The Emergent Church | Frances and Friends on Sonlife Radio

Christian or "Christ Follower"

Source: Editors at Lighthouse Trails

Christian or Christ-follower. It's a distinction that is being made more and more today, and often the latter term, Christ follower, is replacing the former term, Christian. Even many Christian leaders are making the switch. But just what does it mean? Emerging church leader, Erwin McManus says his "goal is to destroy Christianity as a world religion and be a recatalyst for the movement of Jesus Christ." In McManus' book, The Barbarian Way, he talks about being "awakened" to a "primal longing that ... waits to be unleashed within everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ." McManus says that the "greatest enemy to the movement of Jesus Christ is Christianity [i.e., Christians]." A video series on YouTube.com called "Christian No More" (by Christian Community Church) exemplifies this view by portraying those who call themselves Christians as shallow church-goers who wear suits and ties, have Christian bumper stickers on their cars and prefer the King James Version. This belittling video is evidence that it is increasingly more popular to call oneself a Christ follower rather than a Christian.

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Erwin McManus & the Five Elements

By Discernment Group

Erwin McManus is an emerging church leader, author of The Unstoppable Force, and lead pastor and self-professed “cultural architect” of the Mosaic church in Los Angeles. He believes that the church needs to shape a cultural movement, an apostolic ethos. To create this apostolic ethos he has reinvigorated the five elements that come from ancient pagan spirituality.

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Emergent Leaders? Paving the Way to Apostasy

From the March 26, 2007 Lighthouse Trails Newsletter

Some say that some emerging church leaders (like Dan Kimball and Mark Driscoll) are not part of the Emergent movement and that the terms Emergent and emerging church mean two different things. However, according to one of the strongest catalysts for the emerging church movement, Zondervan Publishing, Kimball and Driscoll are indeed part of the "Emergent movement." Zondervan describes its 2007 book, Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches as: "Five of the emergent movement's most prominent leaders debate their views on Scripture, Christ, atonement, and more." Those five are Dan Kimball, Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Karen Ward and Doug Pagitt. Be that as it may, emergent and emerging are just words, but those who adhere to either of the concepts are going in the same direction, and as we stated in our article, Emerging Church Confusion: What Does it Really Mean?, emergent leaders are feeding the emerging church movement and making it what it is and will become.

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The Kingdom of Emergent Theology - Part II

By Gary E. Gilley The Effect on the Gospel

It is not surprising with this understanding of the kingdom of God that David Gushee in a recent Christianity Today article asks, “Is it permissible to reopen the question of salvation?” While Gushee follows up his question with some things worth pondering, he states that when “Jesus was asked about the criteria for admission to eternity, he offered a fourfold answer: love God with all that you are, love your neighbor (like the Samaritan loved his neighbor), do God’s will by obeying his moral commands, and be willing, if he asks, to drop everything and leave it behind in order to follow him.”[26]

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The Kingdom of Emergent Theology - Part III

By Gary E. Gilley A Biblical Understanding of the Kingdom

Acts 1:3 informs us that during the 40 days in which Jesus was making appearances following the resurrection He spoke to the apostles concerning the kingdom of God. We are uncertain about exactly what He said but we know the kingdom was at the heart of His discussions with them during that time. In verse six Jesus is preparing to depart the earth and they have one question for Him, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel ?”

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The Kingdom of Emergent Theology (Part I)

By Gary E. Gilley

It has been claimed that Sigmund Freud enjoyed telling his followers a story of a pastor who visited an atheist insurance agent who was on his death bed. The family had asked the pastor to share the gospel with their dying loved one as they waited in another room. As the conversation continued longer than expected there was hope that the pastor was being successful in his mission. When the pastor finally emerged from the bedroom it was discovered that the agent had not converted to Christ but he had been able to sell the pastor an insurance policy.

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McLaren's Everything Must Change Tour

by Jeffrey Whittaker

We’ve all heard it said: “The more things change, the more they remain the same”. The Bible says it another way in Ecclesiastes 1:9-10:

9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. 10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.

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