agreement with Brian McLaren and is the outworking of his and other EC leadership vision. This is bolstered by their recommendation of reading materials on their site with books by by Brian D. McLaren, Alan Roxburgh, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Scott Boren, Craig Van Gelder, etc. (http://astore.amazon.com/allelon-20)
In the Allelon purpose statement they mix what the New Testament says about Christians loving one another in the context of the Church with loving the world.
The word allelon is a common but overlooked New
Testament word that is reciprocal in nature. Christian faith is not an
individual matter. Everything in the life of the church is done allelon
for the sake of the world. A Christian community is defined by the allelon sayings in Scripture. We are
to love one another; We are to pursue one another's good; We are to build up one
another; We are to bear with one another in love; We are to bear one another's
burdens; We are to be kind to one another; We are to be compassionate to one
another; We are to be forgiving one another; We are to submit to one another;
We are to consider one another better than ourselves; We are to be devoted to
one another in love; We are to live in harmony with one another. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
This
is a good example of taking the Bible out of context, which is another hallmark
of EC leadership. The passage they are
quoting, in part Col. 3:12-15, is talking about love within the context of the
body of Christ, not love of the world or its way of thinking.
Col.
3:14-15 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all
together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since
as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
The word “allelon” is used in the Bible, in every case
except one, with regards to the unity and love within the body of Christ, not
regarding unity or love for the world. (http://net.bible.org/search.php?search=greek_strict_index:240) Examples:
2
Cor. 13:12 Greet one another (allelon) with a holy kiss.
1
Thes. 4:18 Therefore encourage each other (allelon) with these words.
Acts
4:15 But when they had ordered them to go outside the council, they began to
confer with one another (allelon),
Rom. 12:10 Be devoted to one another (allelon) with mutual love, showing eagerness in honoring one another (allelon).
The only exception is
Matt. 24:10 where Jesus talks about the apostasy and how people will betray one
another.
Matt.
24:20 Then many will be led into sin, and they will betray one another
(allelon) and hate one another (allelon).
Interestingly this is what the EC is doing, turning
Christianity on its ear with false doctrines that divide families and
churches. Those who do not agree with
the new paradigm and enter praxis are vilified, demonized and finally
ostracized (thank the Lord). Perhaps
this is the allelon they are talking about.
We are not in unity with the world. We can have compassion for the people of the world by preaching the Gospel to them and trying to help them in their times of need, but we are not to have unity with the world. So the basic premise of Allelon is in error from the start.
At Allelon, our overarching mission is to educate and encourage the
church to become a people among whom God can live, as sign, symbol, and
foretaste of his redeeming love and grace in their neighborhoods and the whole
of society- ordinary women and men endeavoring to participate in God's mission
to reclaim and restore the whole of creation and to bear witness to the
world of a new way of being human. (http://www.allelon.org/history.cfm)
Nowhere
in their mission statement do they mention the Gospel. It is also not the job of Christian or the
Church to “restore the whole of creation”.
That is Dominionism, which is another tenant of the EC showing that they
are teaching the same false doctrines as the New Apostolic Reformation, or
Latter Rain. The Gospel will, by the
Holy Spirit, “restore” a relationship to God in individuals who repent and
believe, and create in them a new creation. But Allelon is not talking about individuals but the “whole of
creation”. Only Jesus Christ’s return
at the beginning of the Millennium will restore creation, which is at the
moment in the domain of the evil one.
The mission of the true believer today is to continue to obey the Great
Commission, not get involved in schemes to save the planet.
Long
Answer: The Mission In Western Culture Project (MWCP) is also a project of
Allelon. The diaprax of MWCP is evident
on their home page. Their “three
elements” or fundamentals are: “Our changed context, Mission is about the
Missio Dei (the mission of God), and Missional theology sees the Church (the
people of God) as a contrast society.” (http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm).
The first
element is a vilification of the Church.
We are now living in a changed social context, what
might be described as both postmodern and post Christian. … Modern
evangelism developed in a time when people assumed the Christian story was a
normal, regulative part of the culture within which they lived. Most folk
knew the basic Gospel story in one form or another. Evangelism fulfilled the
role of presenting an apologetic, which pressed for commitment. It worked
in a world where the culture-at-large understood the basic Christian story. This
is no longer the case. (http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm )
We are not living in a post-Christian world yet unless the Rapture has
already taken place. We have always
been living in a sinful world ruled by Satan that has no interest in the things
of the Spirit. But that is nothing new. Nor is postmodernism, which is basically
relativism and subjectivism. That has
been with us since the beginning.
