SBC & Emerging Church Fight On ~ BitterSweetLife

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

SBC & Emerging Church Fight On

I hope you like reading about this stuff.

Emerging church, Acts 29, alcohol, Darrin Patrick and Southern Baptist in-fighting politics have been cropping up a lot here lately, and I'm about to dive in again. I blame some of it on KU's failure to win the NCAA championship, which has forced me to think about things other than basketball recently. Also, you could say I take a proprietary interest, since I'm a "Southern Baptist" by academic adoption (I am now about two years old in SBC years).

Anyway, The Pathway's latest article on emerging church issues takes a more moderate approach to Darrin Patrick and his church, The Journey, as well as backing away from previous ad hominem attacks on Mark Driscoll and Ed Stetzer. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's my previous overview: Emerging Church Controversy in the SBC.)

I applaud the calculated movement away from libel. Unfortunately, the good people at
The Pathway failed to notice that someone named Roger Moran had secretly grafted several over-the-top paragraphs of divisive rhetoric onto the very end of the "article." Too bad the copy editor didn't catch it, since it pulled down the integrity of the piece. Check for yourselves: Alcohol, Acts 29 and the SBC.

Probably the most eye-opening article I came across (article, in the non-North Korean sense of the word) was this story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It provides some background on Roger Moran and his politics as well as commentary from Darrin Patrick:

The Rev. Darrin Patrick, pastor of the emerging church in St. Louis called The Journey, says Moran's kind of theology is only driving away young Christian leaders.

"When you're stricter than God about what he commands and permits, younger pastors are not going to play ball," Patrick said. "They're not going to take one for the denomination."

Reading this piece is helpful in bringing the actual shape of the SBC/Emerging Church controversy into focus. Ingrained denominational preferences, not biblical theology, are what is driving this brouhaha.



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1 comments:

brad brisco said...

In light of Scot McKnight's very helpful post today on "Letters to Emerging Christians" I am trying hard at not "tossing bombs" in the direction of Roger Moran. You are certainly correct in your assessment of what is driving the "civil war" as Moran calls it. It is not biblical theology. I believe the long term effects of guys checking out of the denomination will be significant in the next decade or two.

 

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