emergent church

Just got finished listening to a lecture by Mark Driscoll about the Emergent Church.

Now I know why Rob Bell has been seemingly shunned. I'm going to have to check into some more of this stuff. But I am concerned with where some of these "evangelical" leaders are going.

Learned some new words:
Panantheism, not to be confused with Pantheism
Espitology, Mystology, and other stuff like that.

Words brilliant men use to start conversations.

So, here's a question: are conversations about God's Word a bad thing? Conversations about how we apply God's Word to our lives, what ancient text means to us today with countless translations and transliterations? Does our understanding evolve? Is it okay to say that we as a collective are more enlightened today than were the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews of the New Testament? Or is that dangerous ground?

And as far as looking at Scripture through the eyes of Rabbinical teaching. I don't see a danger in that. But only really, if the Rabbis have accepted Jesus as Messiah. Otherwise, the teachings of Rabbis that were Jesus' contemporaries just offer and interesting religious commentary on the times. Their truth does not transcend what Jesus was doing. But their model of discussion and challenging is something to look at.

I'm not sure. I can see from the one side how Mark Driscoll's comments about Rob Bell's first book make sense. Being able to say any sensational thing and draw a crowd is not a good thing in the Christian collective. But was RB really saying those statements for that purpose? Or to challenge people to think about the theology they adhere to?

So many modern Christians don't know the difference between theology and church doctrine. Why there are different denominations and what the difference between antiquated words like Calvinism and Armenianism mean. Sin is not a readily understandable word by the world's standards, but neither is love, hate, God, or any number of words that we've lost with our increasing illiteracy and the dumbing down of the collective.

Higher test statistics favored over core content understanding is leading to this decay of knowledge and wisdom. It's no longer sought out, so people are like lemmings. That's why one can say anything and draw a crowd.

We're living in 2008 A.D. (or C.E), yet nothing is really any different than that time Paul preached on Mars Hill.