Evangelism has always been around in history but has never been a
“normal, regulative part of culture.”
Perhaps you could make that claim about certain Western cultures, but
others have never been “regulated” by the “Christian story”. If you move beyond that very few cultures
have been “regulated” by any form of Christianity. Mission work was not the work of apologetics but the work of
first time proclamation in most cases.
Only in the Western world were people very thinly knowledgeable about
Christianity. Even then the true Gospel
message was and is still a shock to most people if presented correctly. To say it is no longer the case is to say that Biblical evangelism no
longer works in this modern culture.
That is hogwash. It doesn’t work
because EC proponents have moved beyond it into a new map of their own making,
one of confusion and existentialism.
The second element states this:
Mission is
about the Missio Dei (the mission of God). If the West, including North America, is once
again a mission field where the central narratives of the Gospel are being
either lost or profoundly compromised by other values and stories, then the
focus of this mission is the God who has encountered us in Jesus Christ ? the
One whom we confess in the Trinitarian confession of Father, Son and Spirit.
This may seem such an obvious statement that requires no explicit comment, but
that?s not the case. In Western societies, churches have shifted their focus
from God to how God serves and meets our needs. Jesus Christ has been
packaged as a choice in the spiritual food court used to meet the private needs
of individuals. The result is a debased, compromised, sterilized
Christianity, which misrepresents the Gospel. The gospel is not just a
matter of personal salvation; rather, it is a call to participate in the
communal and global purposes of God. The biblical narratives revolve
around God?s mission in, through, and for the sake of the world. The focus of
attention is toward God not the other way around. The missio dei is about a
God-centered rather than a meeting-personal-need centered understanding of
Jesus? life, death and resurrection.
(http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm)
The Gospel is being lost not because there are so many other religious
“stories” abounding but because many churches are no longer preaching the
Gospel and have not been for some time.
That almost empty void has been filled with other things, by the devil I
might add. If the Church would get back
to the Gospel we would see more people being saved. It is counterproductive, in fact counterintuitive, to widen out
our “story” to include other stories just so we can fit in. It is true that many mega churches have
shifted their focus off of God to “felt needs”. But the solution to that problem is not to declare that the
Gospel is “not just a matter of personal salvation”. The whole point of the Gospel IS personal salvation (John 3:3,
7). Without that a person will not be
light and salt no matter how well he interacts and agrees with other “stories”,
ie. religions. God’s purposes, in this
time, are not to take over the planet.
His purpose is for people, individuals, to recognize their sin, repent
and believe in Jesus Christ as their only Savior and Lord, then move on to
serve Him by witnessing to others.
Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world but it takes a personal
belief and commitment to appropriate that price paid for the wages of sin to
each and every individual. The goal of
the true Christian today is not to save the world or the planet, but to be
witnesses for Him (Acts 22:15, 2 Cor. 5:20) often speaking as the vast minority
(Luke 12:32, Matt. 7:14, Rom. 11:5). This “misso dei” is, then, a misapplied
term being used to serve a Dominionist agenda.
Dominionism is clear false doctrine.
The third element states this:
Missional
theology sees the Church (the people of God) as a contrast society. We recognized that our culture
continues to move through massive levels of discontinuous change, which is
rapidly de-centering the church from its former place at the center. This
raises fundamental questions about the relationship between Christian life and
the pluralist culture in which we live. In terms of the latter, the message
of Jesus is the breaking-in of God?s Kingdom reign into the world. Therefore,
the church is the called-out community of God in midst of the specificity of a
culture. The church is an ecclesia, which means an assembly that has been called
out in a public way as a sign, witness, and foretaste of where God is inviting
all creation in Jesus Christ. The church, in its life together and witness in
the world, proclaims the destiny and future of all creation. The God we meet
in Jesus calls the church to be a community of people who no longer live for
themselves and their own needs but as a contrast society whose life together
manifests God?s future for the whole of creation. (http://www.allelon.org/projects/mission_western_culture.cfm)
The church has never been the center of society, not by a long
shot. God is not in the process of
“breaking in” His Kingdom. He is in the
process of redeeming sinners who will participate in His Kingdom when it is
established. If people are busy “breaking
in” what they perceive as God’s Kingdom they will be shocked to find out they
were not living in obedience to the Lord when He comes (as a thief). We are to do more than be a community of
contrast. We are to be a community of
truth proclamation and truth life. If
the truth of redemption is not clearly proclaimed all our Christian
machinations will have been in vain. It
is true that our culture should be that laid down by Christ and the
Apostles. But we cannot do that by
compromise with the world, only by contrast and the real contrast are the
exclusive claims of Christ in a world that does not believe.
