Okay, let's get started. We'll have more of these sheets coming in a moment, but let's ask God to bless our time together before we begin. Father, we would thank you for this time together to better your church, and we would look for your blessing in the name of Jesus Christ upon our time together. We ask that you might help us to understand truth and error, and we would ask that you might give us wisdom, Father, as we look into these things with grace and humility, we pray. Please gift us in this way we ask in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, Immersion Church. It will be our topic today. And as I said previously on unrecorded form, this is a challenging thing to get our hands around. There's a lot out there, there's a lot of book writing, there's been a lot of blogs and things like that. But we will try to do this anyway. Emergent Church is known for their postmodernism. Does anyone know what postmodernism means as a term? Postmodernism. Without looking at your sheet. Anyone? After God? After Jesus? After the book was read? Finished? Not exactly. After God. Well, let's look at what we have here. Postmodernism. The definition from the dictionary. Some of this is also from Wikipedia, which apparently is a little bit So we weeded through that and I compared it against Carson and some others too. So we've got some pretty good things to move on here. The tendency in contemporary culture to reject absolute truth. Postmodernism attacks the use of sharp classifications, male versus female, gay versus straight, white versus black, imperial versus colonial, etc. And then we got a definition on the emerging or emergent church. Apparently, within their circles, they look at those as two different terms. Well, modernists, which came along in the 50s, were proclaiming science as the way to truth. So, if you got educated and studied academics, you could find truth. Postmodernism is essentially a declaration that there is no truth. So don't buy it. In a sense, yes. Yes, exactly. And modernism, I would tend to think, I mean, from the Unitarian study, they were labeled modernist for its season, and that was even earlier than that. That would have been probably the 30s and all, but yes, that's definitely what we're getting at here is the inability or the lack of willpower to say, this is true and this is error. So we have a little definition here of the emerging church. By the way, some of this, what we'll do is we'll go through some of these things together and then we'll open up when we get to the beliefs. We'll open up to the floor for some participation. But the Emerging Church as a Christian Movement began in 1970. It crosses a number of theological boundaries. Participants can be described as evangelical, post-evangelical, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Anabaptist, Adventist, Liberal, Post-Liberal, Reform, Charismatic, and fill-in-the-blank. There was many other things we didn't bother to get in there. Proponents believe the movement transcends modernist labels like conservative or liberal, instead calling the movement a conversation to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, the vast range of standpoints and commitment to dialogue, What those involved in the conversation tend to agree on is their disillusionment with the organized and institutional church and their support for the deconstruction of Christian worship, modern evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community. The emerging church favors the use of simple story and narrative, and members often place a high value on good works or social activism, including missional living. Some evangelicals would emphasize eternal salvation, but many in the emerging church emphasize the here and now. And then from Carl Carson in response to some of these ideas from this church, Modernism seeks to find foundations on which to build knowledge and then proceed with methodological rigor. Postmodernism denies that such foundations exist and believes we come to know things in many ways. Modernism is hard-edged, and in the realm of religion focuses on truth versus error, right versus wrong belief. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is gentle, and in the domain of religion focuses upon relationships, love, shared tradition, and integrity in discussion. At the heart of the emergent church conversation is the conviction that changes in culture signify that a new church is emerging. Christian leaders must therefore adapt to this emerging church, and those who fail to do so are blind to cultural accretions that hide the gospel behind forms of thought and modes of expression that no longer communicate to the new or emerging generation. So I think those two quotes alone would probably give us a little bit of a picture of where the emerging church is coming from. The emerging church definitely has a strong appeal to the people in their twenties and thirties. and maybe into the 40s, but it's not, you wouldn't see a cross-section necessarily of people. It's a narrow demographic. They have, as you said, we'll get into this a little bit farther down, but they've definitely decided what they don't want to be, which is a megachurch or a church that targets