Why Does The Emerging Church Attract Young People?

Tom: You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

We’re continuing our series on the emerging church movement in this segment of our program, and if you’re not familiar with this trend in evangelical Christianity. It’s perhaps the fastest growing movement in the church today, especially among young adults. It’s drawing mostly those between the ages 18 and 30, and particularly those who have been turned off by seeker-sensitive or purpose-driven churches that were heavily involved in the church growth activities. And a claimed goal of the emerging church movement is to introduce what they call a reinvented or reimagined Christianity to the world, and particularly to our youth culture, which is really heavily influenced by post-modern attitudes, beliefs, and practices.

Dave, to begin with, I guess I need to reiterate that there is a diversity of beliefs among those who are on board the emerging church movement. Some seem to be dabbling in it while others, they want to maintain the whole program; they really want to get involved. But there are those who—conservative Christians, churches—who kind of like some aspects of it and they’re getting on board. What I’d like to discuss today is some of the aspects of the emerging church movement that are attractive to young people.

Now, first of all, as I’ve said, many are turned off by the worldly influences that have been introduced into their evangelical churches. Of course, I’m referring to seeker-friendly, seeker-sensitive programs, purpose-driven. Many churches have gone heavily into the purpose-driven movement. And so they’re very popular, especially among the larger churches that can afford the different programs. And it can be pretty expensive.

Dave: But aren’t they going to get worldly influences in this movement, too?

Tom: Well, Dave, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. I think it’s both movements are really consumer-oriented. You give the young people what they want, and you give, you know, the older people commercial music, you know, whatever venue they like. But, Dave, here’s my question: the young people are saying, well, these seeker-friendly movements, they lack a reverence of spirituality that they want. What would you say that to that?

Dave: Well, it depends on what you mean by reverence. I don’t think—I don’t know, I’ve been to Rick Warren’s church and watched him, heard him talk, and seen what goes on there. I didn’t find a lack of reverence. But if you want something like in the Orthodox Church, or the Catholic Church—you want liturgy and so forth—and you would probably call that irreverent. But I wouldn’t call… Well, it depends, what kind of a worship team do you have? Are they up there jazzing it up, are they up there performing, or is there some reverence? That’s one of the problems that I face, too, Tom.

Tom: Well, you know, people—maybe this says more about our age, Dave. You see guys in there with ball caps on, you see people drinking lattes, you know, getting comfortable. And you know, you could say, “Well, come on, Tom, you’re being old-fashioned here.” Well, what I’m getting at, and maybe it’s because I grew up in Roman Catholic Church for 30 years—not that it was really more spiritual, but it gave you a sense of awe and reverence for God in the environment you were in, as opposed to something that’s so casual. “Well, wait a minute, we’re just kind of here.”

Dave: Yeah. Well, Tom, to me, it’s pretty simple—would it fly in the presence of God in heaven? You had better think about that, because I’ve seen some so-called worship teams…I mean, they seem to go out of their way. They’ve got the new mussed look for the hair now, for example, or…I don’t know. You’ve got to have jeans with holes in it because then you’re “with it.”

Tom: Yeah, or performance is a big deal.

Dave: It is a performance. But I have an objection, and I’m going to anger some people out there. They’ll say, “Well, we’re not going to have you back again!” But I have a problem with this whole worship team idea. It’s kind of like, okay, now we’re going to worship. And in order to worship we’ve got these guys and gals up there, and they’re going to sing some songs, and that will bring us into worship.

I can tell you, I was raised in a fellowship—it doesn’t mean that this is the right way to do it, but I tell you, we had reverence. We remembered the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ with the bread and the cup every week. Now, we sat there—I mean, there was nobody getting up there singing, you know, “Come on now, let’s do this and that.” I can tell you there was weeping. Hearts were bowed in worship as we sat there thinking about what Christ did for us.

See, to me, worship is not just somebody up there getting you going singing. It’s a much deeper thing than that. It comes from the heart with a profound, thoughtful appreciation of who God is, who Jesus Christ is, what it cost for our redemption. And I don’t find that in most of these so-called worship services and worship teams.

