There are two defining elements to the Emergent Missional Church movement. 1. Social Justice or social activism (which is how you live on mission, sent and incarnationally) – that may not actually be a word, but you get my point. 2. Contemplative Spiritual practices/ Spiritual Formation/ Soul Care and following Mystics. Every one of the Emerging Church leaders I have looked at over the past two years have these two things in common as well as organizations like Creo Collective which is a group of people in the EFCA who are following the Emergent ideology. If you as a Christian practice contemplative spiritual practices or your church promotes it even as “Spiritual Formation” or “Soul Care” technically you or your church are “Emergent” … might be time to wake up!

The Emergent Church is made up of two elements (for lack of a better word) Progressive Christianity and Missional Christianity. There is a huge amount of cross over between those who walk the Progressive Christian lane and those who are in the Missional lane. In reality Progressive Christianity is apostate Christianity and Missional at best is heretical Christianity. If Missional Christianity were biblical those in its box would have nothing to do with the Progressive side, but that is not the case. The whose who of each group are more than accepting of each others “Christianity” after all we are all God’s children, right? NOPE. Not true. In fact, the Emerging Church was started by a group of men along with a guy named Bob Buford. Some of these men were Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt, and Tony Jones. Bob Buford wasn’t even a Christian! Today, these men are all Progressive Christians! Think there is a connection? Absolutely. This movement is railroading churches at warp speed! It is very discouraging and yet at the same time the Bible tells us this is going to happen.

This is my attempt to help explain the Emergent Missional Church since I am being asked more and more to explain it. It is a complex movement with variations between it’s people and churches, so explaining it is not always simple. So, the picture is like it says, a snap shot. We need to be aware of these things! This movement has a lot of nice sounding elements, but it is not biblical Christianity by a long shot. The Bible tells us to be on guard, be alert, and to be watching! Church, it is time to wake up! There are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing leading churches today we are to be able to recognize this and to call it out and reject it. It’s time to get away from pay it forward, social justice Christianity. It’s time to get into the scriptures and see what they say for yourselves, don’t just trust something because the pastor is saying it or promoting it or because a particular teacher/leader use to be biblically sound…that doesn’t mean they still are. If you read the Bible and don’t understand it, you may need to consider did you accept the Jesus of the Bible or a false Jesus of the social justice gospel? Did you truly surrender your life to Jesus or did you just get a “Get out of hell card”? The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is in us when we are born again, He will give us understanding of the Bible, without the Holy Spirit a person cannot understand the scriptures. It’s time to wake up Church. That’s it. StraightUp!