baby boomers in that generation. They're going for something very different. So what we have next, and this has been evident for brevity in our discussion here, we have some things that I got off their website, emergentvillage.com. I think there may be other places to go to get some things too. What we have is values under the underlined section here, and then they gave a number of practices. It's been whittled down considerably. If you have any interest at all in seeing more of this, you can go onto their website and look at this. This is actually right there. I'm going to just read these things out loud. some of their values. Commitment to God in the way of Jesus. We are committed to doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. We seek to live by the great commandment, loving God and our neighbors, including those who might be considered the least of these, or our enemies. We understand the gospel to be centered in Jesus and his message of the kingdom of God, a message offering reconciliation with God, humanity, etc. They had a number of practices. as Christ-centered people to understand the gospel in terms of Jesus' radical and profound message of the Kingdom of God, as participants in the historic Christian faith to be humble learners, to give priority to love over knowledge while still valuing knowledge. Commitment to the Church, number two, in all its forms. We are committed to honor and serve the Church in all its forms. Every form of the Church has weaknesses and strengths. We believe the injustice and sin in our world requires sincere, wholehearted response of all Christians in all denominations. We seek to be inclusive of all our sisters and brothers, Christian brothers, rather than elitist and critical. We own the many failures of the Church as our failures, which humble us and call us to repentance practices. To be actively and positively involved in a local congregation while maintaining open definitions of church and congregation. To seek peace among followers of Christ. To offer critique only prayerfully when necessary, with grace and without judgment. 3. Commitment to God's world. We do not isolate ourselves from this world, but follow Christ into the world. We believe that the Church exists for the benefit and blessing of the world at large. We see the earth and all that it contains as God's beloved creation, so we join God in seeking its good, healing, and blessing practices to build relationships with neighbors, to seek the good of our neighborhoods and cities, encourage and cherish younger and older people, honor creation, build friendships across gender, racial, ethnic lines, etc., and be involved with a cause of peace or justice. 4. Commitment to one another. To strengthen our shared faith, to encourage and learn from one another through respectful, sacred conversation, we value time and interaction with other friends who share this rule. Practices make annual pilgrimage to emergent village gathering, to publicly identify with emerging village, to stay reconciled to one another, to give the gifts a commitment not to give up on, betray, or reject one another, but instead to encourage, honor, and care for one another. Any thoughts? So they have a fairly loose, obviously, based on the eclectic nature of all the people that you talked about in the beginning that are part of this body. so-called statement of faith. Not that I've seen. This is their statement of faith as far as I understand it. Just be nice to each other, love each other. Could it possibly be Kumbaya? Yes, it could. They try to be as inclusive as possible and they don't want to exclude anyone. What is their position on Jesus? Well, interestingly, I didn't include this. I've heard some rather awful quotes from people about Jesus and or God or the idea of atonement. And then on the other hand, at the end of this, I don't even know if we'll get to it, but then we've had some, added in some responses from a number of the leaders, which sounds somewhat orthodox. So I don't think they really know who they are exactly, as far as I can understand it. What I see this as, in some sense, is a bookend to the Unitarian Universalist that we covered a few weeks ago. It sort of seems to me a little bit like the modern view of Unitarian Universalism for younger people. There's a strong emphasis on social do good works on relationships, on conversation, apparently blogs, the internet, Facebook, Twitter, these kinds of things are how a lot of them communicate. They do conferences, they write lots of books, but people seem to be saying over and over again, we're not exactly sure what they're getting at with all these books. If they don't really know what they believe, why do they keep writing books and giving conferences? So, but yes, there's definitely an emphasis on who we are as opposed to what we believe. I suppose the conferences or the books might be just to encourage one another to do good works. To some degree, yes. Do they see themselves as working for the approval of God or just working to be nice? I think they're, well, I don't know if I can find the quote quickly. There was so much material I read, basically something to the effect that the world is God's world, the world