What's Wrong with the Emerging Church?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here is this week’s question: Dear Dave and TA, When the Bible says we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, wouldn’t that include worshipping Him with our senses, since that is a major part of what the emerging church movement is all about, that is, encouraging us to worship God with our creativity, our art, our dance, and so forth, how can you complain about such activities?

Tom:

Dave, I’ve been hearing this more and more, especially since the September article dealt with the emerging church, and you know, I love talking to young people about that, and it’s like they have a zeal. They want more of God, many that I talk to, and they want to utilize the gifts, the talents that they’ve had, they want to be involved in churches that are caring for others, that are community, that are—where you have conversation, where you’re challenging issues, and so on and so forth. But the main thing is they want to use their senses to worship God. Now what’s wrong with that?

Dave:

Well, God is not a physical being, He’s not impressed with our art, in fact, what kind of art are you going to use? You are forbidden to attempt some kind of a physical representation of God.

Tom:

Well, many of these emerging churches use icons, which is really—the history of it, these are divination devices, but go ahead.

Dave:

So, all my senses? This is what Richard Foster would teach. You’re going to get in touch with Jesus you’ve got to visualize Him.

Tom:

Dave, this is like Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, he introduced visualization as a—well really, an occult practice.

Dave:

So you’ve got a visible—some visible or some sound or whatever it is, that is going to draw you closer to God. I was speaking at this, Tom, at Arrowhead Springs many years ago, and a pastor came up to me afterwards and he said—

Tom:

This was the headquarters of Campus Crusade for those that don’t know that.

Dave:

Right. And he came up to me and said: Well, you don’t know what you’re talking about because when I pray I visualize myself in the presence of God, and I find, I get a much closer feeling, a sense of being in His presence, and so forth. And I said: Well now how are you going to visualize yourself in the presence of God? The scripture says: God dwells in a light that no man can approach unto, who no man has seen nor can see. Now what is the purpose---what are you visualizing?Whatever you are visualizing it is not the presence of God, that’s for sure! And to whatever extent it makes you feel closer to God, you have been deceived. So, God is not impressed with—Look, this is called a fetish, it’s a divination device, all of these things that people imagine they can use the witchdoctors use them in order to get in touch with the spirit world, to open the door.

Tom:

So, it’s purely experiential. In other words, they are going to their feelings to somehow feel closer to God, to their emotions and so on. Now, Dave, we have emotions, we have feelings with regard to God but we don’t go there first, that’s a byproduct it seems to me of truth, of God’s Word, of getting to know Him through the Word of God.

Dave:

Amen. But it can involve exaltation, it can involve—wow, an ecstatic experience even. I remember I was a very close friend of Richard Wurmbrand, and I remember him telling me, in fact I introduced him to Bill Bright at the Campus Crusade headquarters. I remember him telling me he’s being tortured so badly you couldn’t bear it—red hot poker driven into his flesh, he still had the holes that had been burned there. But he said, Sometimes, the presence of Christ was so powerful that he just danced for joy in the cell.

Tom:

Now he didn’t conjure that up, this was the grace of God.

Dave:

He wasn’t dancing in order to get in touch with God.

Tom:

Right, right. That’s really an important thing with regard to the emerging church and the way they are approaching these things. That’s why we think it’s dead wrong.

Dave:

This is a very important point you’re making, Tom. If I’m using some technique to get in touch with God, that’s the problem. For example, if we went to Jeremiah 42—well, they’re disobedient, they’re rebels and they have no intention of doing what God says, but they say to Jeremiah, Go to your God and get a word from the Lord for us. Now Jeremiah didn’t get a crystal ball, he didn’t put his hand on the third eye in his forehead, he didn’t go into a meditative state, he didn’t try to visualize. Very interesting, it says, After ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying: Not a prophet in the Bible ever did anything to get in touch with God. But when he is in touch with God Moses’ face shines as he comes down, so you make a very good point. I don’t do something to get in touch with God. Now if I am inspired to write a poem or a hymn after I have been reading God’s Word and I come to a deeper understanding, this is what we need. Solomon said, Wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding. But much of the songs we’re getting and the sort of things that are going on, and of course you’ve shown them from the internet the images and so forth, that’s not wisdom, that’s the very antithesis of it—

Tom:

Well Dave, it’s worse than that. As we’ve been talking, this is what the series has been about, we have Christians thinking they can use yogic techniques to draw closer to God, to get to know Jesus better, to experience Him. Yoga! Come on!

Dave:

And Tom, it says, With all you are getting, get understanding. You don’t get understanding through a false visualization of the presence of God. You get understanding through the Word of God, the entrance of thy Word giveth us light. But these people are not out to understanding, they want feelings.

Tom:

Experiences. Mmhmm.