Tom: Dave, now usually I stay out of this. I’m tone deaf. I can make a joyful noise unto the Lord, but music is not my deal, so I like to just back off and let you take the heat for some of this. But I’m going to step forward here just with an idea, a thought, an opinion, and people can just blow it off as soon as it comes out of my mouth. I think that a worship team, people that bring music—and that’s totally biblical. I go through the Psalms and I see all of the different instruments, and that’s great. But what I would like to see is have the worship team, or group, or whatever you want to call them, move to the back of the church so they are not a distraction. Let their music come forth. That’s just an idea.

Dave: Tom, I find that an awful lot of the songs they sing that are popular with various churches, I don’t find much worship in it. I’ve said it before, we worship worship, we’ve fallen in love with love, and we praise praise, but there’s nothing about the Lord! Worship is worshipping Him. I want to have some thoughts about Him if I’m going to be worshipping Him. If I’m going to be praising Him—I’ve said it, but I’ll say it again: sometimes I sit there and I think, Well, praise and worship… Well, really, what are we praising, and who are we worshipping? There’s no substance in a lot of this stuff.

Now, okay, I’m over the hill and I’m old, but I can tell you—I could begin to quote him, but I won’t. I’ve done it before, but there are hymns from the past that have real substance. Let me just quote one, and I’ve probably quoted it before: “In weakness like defeat, He won the victor’s crown. Tread all our foes beneath His feet by being trodden down. He Satan’s power laid low, made sin, He sin overthrew, bowed to the grave destroyed it so, and death by dying slew.” Now, there’s something for you to think about. And the word “worship” or “praise” was not in it, but we are worshipping the Lord and praising Him.

Okay, now I shouldn’t have said it anyway. Junk this whole program, because people are going to be unhappy, but I hope they will at least take me seriously.

Tom: Yeah. Dave, I’ll give an example. Okay, I’m stepping up to take some of the heat for this—I’ll give you an example of a hymn, so-called, that people just love, and it doesn’t make any sense. Try this one: “Worship His majesty.” What is that?

Dave: Yeah, well, that’s a kingdom dominion song.

Tom: I know that, but how can you worship that quality, that characteristic? You’re moving from God to an attribute of this—well, it’s not even an attribute.

Dave: Well, but, Tom, if “majesty” were capitalized, then that means “His Majesty.” It means Him. But it’s not capitalized. We’re worshiping His majesty.

Tom: No, no, that’s a quality surrounding God. And so that’s why I say it doesn’t make any sense.

Dave: We’re not worshipping Him.

Tom: Okay, we’ll get letters for that.

Dave: Yeah, okay. But anyway, Tom, the emerging church movement, what they’re trying to do is get the attention and the approval, trying to give something that will somehow get these certain people (young people mostly) back in the swing of it. But they don’t necessarily want to swing, they’re going to contemplate, and that’s good if it’s the right thing.

Tom: Well, “contemplation” means to think through. But, you know, the whole contemplative movement within certainly the emerging church and Richard Foster’s Renovaré so-called “spiritual movement,” it’s not biblical contemplation.

Dave: Right.

Tom: Dave, let’s look at some of the things that could have real value. You see, we’ve taken some issues, or looked at some things that are going on in different movements throughout Christianity over a number of decades. Well, first of all, we’re saying, “Is this biblical?”
 We’re asking a question.

So, we’ve reacted to some of the trends that we have seen within the church. And I think, as the emerging church grows, part of its attraction is that they’re trying to correct some things that they see in the popular churches—as I said, getting back to a more reverent approach to it, and so on, and that’s good. But somehow, they take some things like—I’ll give you what they pride themselves on: community, relationship, conversation. They think developing a sense of community within the fellowship is really a priority, as opposed to megachurches. And people going to church, they don’t interact with one another, they just go and leave and become part of a system that really alienates them from one another. So, what about community? Don’t you think that’s a good thing to have community within a fellowship where you’re really concerned about each other and looking out for each other?