is fallen and broken, and we as Christians, we need to do something to fix that. Their emphasis is definitely on the here and now, fixing the here and now. For those of you who have been on our Friday night, study what we had occasionally with Tim Keller and Gospel in Life, I was really surprised to see that there were some almost direct word-for-word things. One or the other, I don't know if it's quince now or not, the shalom, speaking shalom into the culture. Well, I found that in some of the emergent literature, and I wasn't sure if Timothy got that from them or they got that from Timothy. Well, let's just say it was interesting. But there's not a strong sense of, you need to be born again, you need to have a personal relationship with Christ, you need to repent and believe. But apparently they've tried to cover that base too. It's inclusive. One fellow called it, trying to nail them down is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. So, we're trying to nail this down a little bit here, and I don't know if we'll be any more successful than people far more intelligent than myself, but we'll give a shot at this. Here's some characteristics, by the way. Protest against the traditional church. Many in the movement were raised in evangelical, conservative, or fundamentalist churches. They've come to reject seeker-sensitive mega-churches and all that that entails, such as bigger and better, or let's say more and more converts, or, well, my church has got 6,000 members, well, mine has 12,000, well, we just baptized 5,000 people, and, you know, etc., etc. Clear lines of authority and or CEO, pastors, traditional evangelicalism, etc. So all these things are things a lot of them are against. They gave one specific example, which I think I actually write down. No, I didn't write this in here. One guy was talking about how he was a parking lot attendant, and he was helping. He said, my spiritual gift wasn't helping nice-looking families in big SUVs find a place to park. And this was one of those megachurches probably in the California area. So that's what they're against. That's one of the things. But they also protest against modernism. Modernism is defined as pursuing truth, absolutism, certainty, the celebral as opposed to the affective or affectionate, for want of a better term. which in turn, in their eyes, breeds arrogance, inflexibility, and a lust to be right, a desire to control. Postmodernism, by contrast, recognizes how much we know is shaped by the culture in which we live, is controlled by emotions, aspects, and heritage, and can only be held intelligently as part of a common tradition without overbearing claims to be true or right. Another thing they're against, the megachurch movement. The emerging church is defined over against the massive megachurch models and the seeker-sensitive approaches popular among baby boomer pastors. The formative leaders of the emerging church movement argue that they are trying to recover a primitive sense of Christian community that, while keenly aware of contemporary culture and deeply engaged with the culture, avoids the consumerism, entertainment-centeredness, and superficiality of mainstream evangelical churches. They gave an example in one of the books about a pastor who, one of these fellows came into a church and there was a pastor over there in the sidelines. He didn't know that he was a pastor, but he was apparently dressed in a Superman outfit. He was going to go out and preach about how with Christ we could bound over all of our problems in a single bound and this type of thing. So that's one of the things they're against. No, it's beneath the Superman. Actually, you must have shed that, right? Like Clark Kent? Here's one thing that they are for, as best I understand. They are for deconstruction. Immersions have not sought to be movement builders because that would defy their essential posture of pulling away from everything else. But what they are against is often clearer than what they are for. However, they are united in thinking that classical evangelicalism, especially in its reformed configuration, is part and parcel of modernity, and by that they mean it is rationalistic, and by that they mean it imagines that people can know the truth with some certainty, and that, they believe, is pretentious, fraudulent, and arrogant. Does anyone know David Wells? David Wells is a professor at Gordon, and he's written a number of books. I think one of them was Whenever It Happened to Truth, and the last one that I was reading to get some of the quotes from here was The Courage to be Protestant, and one of his little quotes here I thought was pretty pretty diamond point, was emergence are doctrinal minimalists. By their very nature, emergence are resistant to doctrinal structure that would contain and restrict them. Mary Grant was out there, too, that last sentence. I've seen a bumper sticker lately that says, I don't know him, neither do you. I think he must belong to this church. That would be perfect. I don't know that he doesn't know me. There was another one I saw in Wellfleet, and it was, God is too big to fit in one religion. Yeah, well, I saw one in Wellfleet that said, oh man, something to the, you