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Having had Don Carson’s book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, sitting on my shelf for almost a couple of years, and since I started engaging with certain emerging church leaders, and since I have now been referred to as one of the “emerging generation of thinkers in Wales”, I thought I had better get into this critique of the emerging church by the Don of the evangelical world!

Almost immediately, I reacted against the book negatively. The reason being, Don Carson is quite obviously a modernist. Although he’s a very clever bloke and has obviously researched modernism and postmodernism, it didn’t sit well with me as someone who was born into a postmodern world with a naturally postmodern mindset. Don affirms that we can’t know everything omnisciently and goes on to separate postmodernism into two, calling them hard and soft postmodernism. Hard postmodernism, he says, is the rejection of all possibility of absolutes, whereas soft postmodernism he says is where absolutes are accepted although not completely known but when we build on knowledge on knowledge on knowledge, we gradually come closer to a knowledge of the truth without actually knowing the truth. I dunno about you, but to me that sounds like a re-hash of modernism with a slightly more sceptical outlook.

Let me take it further. He uses the age-old modernist argument against postmodernism by highlighting that postmodernism claims there are no absolutes, but that in itself is an absolute. That’s such a modernist argument. It’s like telling an anarchist can’t be an anarchist because anarchy can be defined. Or like saying that the word big, can’t mean something massive because the word itself is physically small (as in it only has 3 letters). Paradoxes exist, get over it!

Since reading the book, I also had a trusted clever bloke tell me that it has been criticised for not having a broad enough view of the emerging church, simply focussing on one or two leaders that he has hang-ups about. On reflection, and looking back over the book, it’s actually quite true. Brian McClaren is very much the main focus of the book, with a little dig at Steve Chalke and one or two others. He’s most probably right to have hang-ups about these two, but if he’s supposed to be critiquing the whole emerging church then you would have thought there’d be a broader sweep of its leaders.

But despite my disagreement with his understanding of postmodernism (even though disagrees with the emerging church’s understanding of postmodernism) and despite my disappointment at the narrow focus of the book, I have to say, it was a helpful book. It does give you a basic understanding of the emerging church and it does affirm at least some of the good points about the emerging church, such as its aim of trying to reach a new emerging culture. It is worth a read if only as a basic introduction, but if you really want to understand the emerging church, then I would say the best way is to read the emerging church’s own material.

Week in, week out, I remember plugging from the front the fact that CU was not a church. Oh we had all sorts of reasons why not, most pretty weak, but I was positive that it was not, nor should it be. My opinion hasn't changed.

You see while I was at university my mission field was the university. I spoke with passion at large CU meetings about how we were a missionary group, that even though we weren't in China or Montinegro (the vogue places to go do mission in Warwick) we were still missionaries, 'sent' from our home churches to impact on the campus. It was brilliant, I had CU for witnessing to students and my University church for doing church things.

The greatest thing about CU was its focus on the gospel. By its very nature (multi-denominational) we were obsessed with focusing on Christ, the cross and His ressurection. Possibly our motive was to avoid any disagreement amongst us rather than a St.Paul realisation that that was all that mattered, but still, that was our obsession and is the obsession of CU's all over Britain. Focusing on the cross made us extremely missionally minded. We used the tag line, "Mission and Maturity" but with our focus on evangelisinig the lost and getting them into local churches (as CU was most definitely not a church) we were actually more realisticly about, "Mission & maturity".

So, why the title? Well as I've returned 'from the mission field' to the day by day slog of the local church, one thing has struck me more than anything. That is the need for people to realise that they are missionaries, that they're place of work, friends, family, these are their mission fields and if they are truely maturing, then they would be witnessing all the more. Unfortunately we have this idea that doing 'maturity' is seperate from doing mission. How wrong could we be! The greatest source of maturing is sharing the gospel and anyone who is truely being matured will be driven more to mission and sharing Jesus. That's a fact. Our churches are far to inward looking, thinking that if we 'send' some students out, 'send' some people abroad, then we fill our missional quota and the rest of us can get on with worshiping God and getting to know Jesus better.

If our Churches could steal just a small amount of that passion from our CU's, well the kingdom of God would be in much better shape here in Wales. A church that is more interested in the style of songs we play, or why there isn't an evening service any more, or why Mrs. Smith has started coming to our Bible study when we were quite happy as we were, a church that is more interested in this, I'm not sure is a church any more. At the very heart of a church must be the urgency to let people know about Jesus. If that is lost (if it is not over emphasised to the extreme) then we are nothing more than a social club and a very odd one at that.