Joh
14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one
comes to the Father except through me.
Ac
4:12
Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under
heaven given to men by which we must be saved."
It is already a hate crime in some countries to make
exclusive claims of salvations against the truth claims of others. If EC followers cannot distinguish between the
exclusive claims of Christ and the “truth” claims of other religions because
the EC leadership is enamored with those other “stories” and “truths” then how
can they call this progress? Where
there is no understanding that the Bible is THE Truth (John 17:17) , that Jesus
Christ is THE truth (John 14:6), there can be no truthful dialog or salvation,
for that matter.
Who is Alan Roxburgh and what is his connection to
Allelon and the Mission In Western Culture Project?
Long Answer: Alan serves as the Vice President for Allelon Canada.
He is the Director of Educational Resources throughout North America and serves
as the coordinating team leader for the Mission in Western Culture Project. He
has over twenty-seven years of experience in church leadership as a pastor of
congregations in small towns, urban centers and the suburbs and in
denominational leadership. As seminary faculty he was responsible for teaching
in the areas of leadership development and domestic missiology. Alan is
ordained in the Baptist Federation of Canada. (http://www.allelon.org/roxburgh/?page_id=2)
ALAN J.
ROXBURGH, formerly pastor of churches in Toronto and
in
philosophical theology, and the Doctor of Ministry degree at Northern
Baptist
Seminary in Chicago,
Illinois. As an original member of Gospel
and our Culture
Network (GOCN), Dr. Roxburgh has helped author
two
foundational books: The Church Between Gospel and Culture
(Eerdmans,
1996) and, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the
Church in North
America (Eerdmans, 1998). He has also written two other
books on the
challenges of missional identity on North America: Reaching
a New
Generation (InterVarsity Press, 1991 & Regent Press, 1998); and,
Leadership, Liminality and the Missionary Congregation
(Trinity Press, 1998). (http://www.percept1.com/pacific/PDF/CrossingBridge.pdf)
Northern Baptist Seminary is now teaching and endorsing
the Emerging Church. (http://www.seminary.edu/cur.student/documents/DMIN7615-KUHL.july.18.22.2005.pdf) The University of Toronto is a completely
liberal school. In their course
descriptions one of their courses is “Cultivating
a Culture of Generosity” offered through Emmanuel College which promotes the
Emerging Church. (http://www.utoronto.ca/knox/pages/Continuing%20Education/ConEd%202008%20brochure.pdf)
So apparently the type of “theological” education Roxburgh received has influenced
or been influenced by the paradigm of the EC.
Of course Fuller Seminary offers Roxburgh materials. (http://www.fullerseminarybookstore.com/search_results.php?id_author=726) Roxburgh is of course the VP of Allelon and
heads the Mission in Western Culture Project under Allelon.
Long Answer:
There’s been a dis-ease in the back of my mind
for a while about the directions of the missional conversation in North
America. I’ve written about one: it’s too ecclesiocentric. Most of
what I read with missional
in its title is about the church and making the church work with new formulas
and programs. The missional conversation is about what God is up to in the
world; church conversations are a sub-set we’ve turned into the main thing. (Alan
Roxburgh, Seeking a Missional Imagination, http://www.allelon.org/roxburgh/?p=60)
I am not saying everything Roxburgh teaches is false. What I am saying is that he is laying error
alongside truth, which ends up nullifying the true things he is saying by
leading people into error. That is the
case with all false teachers. Not all false teachers start out that way, but
some start out good then fall into the apostasy, which is rife with false
teachings. If he would only take his
own advice about his “dis-ease” with missional teachings maybe he could find
his way back out. But even his dis-ease
is based on a false idea. The Church IS
what God is up to in the world, therefore “church conversations” are of
paramount importance and the “main thing” if Christians are to preach the
Gospel to the world. The main focus of
the Lord is on His Church first (1 John 4:4-5, 5:5). The Church is then set with the task of reaching the world, but
not by pretending that the world knows anything about God, which is what EC
leaders mean by “what God is up to in the world”. The
Bible is clear that the world rejected God (1 Pet. 2:4), were without God (Eph.
2:12) and did not know God (1 Thes. 4:5, Gal. 4:8). God was a mystery to them
(Col. 1:27), they had no hope (Eph. 2:12) and they continued in idolatrous
worship (1 Cor. 10:20, 12:2).
Roxburgh goes
on to indict the church and teach an idea that is not biblical.