know, God has no favorite religion. So, I guess the message there is, whatever you want to believe, it's fine. Brian McLaren is one of the best-known writers and speakers, and he has said things along the lines of, he's not necessarily calling people out of their Islamic-Hindu religion, but calling them to be the best Christian Islamists or Hindus they can be. And I suppose that's said for shock value, if nothing else, but there probably is some truth, at least in his mind, about it. In other words, he's believing that. So, he does have a website, if you're interested you can go to brianmclair.com and get some quotes from him. There's different things in there. I could have spent literally months on this because there's so much and yet it's so hard to pin down. So, Al, did you have a thought? Well, I can definitely see how you came to the conclusion that it's very much like the Unitarians. Because I'm sure there's some Unitarians that believe at least in the aspect that Jesus was a prophet. Yeah, we looked for something, and I never did get to it. I think there was a schism in the Unitarian Church because there were some people in that that wanted to believe in God, and so that was creating waves there. It seems like, look, I tend to think of Unitarian somewhat as the older sort of crowd that's The hippie generation is now in the UU church, but apparently they're getting baby boomers, too. Baby boomers are one of the same. Yeah. But they're getting the younger people, too. These guys are the ones who are really getting the young folks, apparently. There's a lot of people. You figure the kids have been raised, and there's no such thing as absolute truth. How many years has that gone on, let's say, in government schools, for instance? Probably at least 30. Lived out that 30 years, 40 years? Yeah, from 1960, I would think, 62, 65 maybe. Yeah. And these pastors and writers are born post-1960. I'm born in 1959. I think most of them are younger than me, so it probably shouldn't surprise us in some sense that this is what they really believe is true. How do you know you believe what you believe? influences. There's a number of them. One book is called The Velvet Elvis. I didn't quote from that book today, but this one, The Emerging Church, Vintage Christianity for New Generations by Dan Kimball, has been well-received by many pastors in the seeker-sensitive movement. In other words, they see the attraction of the younger people in droves to some of these books or these scholarships or congregations or Kimball suggests new ways to reach younger generations. He believes that they've moved on generationally and culturally from those who antimated the seeker-sensitive movement of the recent past, the so-called post-seeker generation. That's the one he's attracting. So ways Kimball suggests to reach these new generations are through services with much more symbolism and greater stress on the visual. quote, we should have crosses and candles, perhaps a communion service without a sermon. The entire geography of the room could be different, different groups doing different things. The experience should be multi-sensory. Worship in the emerging church is more about moving back into our spiritual center with Jesus as sole focus. That's Kimball. He mentioned things like, for instance, I assume he would be saying he could be having somebody could be speaking, someone else could be praying, someone else could be going off in the corner journaling somewhere. So it reminds me somewhat of the people texting. You have people texting, you have one table, a bunch of teenagers there, some are texting, and they're all together, and yet they're not really together. So, hi. We have this for you, if you'd like to sit in. We're talking about the emerging church. We're talking about the emerging church. I think a lot of us haven't heard recently, but OK, welcome. John, we are on page 3 there, and at the bottom we're going to... Actually, no, I'm sorry, we're about halfway down, where it says 1990 there. From 1990 to 2000, weekly church attendance dropped from 28% to 8%, but those who said they had spiritual experiences rose from 48% to 76%. There's been a surge in spiritual appetite that is either hostile to religion or has at least lost confidence in institutionalized religion. This new spirituality is about the private search for meaning. It is a self-constructed spirituality. This is because postmodernists trust direct experience, but distrust what is mediated. David Wells said that, and he also said the next quote as well. Rather than large empty church structures, emergence have gone to small connected groups, to networking, to being institutionalized, and to relationships with each other. This resonates with loss that's very deep and painful in the post-modern psyche. People want to connect and be connected. Any thoughts on any of that? By the way, that stat is, I think, from Barna? It's hard to believe, but it may be true, this business about church attendance. I would have guessed that with the advent of the megachurch in major metropolitan areas, the church attendance would have gone up. I don't have a reason to doubt the statistic, but it's just you... He quoted stats from Varner