Book Review: Listening to the Beliefs of the Emerging Church

I just recently finished a great book called Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches.

There was a ton of great information in the book, but it was also the format that was just as intriguing as the beliefs that were discussed. One of the big deals of the emerging church in the post-modern world is to have a continuing conversation about God. Rob Bell talks about this in Velvet Elvis, and the idea is manifested in the pages of Listening to the Beliefs.

Each contributor has a chapter to discuss his or her beliefs on God, and then each other contributor responds. This is about as close to a conversation as you can get in print, although I imagine this one will continue at conferences such as Emergence 2007, where 4 of the 5 authors will be featured along with a couple of other names in the emerging church leadership.

Another thing that I liked about the format was that each contributor wrote the chapter in his or her own style without much direction. At times, it seemed like some of them didn't get the memo about what the chapter was supposed to be about (which was apparently their beliefs on the Trinity, the atonement, and the Scripture). If a reader approaches the book with a need to come away with solid understanding of all the beliefs, then it may prove to be an annoying read. But the reason I liked this was that it really gave a feel for the individual's personality and highlighted the diversity among emerging church leaders. Mark Driscoll wrote his chapter as a well-structured argumentation. Dan Kimball wove his beliefs into the story of his own spiritual journey, and Karen Ward's chapter was patterned more like a myspace blog than a book chapter. I found each of them to be captivating and compelling.

The content in each chapter was just as diverse as the styles in which they were written. One of the warnings against the emerging church (and a warning that 3 of the 5 authors [Driscoll, John Burke, and Kimball] themselves bring up) is that as it moves with cultural relevance, it must not water down the truth of God in exchange for a post-modern pluralistic social gospel. I felt like Driscoll, Burke, and Kimball were all pretty solid. The exception to that being that Burke believes in an old Earth. Doug Pagitt was probably where my questioning on sound doctrine came in. It's hard to nail down exactly what struck me as off because sound bites from his chapter all sound okay. It was more of a feel from both his chapter and his responses to others' chapters that caused me to think that he was a bit too open-minded for my taste. He seemed to approach theology from the starting point of experience, instead of starting at the Truth we know and integrating our experience into it to find a more complete picture. To finish the discussion, Karen Ward and her community wrote a great chapter that makes me want to re-form my church to emulate hers. I felt like she kind of suggested that they do church the right way, so that kind of attitude wasn't as cool as I'd like. But her main response to others' chapters was to emphasize the unity, and that was cool.

This information was all framed by an introduction and conclusion by Robert Webber. It was nice to have his information there because it really put the currently emerging church into perspective over the course of 2000 years, and especially in terms of the modern church that we're moving away from. He explained why the modern church grew into its place, which was helpful information for those who are disenchanted with it to hear about. To know why something happened in the first place can help us to understand more and condemn less. After reading his intro, I felt like I could better appreciate some of the people and methods that have been at the forefront of the recent church. Do changes still need to be made? Yes. Our culture continues to change, and our church is a living organism that will need to change. But at least we can understand the purpose that modernism and the church in the modern context served, and we can realize that culture is a progression, and we would not have the same ideas now about where the church should go if we hadn't seen it be where it was.

This book is a great tool to learn about both of those issues.