I read books that, basically, retreat into the
realm of some ideal imagination that is supposed to provide formulas and methods
for the ailing mission of the church in the West. We
haven’t got past our Cartesian dualism with its romantic idealisms about the
nature of God’s mission in the world. We need a different
imagination. (Alan Roxburgh, Seeking a Missional Imagination, http://www.allelon.org/roxburgh/?p=60)
First of all, the only reason
mission work is ailing is because of the false teaching going on around the
world in churches these people had no part in planting. Now people from those churches are being
diapraxed to have a bad attitude toward Christan mission work so that they will
follow these unbiblical latecomers who use their imaginations instead of follow
the easily understood commands of Jesus Christ and the Apostles. They have gone beyond what is written and
instead are building a new paradigm based on their own ideas.
1Co 4:6 Now, brothers, I
have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you
may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is
written." Then you will not take pride in one man over against
another.
Isa 65:2 All day long I
have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good,
pursuing their own imaginations—
Eze 13:2 "Son of
man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to
those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the LORD!
What we need is not a new paradigm based on the
imaginations of men, but a clear understanding and application of the eternally
relevant Word of God.
This series offers frameworks for understanding how our
metaphorical maps have changed. It proposes ways of developing maps for
cultivating local communities of witness and mission. (Missional
Map-Making: Chapter Five, by Alan Roxburgh, February
15, 2008, http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=741)
This teaching shows that the foundation laid by Brian McLaren in his “Off The Map” series is being carried to fruition by other EC leaders like Alan Roxburgh. The maps have not changed, nor is postmodernism anything really new. The Bible states that even back in the times of the Judges “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6) All you have to do is look at the resources for sale in the Allelon store to see that they are promoting the books of other EC leaders. The board of advisors for Allelon are: James V. Brownson (Reformed Church of America), Inagrace T. Dietterich (an ordained United Methodist pastor), Richard Foster (Quaker and founder of Renovare), Darrell L Guder (Presbyterian minister), George Hunsberger (Western Seminary, Presbyterian), Pat Keifert (Luther Seminary, Lutheran) , Brian Mclaren (Cedar Ridge Community Church, non-denominational), Leonard Sweet (lots of degrees, no obvious church affiliation), Eugene Peterson (Regent College, BC), Dallas Willard (School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles) (http://www.allelon.org/advisory_board.cfm).
One of the most basic rules of good leadership is to do
all that cultivates trust in your leadership. Trust is critical for innovating
a culture of missional transformation.
Leaders who have become aware of these issues need to spend the time
understanding what the alternatives to strategic planning involve, as well as
what might be the appropriate places for using strategic planning. Therefore, the initial
step is to develop a reading list that will assist you to begin reframing your
own understanding. What is involved quite literally, is a changing of our maps.
Strategic planning represents a specific map of how we see reality, understand
people and the nature of change. Time
is required to understand and dwell in an alternative map. It is imperative to take this time. People in
congregations will leaders this kind of time, as we continue to build and
develop trust among our people. (MISSIONAL MAPMAKING -- An Art of the Mission-Shaped Church by Alan Roxburgh, Allelon Publishing, 2008,
http://www.allelon.org/pdf/MAPSchpt5.pdf)
The questions we need to ask
about missional, therefore, are not drawn from the world of business or the
social sciences, nor are they about how to apply supposed New Testament
patterns to the contemporary church. Questions about what God is up to in the
world require us to ask what kind of space church leadership must
indwell at this moment in late modern societies. (a quote by Alan Roxburgh
in Spaces Between by Len Hjalmarson, http://www.allelon.org/missional_journey/?p=158)
Again, well intentioned as it may seem, Roxburgh admits that he does not want “missional” church shaped by the “world of business or the social sciences” though, if truth be told, that is where much of the material of the EC has been culled. But then he goes on to state that churches should also not “apply supposed New Testament patterns to the contemporary church”. But as I see it this is one of the main problems with churches today … that they often stray way too far away from the early church model. That model is a model that has been almost entirely done away with by mega churches with their postmodern poling and throwback traditions that emulate the early Roman Catholic Church instead of the early New Testament church. But then his solution is to require churches to “ask what kind of space church leadership must indwell at this moment in late modern societies.” I know what I am about to say is not necessarily what he meant, but this sounds very pantheistic and metaphysical to me, not Biblical at all. It is no wonder that the average Christian who finds himself or herself attending EC conferences come away with their minds feeling like they have been turned into rice pudding. True Christian leadership are not concerned with indwelling “space”. They are concerned with obeying the Word of God and not running away from it.
Heb 2:1 We must pay
more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not
drift away.
1Ti 1:6 Some have
wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk.
