Jay Bakker

Real Roots of the Emergent Church Documentary: Updated!

Here is the 3-hour Updated Director’s Cut of The Real Roots of the Emergent Church documentary:

Because diversity characterizes the Emergent Church movement, it is difficult to paint everyone in the movement with a broad brush. Some have observed that defining the Emergent Church is like nailing jello to a wall. All participants agree on their disillusionment with the institutional church, but do not all agree on where the church is destined to go from here. They share a common concern with many evangelicals over the state of the modern church, especially the mega-church phenomenon and “seeker-friendly” churches. For this reason, many evangelicals who observe the Emerging Church are fascinated by it, drawn to its creative approaches to worship, genuineness of many of the leaders and desire to reach Gen Xers. However, these evangelicals fail to look beyond it to understand its underlying theology, or lack thereof. [Read more...]

Yancey Joins Emergents for Wild Goose

From their official website, the Wild Goose festival “is a community gathered at the intersection of justice, spirituality, music and art. Our main annual event is a 4-day, outdoor festival hosted each summer in North Carolina.” Among many others, the speakers for 2013 include Emergent leaders Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle and Philip Yancey. Previous speakers have included Jay Bakker and Shane Claiborne. How did it start?

This group held their first festival in June of 2011. There, Jim Wallis, T-Bone Burnett, Phyllis Tickle, Vincent Harding, Over the Rhine, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Brian McLaren, Peggy & Tony Campolo, InterVarsity Press, Restoring Eden, Michelle Shocked, Rev. William Barber, Jim Forbes, Gabriel Salguero, Paul Fromberg, Lynne Hybels, and 1,700 others met at the intersection of justice, spirituality, music, and art. We sang, learned, taught, argued, prayed, ate, danced, imagined a new world, and gave birth to the Wild Goose community.

In the video above, Rev. William Barber quotes Matthew 23:23 and redefines being “born again” as “being in opposition to injustice.” The next speaker Lynne Hybels, wife of Bill Hybels and co-founder with him of Willow Creek Community Church, who says sometimes she rages against God when she sees the “tragedy of the world.” Jim Wallis of Sojourners speaks of “social change.”

Once again, this event demonstrates the fascistic social gospel of immanence which characterizes the Emerging Church movement: nature, emotion and community. “Give us new things to taste and to feel and to touch and to see,” says Melvin Bray epitomizing the here-and-now emphasis over God’s transcendent truth and morality. They welcome you to ” talk, listen, eat and camp together with us as equals, captivated and challenged by the call of radical humanity, and who seek to celebrate diversity and promote the common good,” NOT for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12).

[Read more...]