frequently, so I'm assuming that's just yet another Varner quote. I just threw that one in there because that surprised me as well. Eight percent is pretty small. I know that when they... I think the second quote, the spiritual experiences quote, I believe that because when they take hold, for example, our American culture, most people still say they believe in God, undefined God, and I've had some kind of an experience. A lot of people also will say they were born again, too. That also shows up. I believe it's less now than it was in the 1700s. Yeah, I think that's going away as a goonie bird, too. When you read this, the loss that's very deep and painful in the modern psyche, people want to connect in being connected. We should, as believers, take note of that. We've had years and years and years of broken relationships and government greed and corporate takeover and all these kinds of things. I think people feel a sense of loss in some things, probably a loss of community. They probably are on to some things. Well, we see this pulse in our society, what can we do about it? Perhaps some of their conclusions are wrong, but I think that they've caught on to some aspects of our modern society that's disagreeable. I think there's also one other comment here. Sure. When I think of some of Lakes to Valleys who have been in the same place for a long time, they have a real sense of community with family. And I think what's happened with a lot of us is that as the families have disintegrated or gone every which way to different parts of the world, people feel disconnected. And so this kind of a church appeals to that loss of being connected to family, and you end up with connections of other places. Some of the reasons that they play softball with their doctors is because they don't want to hurt or offend people within their little community or grouping of people. As Christians, obviously, we're approaching it in a totally different way, but they've noted these things, and I don't know what the big boomer churches do to try to reach folks. I suppose they segment things off of little outreaches here and there. I've never been to one of those megachurches. Al, I think you have. been one in the past, correct? Oh yeah, yeah. And what you said in one of these quotes about the CEO mindset in the secret sensitive church that we were part of in the early 90s, which we tried for a year until we couldn't tolerate it anymore, it was definitely the pastor was the CEO. They had elders, but they were not at all Well, we're going to move into now, unless anyone else had any other comments on the quotes and influences, any other comments? Okay, we're going to move into some points of concern and or criticism of movement, and these are common characteristics, that doesn't mean necessarily that each local grouping, congregation, I'm not sure if we should call them a church or what to call them, but that each one would have the same concerns. But this is common characteristics, so I'll stress that. Number one, the tenancy of the emergent church to distrust. Actually, you know what I think I'll do is go through Six points, and then I think we can dialogue about those a bit. I'd like to at least get through those things. We may not get to the paraphrase of response from recent criticism. A number of their writers responded to that. Okay, number one. The tendency of the emergent church to distrust sure doctrinal convictions which they believe the church has historically used to wield authority and oppress the weak. Number two, the belief that all theological convictions and points of doctrine should be held with humility, i.e., uncertainty. We should be open to ongoing dialogue in which all opinions and perspectives should be embraced and affirmed. The belief that doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus If you turn the page over to number four, the belief that salvation has little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its maker. Number five, the belief that following Jesus means not believing the right things, but living the right way. And number six, the tendency to act upon the belief that Christianity is not about faith in the Christ that saves, but about finding salvation through being a good and loving person. And obviously these characteristics have led to downplaying of some important Christian doctrine and thought. Substitutionary atonement has often been denied. Hell and eternal punishment have been basically put in the back burner or been denied. It's been suggested that good moral people of other faiths, traditions, such as Islam and Hinduism, are true members of the kingdom, and it's been an acceptance of homosexuality in a loving relationship as a loving moral thing. So, we're going to go into each point there, on the six points, and look at those for a moment, Al. Yeah, it seems to me that what's troubling, and I think it's not restricted to the Emergent Church, but the mentality that what you believe in your heart is irrelevant to how you live. In other words, most biblical theologians would argue that what you are in your heart is what manifests itself in your life. And the mentality that says theology is irrelevant denies that principle. In