The EC leadership are using strange
unbiblical language that lead to unbiblical ideas. True believer will recognize strangers who bring a different
Word.
Joh 10:5 But they will
never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do
not recognise a stranger’s voice."
As in the time of John, these new teachers want to lay down the new game plan, but they do not know what they
are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
“In these biblical narratives God is constantly present in places where no one would logically expect God’s future to emerge and yet it does over and over. There is nothing in these stories about getting the wrong people off the bus and the right people on to accomplish great ends and become the best organization in the world. This God who calls us is always calling the wrong people onto a bus that isn’t expected to arrive.” (Missional Leader, A. Roxburgh, Pg 18, http://www.backyardmissionary.com/)
God is only “present”, in other word at work, in places where the Church is present. This implies that God is at work in pagan cultures through pagan religions in lieu of His Church and the Gospel. If the bus is the bus of false religion, truth laid alongside error, and pagan culture then it is the wrong bus and no believers should be on it. If they are called and sent by God to those places they will be riding the bus of orthodoxy, of the Gospel, of compassion, and of truth.
Alan Roxburgh was up next. He addressed the question of the conference, “What
is a missional leader?” And then he gave us his standard responses: “I don’t
know,” “Does it matter?” “Who cares?” Why do we want a definition so
desperately? Because we are moderns. Definitions are modern constructs. The
need to define the missional church and missional leadership is a modern need
to define, name, control and plan. So, if I do what I’m not supposed to do
(create a definition), the best I could say is, “a missional leader is one who
can change as the world changes around him/her.”
(http://timneufeld.blogs.com/occasio/2007/06/index.html)
So there need be no definition for “missional”? Could this be a bad excuse for having none? There is always a definition for everything, unless you are a subjectivist who believes that “truth” is always in a state of flux. If definitions are impossible to nail down, then truth is also.
As our culture changes our
perceptual maps become dated and the lenses we use become less and less
helpful. When this occurs we tend to work harder at our frameworks.
Many leaders assume that simply adjusting the map will provide the answers
needed. These men and women have not recognized that we are dealing with
"discontinuous" change. The old lenses are not allowing them to see
things "as they really are." Roxburgh quotes from Surfing the Edge of
Chaos, that in times of discontinuous change "equilibrium is
death." (Alan Roxburgh, The Sky Is Falling !?!,
http://www.nextreformation.com/wp-admin/reviews/falling.htm)
I would completely disagree with Roxburgh’s quote of
“Surging the Edge of Chaos”. There is
nothing more necessary during time of change than equilibrium, the equilibrium
of the never changing, eternal Word of God.
The problem is the lenses EC leadership are looking through are the
lenses of culture rather than the lenses of Scripture. If they want to understand modern culture
all they have to do is look at it through the lessons of history and theography
of the Bible. It is there we can find
answers on how to reach people, not with new programs set on top of new
programs which never work and only confuse the core issues.
What is the Nazarene connection to
all this?
Long
Answer: The Allelon Missional Schools Project was launched after papers were written to explain the
teachings of Allelon. The four papers
what were written were by Dr Dean Blevins: Nazarene Theological Seminary -
Kansas City, Dr Mark Lau Branson/Dr Ryan Bolger: Fuller Theological
Seminary, Pasadena, Dr S. Mark Heim: Andover
Newton Theological School, Dr J. Nelson Kraybill:
Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana (http://www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=335)
The tradition of the Church
of the Nazarene is best described as Methodist, or
“Wesleyan” to acknowledge Holiness and some Pentecostal movements
often framed as renewal movements inside Methodism. … As will be seen; missional
proclivities remain woven, to some degree, into the DNA of Wesleyan praxis.
(http://www.allelon.org/ARTICLES/article.cfm?id=327)
Of course one has to wonder how you can have a “missional
proclivity” long before that concept was even being used. But this shows that the EC leadership is
using the emphasis on praxis already in the Wesleyan churches like the
Nazarenes to attempt to ride their false ideas in on that bandwagon.
The 2006 ALLELON SUMMER
LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
-- Training
and Formation for Missional Leaders was held at Eagle Nazarene Church, 1001 W. State St.,
Eagle, ID, cost $250. (http://www.churchinnovations.org/05_news/pii_v6_i1/pii_v6_i1_lewis.html)
Notice
that Alan Roxburgh was a teacher at this Nazarene church seminar. Here is part of what they presented.
Forming
Missional Leaders
Alan Roxburgh and Mark Priddy will provide participants with a clear,
well-tested process for identifying the skills and capacities needed to
innovate missional life in an existing leadership context. Because pre-course
work is involved, the registration deadline for this course is April 30.
