The UmBlog

Do-It-Yourself Impressive Theological Constructs "Compose 10,000 impressive sentences. Select a phrase from each column to form statements which sound profound." Thanks for the pointer Joe...

See Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . D.A. Carson . July 8, 2005 | PBS where many of the concerns I have Carson has, but he is far more charitable than I make any space for here. some highlights are "What I want to see in the movement is less focus on emerging as a category and more focus on the Gospel, because otherwise, if the Gospel is merely the assumed thing rather than the thing about which we are passionate, in another half-generation, another generation, the Gospel itself becomes diluted, even denied. The successors and heirs of the current leaders to the movement will be passionate about the things they are passionate about, and they are being stamped now, it seems to me, by whether they are or are not sufficiently emerging, rather than being stamped by whether they are or are not sufficiently faithful to the historic Gospel." he says what i said in my last post "I think that the movement itself is likely to split. In fact, in some ways it al...

Please forgive me, I never knew that, As a legal non-profit (501(c)(3)) corporation, Emergent has had a Board of Directors and an annual business meeting, as required by law, for several years now. I guess this isn't true for all things emerging outside of the US. First, I must say, this is so NOT postmodern. But now this, Tony Jones, Emergent-U.S. National Director, no, strike that, Coordinator. The spin from these systematizing anti-systematizers couldn't be beat by any politician from Washington D.C. Just when I'm getting ready to write about the birth of a new denomination/affiliation/movement with the requisite gatekeepers and doctrinal fences, I get another gift from these guys. I know the meeting happened last month but emergent-us isn't part of my regular rounds of emergent's blogdom. I actually ended up there from Andrew's blog on the ec's tension points where someone mentioned the trashing a, presumably, orthodox Presbyterian minister named tooa...

so i'm concerned with seeing the enneagram on Pagitt's blog . Previously I had concern when I read about Solomon's Porch that "Monday night means yoga class, not board meetings. For worshipers at Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis, it's part of their passion for a new kind of spiritual formation." CT . I am discerning a lack of discernment at Pagitt's church, because Pagitt isn't discerning. Hold off on flaming me though. I spent my 20's in a movement that lacked discernment also, The Vineyard . There was much I was blessed by in the Vineyard. It was used by God to scratch those itches that my Plymouth Bretheren upbringing didn't. (FWIW, Brian Mclaren comes from the PB). I never left the Vineyard though, instead our affiliation changed to Calvary Chapel . This wasn't a huge leap, as the Vineyard sprung from CC . And my pastor came from CC. So we were a Vineyard with alot of Bible teaching time and we became a CC with alot of worship time. W...

from Watchman Fellowship "The Enneagram is an occult oriented chart or diagram with many points and lines inside and touching a circle. The chart purports to describe nine different personality types, and therefore, nine approaches to the perception and response to reality...And the most important myth is that it can be adapted to fit Christianity. Catholic charismatic lecturer Dorothy Ranaghan has written a well-researched booklet, A Closer Look at the Enneagram, and asks the important question, "If the enneagram is unscientific, esoteric, taken from a contemporary sycretsit version of Islamic mysticism and tainted with the occult, how is it that many Christians have bought into the system so wholeheartedly?" (p. 37)" It's big in Catholic circles. From Saint Mike's "Out of nowhere, the enneagram burst onto the Christian scene and became very popular with publishers and retreat houses. The enneagram is a circular diagram on which personality types numbe...

Jesus Creed: Jesus and the First Spiritual Law I've just started reading through McKnight's reflections on the 4 Spiritual Laws. I will have comments on this series, but I also wanted to point out Gerald's comments, most of the way down, on Salvation and Perseverance in Augustine's thought. I can't comment yet on Gerald's blog but I think I was saying similar things in my First Shovelful .

Theologizing Away Discomfort , by David Brickner is a worthwhile observation on some trends in the emergent church, e.g. At the heart of that philosophy is the notion that what we do and how we live matters more than any message we might proclaim. Claims to truth falter and fail, but a life that is "authentic" is necessary for evangelism in our postmodern society. At first blush this sounds holy and smart and kind of biblical. The problem is, it creates a false dichotomy between words and deeds, as though we need to choose one over the other to be effective. This is certainly not biblical.