other words, they emphasize how to live, how to live, how to live, how to live, not what to believe. But how you live is a function of what you believe. And if you keep your mind jumbled up with various inaccuracies and vagaries and unabsolutes, then you will live that way. It's just your feet will go in the direction of your heart. And you cannot separate the two. It's a human principle. If your heart is bound towards sin, that's how you're going to live. If your heart is bound towards Christ, that's how you're going to live. But the idea that theology or what you believe is irrelevant is just irrational, in my opinion. Clearly is that, but I would probably take you back to that whole idea of post-modernism. How do you know what you know, or how can we know it? Maybe we can't know it. That would be, I suppose, one of their defenses is that, well, we can't know a certainty that this is true. They look at the scriptures as narrative and story as opposed to, let's say, a book of doctrine as to how to live. For instance, I read one quote about how they prefer to read something like the Good Samaritan over the Ten Commandments. Well, who could memorize the Ten Commandments anyway? So they were more captivated by the idea of serving that fellow who had been beaten on the side of the road. And they also took note of the Pharisee and the the Pharisee and the priest walk by the other side, thinking, let's say, for instance, the evangelical or mainline church. So, the tendency of the emergent church to distrust surreptitious doctrinal convictions which they believe the church has historically used to wield authority and oppress the weak. Any thoughts, Wendy? That's what I'm seeing coming to the surface just lately, is that they think the church real authority. Can you be more specific? I've heard it commented by a few non-Christian friends that all the church really is doing is trying to make everybody do what they think should be done and it doesn't have anything to do with the way things are. Are you speaking of something like abortion or like a right-wing... No, I'm speaking of preaching. Preaching? Preaching of, you know, probably, I would assume, that's not a good thing to do, but that it was more of the church saying that you're sinners and that they are, as Al said, thinking that everything, as long as they're doing good and and they're good people, and they're fine, and they're going to heaven too. And I think the church is trying to tell them they're not going to, and they're not good enough. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I understand. It's all directed, when you read this, distrust of doctrinal convictions, for example. It's all directed so that they can change whatever they want to into what they want. So it's all a feel-good world for them, and they want God to be inclusive in it, but they want to control God. That's what I see in these movements. They want to direct what's supposed to be happening, not what God's word says. And they take it out of context, and they use it to their advantage. They tear pages out of the Bible that they don't want to agree to. So that's why these statements are so big, and all of their decisions, and all of what they do. If we go back to the idea of authority, I think the rejection that a lot of people feel is when they see a church wielding authority as to how people should live. But the people in the church have no internal conviction that that's true, but they're just doing what they're told. I'll pick on Roman Catholicism for a minute. The mass of the people in the church, and I don't mean mass in the sense of mass, but the people in the church are not necessarily understanding or buying into it, but because the priest says it, I have to do it. So there's this legal compulsion to live this way, even though internally, again, the heart hasn't been turned to a position of, yes, I agree, I love this, this is great. So again, if the church preaches authoritatively about, you should do this, you should do that, you should do this, and the heart's not regenerated, then that's what people are reacting to. And if the majority of the churches are filled with people who aren't regenerating, and who are just going along because the church says so, it's no wonder you get this kind of response. I wouldn't swear, on the other hand, that everyone in the emergent church is unregenerate. I'm not exactly sure what the Paul is, I would take you back once again to the idea that they don't believe that we could hold those convictions that you spoke about with clarity. and with a true confidence, they would look at it as, from what I understand, that, well, we've interpreted that through our culture and through history. Perhaps this isn't right after all. So they're looking at it more as narrative and story as opposed to, let's say, scientific doctrine. In other words, okay, this is right and that's wrong. If I climb to the top of the roof of the church and jump off, then I'm going to I smashed myself against the ground. They said, well, you could perhaps, but maybe a gust of wind would come in. I don't know. Yeah, as I understand it, they are not willing to make those strong stands on things. They just don't want