So they are not teaching Biblical concepts but “innovating” missional ideas among the leadership of churches.
Forming a
Missional Order
This course, led by Tim Keel and Gary Waller, will provide a primer on basic
thinking (theology, history, and cultural reflection) about the movement
toward ordered communities, the communal considerations, and commitments needed
to develop missional environments and the habits and practices necessary to
birth missional communities. (http://www.churchinnovations.org/05_news/pii_v6_i1/pii_v6_i1_lewis.html)
They are moving toward
“ordered communities” with “communal considerations”? Sounds like Utopian hippie talk to me. The term “birthing” is taken right out of the New Apostolic
Reformation. Do Nazarenes want to be
innovated into communities where the leadership has total apostolic control
over their thoughts, “habits and practices”?
If I were a Nazarene I would be really skeptical of this movement at
this point.
On the web site “Emergent
Nazarenes” there are a whole list of contributors from the Nazarene
denomination who are urging the Nazarenes into the EC. (http://emergentnazarenes.blogspot.com/)
The current
general superintendents, elected in 2005, are the following: Paul G. Cunningham, James
H. Diehl, Nina G. Gunter, Jesse C. Middendorf, Jerry
D. Porter and J. K. Warrick. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Nazarene) As far as I can tell all of the above are
allowing the Emerging Church into the Church of the Nazarene. On the official Church of the Nazarene site,
http://www.nazarene.org they have a
whole subset of the site dedicated to Emerging
(http://www.nazarenemissions.org/10002/story.aspx). Even their banner on the
nazarene.org site uses the words Christian … holiness … missional. Missional is a term of the Emerging Church,
not of Biblical Christian churches. The
Global Mission Conference, though exposing youth to other cultures, is using
the terminology of the EC to bring the young generation into line with EC ideas. (http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/MediaView.aspx?mediaId=347e0fe9-5e3f-46e6-8e1a-743ce8db1be7) Terms like “encountering stories” and making
them part of yours, “a conversation in God’s global story”, “experience global
prayer”, “discuss responsible compassion”, “engage in conversation”, “join the
coversation”, and “join the story” are all expressions that are being used in
EC conferences. The “missional church”
is also expounded upon on the Nazarene main site on this page: http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/
using the search term “missional”.
An article by Ron Benefiel who is
president of Nazarene Theological Seminary is posted on the Allelon site. (Response
to Craig Van Gelder’s - “ENGAGING THE MISSIONAL CHURCH CONVERSATION AS A
FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPING MISSIONAL THEOLOGY” by Ron Benefiel, President,
Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO, http://www.allelon.org/projects/Benefiels_response_CVG.pdf) In that article he states: “I have jotted down some of what I
understand to be some of the theological and sociological challenges in moving
from the church that “is” toward the missional church that I understand we are
called to be.” The problem is that
The Bible has not called us to be “missional”, at least not the way it is being
defined in the EC. We are called to
carry out the Great Commission and to encourage and build one another up in the
Faith, that is in sound doctrine. We
are to be light and salt to the world, but we are not called to work with every
nere-do-well who comes wafting through our churches, denominations or
organizations with a “new map”. But it
is obvious to me that Nazarene Theological Seminary is being guided by the EC,
not solid Biblical teaching. Maybe they
should just rename the school “Nazarene Missional Semniary” or “Nazarene We
Love McLaren Seminary” or some more appropriate name because they are now
spouting the same new unbiblical ideas as the EC and have little interest,
apparently, in what the Bible says about how we should carry out the task of
evangelism or the teaching of sound doctrine.
To be “theological” we must follow what God says, not men who use their
imaginations to come up with ways to empower, enrich and make a name for
themselves.
So it appears that EC is a done deal in the Church of
the Nazarene as it is in many other mainline denominations. Why churches allow individuals with false
teachings to come in from the outside and bombard their churches with
unbiblical ideas is beyond me.
The tradition of the Church
of the Nazarene is best described as Methodist, or
“Wesleyan” to acknowledge Holiness and some Pentecostal
movements often framed as renewal movements inside Methodism. … As will be
seen; missional proclivities remain woven, to some degree, into the DNA of
Wesleyan praxis. (http://www.allelon.org/ARTICLES/article.cfm?id=327)
Of course one has to wonder how you can have a “missional
proclivity” long before that concept was even being used. But this shows that the EC leadership is
using the emphasis on praxis already in the Wesleyan churches like the
Nazarenes to attempt to ride their false ideas in on that bandwagon.