Hats off to CU's across the nation, they are more of a church than most of the churches that we'll ever visit.

In my research for an essay on what a preacher should wear, I happened to stumble across a guy who has now become my new favourite reformer (not that I had one before!) His full name is Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt, but most people just call him as Karlstadt. If you haven’t guessed from his name, he was German, and he was an Evangelical around at the same time as Martin Luther (who is usually credited with starting the reformation).

Interestingly Karlstadt is the person who gave Luther his PhD. And in fact, before Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Karlstadt had already nailed his 151 theses to the door of the church! Karlstadt and Luther had a bit of a falling out and up until recently, he's been painted in a bad light because of that. One of the reason they fell out is what interests me.

On Christmas day, 1521, Luther was away (in prison I think) and Karlstadt was left in charge of the church they were both at. Being the radical reformer that he was, he decided to make a few changes. Karlstadt decided to preach in his normal clothing and since he was an academic that was his university gown. He also offered the Lord's Supper to the normal people, a practice which had ceased, he held the service in German (the common language of Germany at that time) and didn't do all those Catholic mass ritual stuff that was disputed at that time. He also taught that ministers can marry, and practiced his preaching by marrying in the January. When Luther came back, he was annoyed and changed everything back to how it was saying it was too much change. A few years later, though, Luther went on to wear the gown himself and Karlstadt decided that actually the gown wasn't enough and went on to wear peasants clothing, the equivalent today of preaching in your trainers!

The thing Karlstadt is criticised for is that he moved too fast and was too much of a radical. (Luther is criticised for not moving fast enough!) And if I've learnt anything from chatting to my Grandma about my Grandpa, Hugh Morgan, (Minister of Malpas Road Evangelical Church for a number of years) it's that you can't move a church on unless you take the people with you. It's that tension of going forward and doing what's best and right but doing it at a pace that's going to be helpful to those already in your church. I guess wisdom is the key, and I know I'm going to need plenty of that if and when the time comes!

Yesterday I went to a lecture by a man who's phd was so good that it actually killed a man. The lecture was on the subject of heresies and cults - he told us that apparently we can believe something to be true, and we can believe something to be not true. But just because something is not true, it doesn't necassarily mean that it's heresy.

Take baptism, for instance. There are two very different understandings with baptism. Some dunk, some splash. Some wait, some hope. And because there are two different understandings, they can't both be right. One has to be wrong. But to believe the wrong thing about baptism is not to believe a heresy - it is simply to believe a misunderstanding. A heresy on the other hand, is something that if proved to be true, would undermine the entire Christian faith. Christianity does not depend on baptism.

And this got me thinking. If this is the definition of heresy, then Christmas for me will never be the same again.

Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head

The cattle are lowing
The poor Baby wakes
But little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

Here's a warning to everyone that gets their theology from hymns. This Christmas carol isn't just wrong, it is almost heretical. This carol is the sort of thing that got you into serious trouble in sixteenth century Geneva. Now I know that the gospels are quiet when it comes to the matter of Jesus crying as a baby (though obviously not as a man - John 11:35) But are you really telling me that Jesus, as a newborn baby - cold, hungry, NEWBORN - would not have cried? To imagine this is to imagine a Jesus that is simply not human. And Jesus was human. He was fully human - he had to be, otherwise he could not have atoned for our sins when he died on the cross. He didn't just look human. He was human.

Fully God. Fully human. Without this, there is nothing to get up for in the morning.

According to Oxford University's professor for the public understanding of Science, Richard Dawkins, I and all other theists (those who believe in a divine being) are deluded.

I wonder, do you think that theists are deluded? Do you wonder whether religion is mass delusion?

Richard Dawkins is convinced of this and is on a mission.

Why has he written this book?

To turn theists into atheists (see page 5)

What a challenge. His aim is illume the deluded. As you read you can see that Dawkins has strong feelings against theists and religion. In fact, this book is based on his 2 part TV series on religion called ‘the root of all evil' - a title that says it all.

And he writes with passion as he tries to convince us that religion is evil, violent and based on a delusion.

So, has Dawkins succeeded? Has he created an army of new atheists? Well, a friend whom I email on this subject is himself an atheist and finds this book compelling and encouraging. In fact he feels like his belief in atheism is confirmed with every page. Maybe you find that too.

However, some people have been amazed at how weak and shallow some of his argument is. Actually some scholars (such as Alistair McGrath and Peter Williams) would claim that there is far more rhetoric than substance. I'm sure that Dawkins is very clever in his field of evolutionary biology. But in the realm of religion and philosophy in which we find him writing here, he is at the very least an amateur.

