The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Emerging Church

I admit here to choosing a bad word in my statement. I believe I meant "church goers" rather than "Christians". The point still stands, though, I think. There are people in the most orthodox of churches I am sure who don't believe "right".


I never implied that McLaren had discovered something "new which others have not understood, preached, and taught". I just thought his chapter about the "7 Jesuses" was interesting. Maybe he didn't pick the best words to make his point, but, I think, if one looks at the church as it is today, different groups put their primary focus on only part of Jesus' life and ministry. This isn't to say that the historic church has failed to focus on these different areas. I never said that they had and never implied that. I just think that what McLaren has to say in that chapter of A Generous Orthodoxy is very good. Here is a quote:



How many orthodox writers are writing things on the level of the common man or the common college student or the common anyone? I find those kind of writings hard to come by these days. In light of that, it's turning people away from the gospel because they can't understand what's being said amidst all the theological terms and such. I'm not saying that we stop using biblical language, but, we can present biblical language to the people in the language of the people. There is nothing wrong with this. We have the Bible in English that people can actually understand don't we? Why does sharing the gospel and the deep things of God have to be any different?


But, also, nowhere in Scripture does it say to use the same methods of sharing the gospel with all people. Yes, it says to preach the gospel, but we can preach to different groups in different ways. This is what Jesus did. He didn't always preach sermons. Sometimes he told stories, sometimes he had conversations. Paul was the same way. Sometimes he preached and sometimes he reasoned in the temple. And in both cases, they used the language of the people. They didn't always come condemning. Sometimes they came serving and loving and reasoning and conversing. And, they used different words to convey the same truth to different people.


I never said or implied that what orthodox writers are reinforcing was wrong. They are reinforcing right ideas. And they do a wonderful job of challenging falsehood. But they leave no room for thinking about why we believe what we believe. The orthodox things that I've read are all about how their view is right and you should believe their way or your wrong. There isn't any room for a difference of opinion. It makes one feel very condemned if they think differently, and, I really don't think that is what Jesus set out to do when He came to this earth, and, I don't know that it's what we should do either. We can reinforce right beliefs by allowing people to ask questions about them. McLaren and others challenge and allow people to ask questions. I think we should do the same.