The 2006 ALLELON SUMMER
LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE
-- Training
and Formation for Missional Leaders was held at Eagle Nazarene Church, 1001 W. State St.,
Eagle, ID, cost $250. (http://www.churchinnovations.org/05_news/pii_v6_i1/pii_v6_i1_lewis.html)
Notice
that Alan Roxburgh was a teacher at this Nazarene church seminar. Here is part of what they presented.
Forming
Missional Leaders
Alan Roxburgh and Mark Priddy will provide participants with a clear, well-tested
process for identifying the skills and capacities needed to innovate
missional life in an existing leadership context. Because pre-course work
is involved, the registration deadline for this course is April 30.
So they are not teaching Biblical concepts but “innovating” missional ideas among the leadership of churches.
Forming a
Missional Order
This course, led by Tim Keel and Gary Waller, will provide a primer on basic
thinking (theology, history, and cultural reflection) about the movement toward
ordered communities, the communal considerations, and commitments needed to
develop missional environments and the habits and practices necessary to birth
missional communities. (http://www.churchinnovations.org/05_news/pii_v6_i1/pii_v6_i1_lewis.html)
They are moving toward
“ordered communities” with “communal considerations”? Sounds like Utopian hippie talk to me. The term “birthing” is taken right out of the New Apostolic
Reformation. Do Nazarenes want to be
innovated into communities where the leadership has total apostolic control
over their thoughts, “habits and practices”?
If I were a Nazarene I would be really skeptical of this movement at
this point.
On the web site “Emergent
Nazarenes” there are a whole list of contributors from the Nazarene
denomination who are urging the Nazarenes into the EC. (http://emergentnazarenes.blogspot.com/)
The current
general superintendents, elected in 2005, are the following: Paul G. Cunningham, James
H. Diehl, Nina G. Gunter, Jesse C. Middendorf, Jerry
D. Porter and J. K. Warrick. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Nazarene) As far as I can tell all of the above are allowing
the Emerging Church into the Church of the Nazarene. On the official Church of the Nazarene site, http://www.nazarene.org they have a whole
subset of the site dedicated to Emerging (http://www.nazarenemissions.org/10002/story.aspx).
Even their banner on the nazarene.org site uses the words Christian … holiness
… missional. Missional is a term of the
Emerging Church, not of Biblical Christian churches. The Global Mission Conference, though exposing youth to other
cultures, is using the terminology of the EC to bring the young generation into
line with EC ideas. (http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/MediaView.aspx?mediaId=347e0fe9-5e3f-46e6-8e1a-743ce8db1be7) Terms like “encountering stories” and making
them part of yours, “a conversation in God’s global story”, “experience global
prayer”, “discuss responsible compassion”, “engage in conversation”, “join the
coversation”, and “join the story” are all expressions that are being used in
EC conferences. The “missional church”
is also expounded upon on the Nazarene main site on this page: http://www.nazarenemedialibrary.org/
using the search term “missional”.
An article by Ron Benefiel who is
president of Nazarene Theological Seminary is posted on the Allelon site. (Response
to Craig Van Gelder’s - “ENGAGING THE MISSIONAL CHURCH CONVERSATION AS A FRAMEWORK
FOR DEVELOPING MISSIONAL THEOLOGY” by Ron Benefiel, President, Nazarene
Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO, http://www.allelon.org/projects/Benefiels_response_CVG.pdf) In that article he states: “I have jotted down some of what I
understand to be some of the theological and sociological challenges in moving
from the church that “is” toward the missional church that I understand we are
called to be.” The problem is that
The Bible has not called us to be “missional”, at least not the way it is being
defined in the EC. We are called to
carry out the Great Commission and to encourage and build one another up in the
Faith, that is in sound doctrine. We
are to be light and salt to the world, but we are not called to work with every
nere-do-well who comes wafting through our churches, denominations or
organizations with a “new map”. But it
is obvious to me that Nazarene Theological Seminary is being guided by the EC,
not solid Biblical teaching. Maybe they
should just rename the school “Nazarene Missional Semniary” or “Nazarene We
Love McLaren Seminary” or some more appropriate name because they are now
spouting the same new unbiblical ideas as the EC and have little interest,
apparently, in what the Bible says about how we should carry out the task of
evangelism or the teaching of sound doctrine.
To be “theological” we must follow what God says, not men who use their
imaginations to come up with ways to empower, enrich and make a name for
themselves.
So it appears that EC is a done deal in the Church of the
Nazarene as it is in many other mainline denominations. Why churches allow individuals with false
teachings to come in from the outside and bombard their churches with unbiblical
ideas is beyond me.