Indeed in the London Book of Reviews you can read;

‘Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology'

In fact, in a book club where I was debating this book highly qualified professor came (who was not a Christian) and said publicly that scientifically Dawkins was ‘arrogant and ignorant'.

Let me tell you some weaknesses with his approach:

-He cites typical examples that are just not typical. That is, he uses the pathological as if they were normal. At some points you would wonder whether this book is grounds for inciting religious hatred. Just look at pages 23 and 25

-He lumps too many religions together. He says that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have the same belief in God. (p37)

-He does not quote contemporary arguments. But rather tends to rely on medieval theologians.

-He even invents scientific data: Look at Pages 170 and 194 -it's rather funny.

-Sometimes he doesn't quote at all on a subject, particularly in the first part of chapter 3 on the cosmological argument.

How would you feel if I dealt with this book but never quoted it? That is not academically vigorous and smells of a weakness in argument.

-Indeed he prefers to create imaginary opponents. Try out page 132 , an imaginary apologist on page 230, and an imaginary moral philosopher on page 293.

I find that very insulting. It is the classic straw man argument. Put a corrupted and easily defeated set of words into mouth of your opponent and you'll knock them down with a single intellectual breath.

But that is not good academic study.

Let me deal with 2 of Dawkins areas: Religion and God.

1. What's wrong with religion?

Religion causes violence.

In fact it is a dysfunctional meme - a virus that has been passed on according to Dawkins. I find Dawkins inventing theory after theory to deal with religious phenomenon.

 

But let's deal with the ‘religion is evil' and the world would be a better place without it.

Would it?

Unfortunately religion has caused much pain. But this is not so much the fault of God as human kind who war over anything.

There seems to be some thing in that wants to fight. This is where the Bible starts - we have rebelled against God. Just read Roman 3.

But what about atheists - no violence? Between 1918 and 1941 the soviet union communist party destroyed 90% of church building and executed 90% of their pastors. Was that a good thing?

It would be fair to say that Dawkins wants religion gone. He only see's the problems like war and division - but none of the good:

-Hospitals

-Science

-Education

-Aid

-Culture

-Hope

But we must understand that religion is very much man's invention and something that he uses for his own gain.

Just because Italian supporters kill police men doesn't mean that the football clubs don't exist and it doesn't mean that the football players themselves encourage the murder.

No, people just want to fight because we are far away from God - and people use God as an excuse for violence.

You see religion is pretty evil - but Christianity is a faith. It is about the true God who came to earth to give us new life.

2. Why there is almost certainly is a God

Dawkins writes this sentence that sums up his thesis:

‘there is no evidence to favour the God hypotheses'

He starts off with his classic arguments, and the typical arguments of the teenage play ground:

God is like Santa

That is, people grow out of believing in him. But that is not a fair analogy as people don't start believing in Santa again when they are 18, 40 or 65.

We would like God to exist

Of course we would! But I would also like to have a wife - but just because I want her does not mean that she doesn't exist.

Come on Dawkins - use some sensible arguments!

There are many arguments for the existence of God:

• Creation needs a creator
• Design demands a designer
• Morality is universal
• Spiritual quest
• First mover
• Ontological
• Jesus claimed to be God and rose again to prove it.

On their own they prove little, but together they are compelling.

Dawkins hypothesis in a nut shell is that God does not exist and religion is evil. He says that those who believe in the God hypothesis are deluded. As the facts are stacked against them

I believe that it is the reverse. I see the overwhelming evidence being stacked against the atheist hypothesis. In fact, I would go so far as to say that at some points Dawkins has lost his rational thought. Let me tell you about the saddest and coldest part of the book. It comes on page 137. Recalling a lecture in Dublin he states clearly that it is worse to be brought up in a Catholic family than to be sexually abused. Did you read that right? Dawkins would rather someone by sexually abused that brought up in a theistic home.

On page 108 he says:

‘people of a theological bent are often chronically incapable of distinguishing what is true from what they'd like to be true'

I would say that is true of Dawkins here.

I am sure you will agree that he is demonstrating here that it is not academic study that is driving him - but something else.

That is not the writing of a rational man.

After reading that I was no longer angry at Dawkins, I simply felt sorry for him.

Let me be clear:

Theism is not a delusion as it is not something which stands against the face evidence. Actually, when we look at the proof we can see that a belief in God is not only rational - it is vital.

God has revealed Himself to you and He wants to know you.

I believe that to say there is not God in the face of all evidence is to delude yourself. It is equal to trying to prove there is no air.