In this article, I will be interacting with Mark Miller's Experiential Storytelling. In this work, Miller states, "What if we removed all of the argumentative language, replaced it with beautiful narratives, and let people feel the power of story" (26). Miller certainly understands postmodern culture, and his desire to contextualize the gospel should be appreciated. However, his contextualization appears to move in the direction of syncretization. Let's examine this quote. The...

“The ability to teach and preach and lead is taking a back seat to the pastor’s capacity to create and facilitate open-source faith experiences for the people of the church” (Doug Pagitt, Church in the Inventive Age, 33). Doug Pagitt prefers a dialogical preaching style that invites everyone in the audience to participate in the sermon. All attenders, Pagitt, and even the Bible are participants in the dialogue. What does Pagitt mean when he says “open-source faith?” This is a fancy way of sa...

“The inerrancy debate is based on the belief that the Bible is the word of God, that the Bible is true because God made it and gave it to us as a guide to truth. But that’s not what the Bible says” (Pagitt, A Christianity Worth Believing, 65). If the Bible is not the word of God, how come the phrase “Thus says the Lord” appears 418 times in the Bible. Jesus Himself rebukes the Pharisees for placing their traditions before the word of God (Matt 15:6; Mark 7:13). Jesus equates Scripture w...

The “second naiveté,” first articulated by Paul Ricoeur, is “the literary and theological subject matter in front of the text that potentially can liberate . . . the text’s claims on the reader’s life and thought” (Mark I. Wallace, Second Naiveté, xiii-xiv). Ted Campbell applies Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach, with McLaren’s approval, to establish ecumenism by avoiding systematic theologies in favor of simply affirming “the most basic common teaching of historic Christian communities, th...