to be accountable for anything. That's accountability. Hi Katie, we have one left if you'd like it even though we're out of time here. Number two, let's tackle a couple more, we have a couple minutes left here. The belief that all theological convictions and points of doctrine should be held with humility or uncertainty and that we should be open to ongoing dialogue in which all opinions and perspectives should be embraced and affirmed. Any thoughts? I think they're certain about that. They're certain that we should be uncertain. Yes, they are. They're certain we aren't. They're quite convinced of themselves. Yes, yes, they are. Again, I think what you see here is a reaction to authoritative church leaders in history who said, you believe it because I said so? Yes, absolutely. What they're trying to do is be God themselves. They don't want to be subjects, they want to be... The belief that doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus. If I'm not mistaken, we've heard that in the evangelical church many times, in the megachurch. Absolutely. Doctrine kills, Jesus lives. Right. Any other thoughts on that? Number four, the belief that salvation has little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its maker. Lucy? As I said before, for some of us in the Gospel in Life Friday night study that we do once a month, that would ring a bell. Our friend Timothy Keller has mentioned bringing creation back into shalom with its maker, though of course he's Orthodox, he laid out the whole idea of the Christian relationship with Christ and with God in the beginning of this book. But any thoughts on that? God's justice. Any other thoughts? Number five, the belief that following Jesus means not believing the right things, but living the right way. Pardon? The emphasis is on what we do as opposed to what we believe. Number six, the tendency to act upon the belief that Christianity is not about faith in the Christ that saves, but about finding salvation through being a good and loving person. Yes it is. Does that sound familiar? What is their salvation? They have denied faith. I look at the next thing down here. Is hell an eternal punishment? I told them it's been denied. What do they see as salvation? What are they looking for, about finding salvation? What is salvation? If they deny heaven and hell, or hell, then what are they being saved from? They don't talk much about hell of judgment and punishment. So I don't know. I don't know. I just say, what are their... I don't know what they're trying to find salvation from. They have nothing that they can hold onto. I don't know that they would even necessarily call it salvation from what I understand of their writings. They may look at it as this is what God expects the kingdom of God to look like. His people helping other people, rescuing. the needy, helping the poor, visiting the prisoner, etc. There's a strong emphasis on works. And by the way, too, it's generally speaking a left-wing works type thing that the political say right-wing causes. For instance, they talk at one point about not being single-cause voters. I'm assuming they're speaking of abortion. So they're not necessarily interested in dealing with that. Or, let's say, homosexuality or homosexual marriage or whatever. There's some of these currently controversial points that our consciences would be informed by scripture that they might say, well, that's open to some inconclusive thoughts. We're not sure we want to make a stand on that. They are trying to be inclusive and loving, but what they're doing in that, of course, is not standing on truth. Truth as we know it here in the scriptures. So they have been, as mentioned here, the Gospel is what Christ has already done for us as Savior, as opposed to what we do for God. The primacy of His accomplishments is the essence of our faith, the primacy of Christ's accomplishments. In other words, the Gospel is good news, not good advice. But the proclamation, we proclaim the Gospel, is not just something that we say, hmm, that's nice, let's go do something. So the emergents have been aware of some of the with their theology and have tried to respond to recent criticisms. We are out of time, so we can't go into those, but I would invite you to look at all those, and I think we have... Yeah, we have all 10 of them, and they're paraphrased. We could direct you to the actual document if you're interested at a different time, At the bottom we have just one little note about labels, and we also have a little note that Brian McLaren is arguably the most articulate spokesperson for the movement, but by no means is he the only one. There's quite a few people who are involved in this movement. So, there you have it for today. Father, we thank you for your truth. Lord, we know your word is truth. Thank you for revealing yourself to us in it. Thank you for giving us a firm foundation by which we can cling. Lord, help us as we meet these folks that are lost and wandering around, seeking and groping for something that is not there. I pray, Lord, that you would give us patience and wisdom, give us compassion and love, so that we might know how to speak with them. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.