“The new Christianity of the Great Emergence must discover some authority base or delivery system and/or governing agency of its own. It must formulate—and soon—something other than Luther’s sola scriptura which, although used so well by the Great Reformation originally, is now seen as hopelessly outmoded or insufficient” (Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence, 150-51). Tickle observes a major challenge for the Emerging Church: the diminished view of the Bible as the sole authority has left th...

“Incarnation is the place where sacred and secular meet” (Michael Slaughter and Warren Bird, Unlearning Church, 51). Is it? Christ is Holy as is the human flesh that he received during His incarnation. The human flesh was good in the eyes of God until it became stained by the sinfulness of humanity. But Christ’s flesh remained good because of His immaculate conception. It seems dangerous for the Emerging Church to  be welding the sacred with the secular in the Person of Christ. Ins...

For Pagitt, the “guiding idea of evangelism is not change” or “conversion. It’s resonance” (Doug Pagitt, Evangelism in the Inventive Age, 9). In Matthew 18:3 (NIV 1984), Jesus says “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” In Mark 1:15 (NIV 1984), Jesus says, “The time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” In Luke 5:32 (NIV 1984), Jesus says, “I have not come to call the righteous, bu...

In Unmasking the New Age, Douglass Groothuis offers six distinctives that are common among New Age proponents: All is One, All is God, Humanity is God, a Change in Consciousness, All Religions are One, and Cosmic Evolutionary Optimism (18-31). New Agers resoundingly agree that all is one, i.e. all is “interrelated, interdependent, and interpenetrating” (18). In Naked Spirituality, McLaren argues, “Put beauty, diversity, complexity, and harmonious interdependence togethe...