Dave: Well, the Elks Club could do that, or the Masons. Tom, we need to get to the substance—what is the substance? Not the form, although it was my fault—I started talking about the worship team, and some of the songs and so forth.

But let me just read—I think we have quoted this before, but people can’t remember. This is Brian McLaren—tell us who he is.

Tom: Well, Brian McLaren is actually maybe the most prominent leader within the emerging church movement. [He’s] written a number of books, and he’s the most often quoted. Was it Newsweek? It was either Time or Newsweek that voted him one of the top 25 evangelical leaders in the country today.

Dave: Well, let me quote him: “I must add, though, that I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherence to the Christian religion.” I don’t know what he means by “religion.” “It may be advisable in many (not all) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish context.” Now, Tom, that’s insane.

Tom: Certainly anti-biblical.

Dave: “I’m going to remain a Buddhist.” They don’t even believe in God, but, “I’m going to be a follower of Jesus too, or a Hindu.” That was Gandhi. Gandhi said, “I love Jesus, but I’m turned off by these Christians.” Well, that could be true. I know there are a lot of Christians who will turn you off.

And as far as community is concerned, there are a lot of churches where you could go there and remain a stranger. They don’t call you during the week, somehow you don’t make friends, you don’t get to know people…

Tom: And that’s the sense of the community that many of these emerging church leaders want. But they push it way too far, way beyond what the Bible would encourage us to do.

Dave, for example, remember back in the days of the hippies? Communal living was a big deal. There’s a sense of that among many of the writers of these emerging church movements. But community now becomes almost cultish. It’s the community that you do things the way the community wants you to do it. You really understand the Bible. The Bible now is not interpreted so much by the individual, you know. You’re reading the Holy Spirit within you if you’re a true believer, and you’re given understanding, but no, now it’s kind of a group thing.

And I’ll give you another quote. This is from Rob Bell in his book, Velvet Elvis. He writes, “Let’s make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible as ‘owner’s manual’ metaphor. It’s terrible, it really is, we have to embrace the Bible as the wild, uncensored passionate account it is of experiencing the living God.” Now this is really—I don’t want people to miss this. He’s talking about group decision that the community comes together and decides to interpret the Bible a certain way, according to the direction the community wants. I’ll finish up the quote here. He says: “Community, community, community, together with others wrestling and searching and engaging the Bible as a group of people hungry to know God in order to follow God.” But that has to do with the group will interpret as they feel, you know, not so much “thus saith the Lord,” what God says, but how they feel about it. That’s the way that much of this is working.

Dave: Well, Tom, they’re rewriting the Bible, they’re changing the meaning. It reminds me of the hippies—you mentioned the hippies. I spent a lot of time with hippies.

Tom: Dave, do you have to become more like the hippies in order for them to identify with you?

Dave: Well, you see the hippies began; I can remember the beginning of it because I’m older enough. Of course, a lot of it had to do with drugs.

Tom: That was the beat generation. I go back there.

Dave: Right, it was “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” That was Timothy Leary.

Tom: Right, Harvard professor at that time.

Dave: Right, and he was kind of their leader. Now, the whole idea was that it was a protest against society. The same thing here, Tom—the emerging church is protesting against this establishment, the established church, and they were going to do their own thing. Well, of course, now we’ve got community. And that was the hippies—they were going to do their own thing—they all ended up doing the same thing! They dressed alike, they talked alike, and so forth. So they were not liberated from some system, they just traded places. They made up their own system, but then they became bound to this system. And if the community now is going to decide… Furthermore, it sounds like he’s in charge of the community. He’s telling the community what they are going to think. These are the writers, not everybody is writing, so they’re the ones the rest of them are following.

Tom, I want to be a follower of the Lord.