The EC promoted and taught by groups like Allelon is full of the teachings of false teachers who have introduced ideas and practices that are not Biblical. Here is a partial list:
Pantheism
Anointing "in" objects, cities, nations
Veneration of objects/icons used to visualize
Slain in the "spirit"/Drunkenness in the "spirit"
Synergy
Globalism
Dominionism/Save the planet
Contemplative Prayer/Labyrinth
Visualization
Centering down
Spiritual mapping
Yoga
Martial arts
Repetitive music/mantra
Automatic writing/journaling
Interfaithism
Universalism
Female deities
Astrology
Auras/personal prophecy
Portents/signs
Postmodernism/Relativism
Feelings based discernment
Other false doctrines such as disdain for the Rapture and
Second Coming, a low view of the Bible and high view of new revelation, a
vilification of the Church and mission, a disdain for the Gospel which includes
teaching on hell and judgment, and a putting down of Christ’s death on the
cross.
For a further treatment of this subject, go to: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/newageinthechurch.html
Here is a summary of some of the specific false teachings of Allelon:
Spirituality refers first of
all to the universal gift of aliveness that exists within all religions and
outside of religions. (Leonard
Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, pg. 253)
A surprisingly central feature of all the world’s religions is the
language of light in communicating the divine and symbolizing the union of the
human with the divine: Muhammed’s light-filled cave, Moses’ burning bush,
Paul’s blinding light, Fox’s “inner light,” Krishna’s Lord of Light, Böhme’s
light-filled cobbler shop, Plotinus’ fire experiences, Bodhisattvas with the
flow of Kundalini’s fire erupting from their fontanelles, and so on. Light is the common thread that ties together
near-death experiences as they occur in various cultures. (Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, pg. 146)
… A New Light
movement of 'world-making' faith have helped to create the world that is to,
and may yet, be. Then, and only then, will earthlings have uncovered the
meaning of these words, some of the last words
poet/activist/contemplative/bridge between East and West Thomas Merton
uttered: "We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we
have to recover is our original unity." (Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, pg. 10)
"Fourth, New Light embodiment means to be 'in connection' and
'information' with other faiths. To be in-formation means to know each
other’s songs almost as well as one knows them oneself, and to enlarge the
community to include those whose conceptions of God differ from ours in form.
To be in connection means to be able to sing, not only selected stanzas, but
all the verses" … "One can be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ
without denying the flickers of the sacred in followers of Yahweh, or Kali, or
Krishna. A globalization of evangelism 'in connection' with others, and a
globally 'in-formed' gospel, is capable of talking across the fence with Hindu,
Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim--people from other so called 'new' religious traditions
('new' only to us)--without assumption of superiority and power."(Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality, p. 129-130)
ALAN JONES (Author of Reimagining
Christianity) "The Church's fixation on the death of Jesus
as the universal saving act must end, and the place of the cross must be
reimagined in Christian faith. Why? Because of the cult of suffering and the
vindictive God behind it" (Alan Jones, Reimaging
Christianity, p. 132).
“Universalism is not as bankrupt of biblical
support as some suggest,” (Brian McLaren, The Last Word and the Word
After That, ( San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), pp. 103 (cf. pp. 182-183)
“It may
be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers
of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts,"…
"Is our religion the only one that understands the true meaning of life?
Or does God place his truth in others too? ... The gospel is not our gospel, but the gospel of the kingdom of God,
and what belongs to the kingdom of God cannot be hijacked by Christianity"
(p. 194). (Brian McLaren, An Emergent Manifesto, Baker Books, referenced http://simplyagape.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html)
"I
don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be
'saved'?.... I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we
have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy."––Brian McLaren, The Emergent Mystique,
Christianity Today, 2004
"I
must add, though, that I don't believe making disciples must equal making
adherents to the Christian religion.”---Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 260
The phrase ‘the Second Coming of Christ’ never actually
appears in the Bible. Whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers
deserves rethinking, a popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and
rejected. (McLaren, Everything Must Change, Jesus, Global Crises,
and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), pg. 144.)
And yet, all the time I could feel myself
drifting toward acceptance that gay persons are fully human persons and should
be afforded all of the cultural and ecclesial benefits that I am.
(”Aha!” my critics will laugh derisively, “I knew he and his ilk were on a
continuous leftward slide!”) … In any case, I now believe that GLBTQ
can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at least as much as any of
us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by
church and state. (Tony Jones, Same Sex Marriage Blogalogue:
How I Went from There to Here, Online
source, bold theirs)