Kalled said:
"Has anyone here actually read McLaren's book or has everyone just read critiques about it?"


I read these BEFORE I knew there were any criticisms:
"A New Kind of Christian" by McLaren, "Messy Spirituality" by Mike Yaconelli, "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning, "Prayer" by Richard Foster and part of his "Spiritual Disciplines", "Wild At Heart" by John Eldredge, another book abou Theophostic Ministry (can't remember the name off the top of my head).

All these books were promoted and used at my church, I had problems with all of them and there are various degrees of error in them (also not all mentioned above are "emergent"). After being so bothered (especially with McLaren) I started hunting online and found several site with criticisms (there are more now) and discovered that there were others seeing the same exact thing I did. Interesting huh? Well then I continued to read more - "More Ready Than You Realize", "Finding Faith" and the second book after "New Kind of Christian" (can't remember the title). I've also read Dan Kimball's "The Emerging Church" (which our current worship pastor says he found good and wants to use ideas from the book for our worship). and the latest I've read is Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz" (currently promoted to our youth).

Think that's enough??? It's probably been a sin the amount of money I've spent in these books.
My reaction to these books is not that I have a boxed Christianity and that these don't fit into the box. It is error - clear and simple. It is a gift that I have this discernment as not everyone sees the error.
Have you read D.A. Carson's book about the emergent church? I would highly suggest it if you haven't.