Now, the Lord wants us to know Him. Jesus said—we’ve quoted it many times— “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”

Now, it’s not following. It’s not knowing someone else. This is an individual matter, it’s not a community matter. Now, it may cause me to love others, and it should. Christ said, “By this shall all men know that you’re my disciples, if you have love for one for another.” But the fact that I can get alone with God’s Word, and I can talk to Him and I can begin to have a deeper understanding of the truth, I can meditate upon the Word of God—I’m not going to be directed by some community to do this. That’s a little problem that we have here. It takes individual faith. You don’t come to Christ as a community. The Bible never says that. It says, “Whosoever will.” It doesn’t say “what community will.  ome on as a community now.”

And, Tom, they’re getting away from some forms. There are a lot of forms in Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, but they’re coming up with their own forms without realizing it, their own way of doing things.

Tom: And it’s a way that “seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.”

Dave: What concerns me, Tom, the most, they are jettisoning the Bible. They’re throwing it out. “We don’t need the Bible.”

Tom: Well, we certainly, as I just quoted Rob Bell, he says, “Let’s make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible as ‘owner’s manual’ metaphor.” The Bible is our instruction book! It’s how we get to know the Lord, and then do what pleases Him.

Dave: Yep, owner’s manual—that’s a metaphor, he says. It’s the “manufacturer’s handbook.” These are instructions from the God who created us, like you would get an instruction with something that you bought, some instrument, or whatever it might be that you…operating manual. Now, he objects to that. But wait a minute! God is our Creator. He’s our maker, and He knows why He made us. He knows what makes us tick.

Tom: Better than we do. He knows our heart better than we do.

Dave: Absolutely! Now, what’s wrong with that metaphor? This is what the Bible is all about—taking instructions. But it seems that these people are just turning that all over.

Tom: Well, Dave, again, this is a reflection of them trying to identify—“them” being the “emerging church” leaders—trying to identify with the post-modern generation. They don’t want to be told what to do. They are not into authority, or having somebody instruct you. They want to figure it out on their own, and really massage that around so that it’s what they want which is going to rise to the surface.

Dave: Yes. Tom, you know me very well. I am not impressed by these labels: “post-modern.” What are you talking about? Were Adam and Eve post-modern? They didn’t like authority either. They decided to do their own thing. It seems to me that this is something deep in the heart of man that goes back, and now we’re going to put a new wave on it, and then we can justify it because we’re the post-modern generation, and we don’t like authority, and so forth. Tom, it’s ludicrous, but it’s deadly!

Tom: Dave, you’re just a little over 80 now, right?

Dave: I’m still young, Tom.

Tom: Okay, but if your grandfather was here, still alive today, we could ask him, “Was your generation a rebellious generation?” He’d say, “Absolutely.” Each one is.

Dave: It’s in the heart of man. “The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked….”

And look, Tom, I was in the Army. I was in the Naval Reserve on a ship, and I can tell you I did not like authority. That really drove me mad. Now, I’ll tell you the verse that I used to justify for myself—Solomon said, “I have seen servants riding on horses, and princes walking like servants on the earth.” And I think some of the guys who were in charge were not too bright, and some of the orders they gave, there weren’t really reasons for it. Well, what was the saying we had—“Well, there’s a right way, and the wrong way, and the Army way.” All kinds of stuff like that. Tom, I did not like authority. But I can tell you I love the authority of God. I love being under the shepherding of Jesus Christ and His Word, and I will not rebel against that.

But these people have rebelled, not just against society, but against God. They’ve rebelled against his Word. “God, now, wait a minute. How come You’re trying to make all the rules? We don’t like Your rules. We want to come up with our own!” But wait a minute, you’ve got it down there in writing. “Well, then we’ll have a discussion about this. We’ll dialogue about it. I think there maybe should be a different way of understanding this.” That’s where they are, Tom.

Tom: Yes. And it’s very sad because we do have the world in rebellion. And now we have those who profess to be evangelicals, Bible-believing Christians, we have them adapting to some of these things, supposedly in order to convert the world. No, no. They’re the ones who are being converted to the world’s ways.

Dave: I’m afraid so.