Definitions Emerging?

Ray Comfort and Todd Friel were talking about the Emergent Church. Their conversation centered around an article by Ed Stetzer. In the article, Ed classifies the Emergent Church into three categories: (tallskinnykiwi found it helpful too.)

Ed's thoughts in bold. Mine are just standard font.

"Relevants. Yes, I made up the word. Sorry about the grammar. However, it expresses an important idea. There are a good number of young (and not so young) leaders who some classify as “emerging” that really are just trying to make their worship, music and outreach more contextual to emerging culture. Ironically, while some may consider them liberal, they are often deeply committed to biblical preaching, male pastoral leadership and other values common in conservative evangelical churches."

This is probably the group that introduced me to the whole conversation. I see nothing wrong with presenting truth in a culturally relevant way.

"Reconstructionists. The reconstructionists think that the current form of church is frequently irrelevant and the structure is unhelpful. Yet, they typically hold to a more orthodox view of the Gospel and Scripture. Therefore, we see an increase in models of church that reject certain organizational models, embracing what are often called “incarnational” or “house” models. They are responding to the fact that after decades of trying fresh ideas in innovative churches, North America is less churched, and those that are churched are less committed."

I would agree that the view of Scripture and the Gospel are largely preserved intellectually with this group. However, the church isn't just an intellectual conceptualization, but largely functions in practice. I"m all for eliminating those practices that are merely creations of 20th century America. However, some functions are Biblically ordained (elders, preaching, church discipline, to name a few) and I'm not sure what happens to a church that abandones those.

"Revisionists. Much of the concern has been addressed at those I call revisionists. Right now, many of those who are revisionists are being read by younger leaders and perceived as evangelicals. They are not -- at least according to our evangelical understanding of Scripture. We significantly differ from them regarding what the Bible is, what it teaches and how we should live it in our churches. I don’t hate them, question their motives and I won’t try to mischaracterize their beliefs. But, I won’t agree with them."

This is the group that seems to get the most press. I know that labels defy all that the emergent church is trying to accomplish, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why leaders within the movement don't articulate some differences.

I can see great benefit in working on church plants with "relevants." I can see how "reconstructionists" can help us rethink the issues regarding new churches. I would not want to reproduce "revisionists" however. I firmly believe in substitutionary atonement, the reality of hell, and the authority of the Word of God. Their conversation may help us intellectually work through why we believe what we do, but I don't know that we can partner in the work of the Gospel.