The Emergent Church Quotes

“They believe God to be bringing everything along toward an ideal future without judgment. Therefore any practice deemed to make the world better is a suitable mission. In their view the only thing that doesn’t make sense is preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins so people can avoid a literal, future judgment (because they do not believe in future judgment). Ironically, the one approach to missions that Emergent leaders reject routinely is the one based on Jesus’ own words to His Church.”
― Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity

“The content of the gospel (that God has offered a path to escape His coming wrath) is the core issue to a missionary but irrelevant to one who is missional. To the missionary, those who repent and believe the gospel are reconciled to God and enter His kingdom. That message is unimportant, or at least not central, to one who is missional. Why? Because to the Emergent there is no impending judgment and if we do something nice on our journey nothing more is needed. To them, a focus on the content of the message is a distraction at best and harmful at worst.”
― Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity

“For Emergents, “The journey is the reward,” and the journey will certainly end well for all—without exception. According to Emergent thinking, being missional means following the journey wherever it leads as long as it corrects society’s evils. In their view, missional is more like the opposite of apathy; it is zeal to right the wrongs of society. Because the eschatological end of the journey is assured for everyone, the path the journey takes doesn’t matter much. One mission to fight social evil is as good as another; what matters most is that we are missional together.”
― Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity

“It is impossible to have a Christian movement without categories and devoid of ideas. As successful as Emergent leaders are at communicating by way of misdirection and by being provocative without being clear, they do have some key bedrock beliefs. The most important of these is their eschatology, which explains, among other things, the term “Emergent” or “Emerging.”[3] In Pagitt’s opening statement at our debate he claimed to hold a “hopeful and positive view of God’s engagement in the world.” That hopeful view is that the kingdom of God is emerging through the processes of history because God is the future, drawing everything into Himself. They believe that God is still creating and that we can be “co-(re)creators” of the world with God.[4]”
― Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity

“The world where God’s words draw logical boundaries is not found within the worldview of the Emergent Church or of postmodern theology. Neither is facing God’s wrath against sin that will climax in a literal future judgment, when all who have not repented and believed the gospel will be judged by the very Savior they have spurned. Emergent/postmodern thinkers throw these longstanding Christian beliefs into a figurative trash can labeled “modernist, Enlightenment, or foundationalist,” and it is because of their rejection of the foundations that undergird human reason and communication that the Emergent Church remains a mystery to many who have worked quite hard to try to understand it.”
― Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity

“Theological liberalism and political liberalism are hardly different. When we hear the term “progressive,” we should realize that the definition of “progress” is that of Hegel and his various followers (theistic or atheistic). The reason for the heated passion we see in political debate is that those who are not joining the progressive agenda are seen to be hindering the process of social and spiritual evolution that will supposedly make the new cosmos a paradise for all.”
― Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity