Erwin McManus and the Emergent Church

A good friend of mine has been reading a few books by Erwin McManus lately, and has enjoyed them a lot. At his urging, I read Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller, and I'm in the middle of reviewing it. When he started reading McManus's stuff, I didn't know if he was going to be like Miller or what, and from my preliminary observations, though he is considered an Emergent Church leader, McManus seemed to be a decent guy with a strong passion.

I have to admit, I admire his passion for wanting the church to be what Jesus established it to be. He also seems to have a strong passion for God from a couple of glances I've taken at his website. This too is far too uncommon in our time, and he is to be commended for that.

However, there are a few things about him that bother me. Not long ago, I had nothing to talk about concerning him, especially since I haven't read his books. I've been guilty before of over-analyzing someone or something about a person without actually having read the material, and, while a person can get a good idea about a book or ministry from trusted sources, it is most often best to get first-hand information. The other day, I found that information.

Here is a link for an interview with E. M. done by FreshMinistry. I'll be referencing a few things from the article, some good, some not so good.

First, I want to say it is clear that God has done a lot of things in Erwin's ministry. The website records some of the work that he did that was, apparently, shortly after his conversion:

He was convinced that if the message of Jesus was true, it would work in the worst situations, so he focused his efforts among the urban poor. He and his wife Kim worked side jobs to support their ministry among the people no one wanted--drug dealers, prostitutes, the homeless.

I can only commend Mr. McManus for this. It is an awesome thing that God was using him to bring the Gospel to those people.

Yet, there are a couple of things that bother me, like this one:

Every human has God placed evidences within their soul. Postmodern evangelism is extracting those evidences from the soul and show them to them. I say, 'Inside you is a craving you need to listen to.'

I would agree that every human has God placed evidences within them. In fact, Romans speaks to that issue clearly:

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (19) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (20) For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

So then, people have some knowledge of God -- but they suppress it in unrighteousness per the inspired text. I'd have to say then that inside a person is some knowledge they are required and commanded to accept and believe, but a "craving"? I'd have to disagree. In fact, the Scripture seems to teach just the opposite:

John 3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. (20) For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

Scripture indicates that we hate the light of God's goodness, not that we're "craving" it. Of course, God eventually changes His elect so that we do crave God, but those who are pre-regenerate won't be doing it. Mr. McManus's statement and method then can use some adjustment. On to another statement by Mr. McManus (emphasis mine):

“The churches that will cease to exist are not those who are doctrinally errant, but are spiritually errant. You can't get away with it anymore. You can't just talk about what the bible says, you better flesh it out or you are dead.”
“That's what's exciting about the world in which we live. Only the viable church of Jesus Christ will survive, the inauthentic need not apply. I want to live in the world that if the church is not the revolution that Jesus died to establish 2000 years ago it ceases to exist. I want to live in a world where the church has no more crutches, or buffers to guard her from injury. I want a church where a culture no longer protects her. Whenever the gospel enters an environment, it prevails.”

First of all, I wanted to say that I find myself in strong agreement with McManus here, that is, the non-emphasized parts of the above quote. We must not simply talk about what the Bible says; we need to flesh it out, and being inauthentic about it is useless. James says this very thing in different words. Furthermore, I completely agree that the Gospel prevails when it enters an environment. The reason of course is that God works out what He ultimately wills when His Word goes forth.

However, with that said, I find that I disagree with the emphasized parts of his statement that I quoted. Granted, no church will be completely doctrinally perfect. However, that is no excuse for not pursuing it and making it a high priority. We must search the Scriptures, and, when we find areas where we are not in agreement with them, we change accordingly.

There seems to be a strong tendency in those who accept some or all of the label "emergent" to avoid emphasizing doctrine. Sometimes, the word is even seen as a pejorative, and Bible doctrine takes a back-seat to relevance in ministry.

This is surely tragic, and misses a critical reason for using Scripture at all. Furthermore, Paul had a few things to say about those who opposed the doctrines he was teaching. We MUST strive constantly to be as biblical as we can be, rigorously scrutinizing everything we say and do by the Holy Scriptures. Granted, McManus was not saying we shouldn't do that, but they way he said what he did seemed to suggest that being doctrinally correct wasn't very important. The truth is, if we are going to be spiritually authentic, we need to have a standard against which we can measure our level of authenticity and if we are spiritually errant or not! It is not an either/or, but rather, a both/and approach that we need.

One more quote that really bothered me, in response to a question asked of him about what kind of advice he would give preachers who want to minister in the post-modern age:

First, The sermons that are changing the world are the ones where the pastor is real--sharing his journey with the congregation. Second, stop preaching sermons and start telling stories. Third, Break though the pressure to be a great preacher and become a great leader.

Agreed, if a pastor is not real and authentic when he declares the Word of God in preaching, then he's doing a disservice to the text and to the congregation. A pastor should be affected by the text he is preaching. However, here is where the agreement ends, and where I think Mr. McManus is creating a false disjunction, falling into the either/or error, among other things.

Stories can be useful to illustrate what a text is talking about, but if all we do is tell stories and stop preaching, we as preachers have abdicated our responsibility to declare the Word of God. We have substituted our errant, personal accounts for the inerrant Word of God. Tragically, this is already the case in many churches, emergent or not. Most of the "preachers" today seem content to tell amusing stories about themselves or others rather than to deal with the text of Scripture. We need more of the latter, not the former. I've addressed this to a small extent in another post.

Also, pastors should desire to be great leaders AND great preachers; it's a both/and, not an either/or. However, if we should have to make a choice between the two, the Scriptures seem to indicate that being a good and accurate preacher would be more important than being a dynamic leader. You can be a great leader and mishandle the text of the Bible and lead your people into doctrinal error, and subsequently, have a church that misses its purpose of the glory of God. However, even if a man isn't the best of leaders, if he declares the Word of God clearly and accurately, God can and will work mightily in his church. Chances are that He'll raise up other people who are better leaders than himself to serve as elders too.

It would appear then that brother McManus has some of his priorities out of order. Let's not make the same mistake, and pray for his ministry that he wouldn't lose his passion for leading people, but that he would also gain one for sound doctrine and expository preaching so that God would be glorified all the more, and his ministry would be all the more blessed.

For the Glory of Jesus,
David Hewitt

Dr. Frank Page's Book, "Trouble with the TULIP"

I've made a comment about it already and there was a bit of good response to it. There have been a lot of reviews (of his book) out there lately, but none better have I found than this one.

I hope you find it as useful as I did!

May God's Glory be Our Single Focus,
David Hewitt

The Idol of Evangelism

Yes, that's right; evangelism has become an idol. I truly believe this to be one of, if not the greatest problem in the Southern Baptist Convention today. We have idolized the practice of evangelism, and focus on it rather than the God who commanded that it be done.

I want it to be clear that I am not opposed to evangelism. That should be very obvious from other posts in my blog. If you are going to insist that I am anti-evangelism based on this post in opposition to my clear statement here and in other posts (not the least of which is my Gospel Tract), then I cannot stop you. However, if you do choose to take that stand, may God rebuke you and correct you. Instead, I am opposed to making it an idol over God Himself, and opposed to many of the methods that pass for it nowadays.

The recent Southern Baptist Convention brought this issue to the forefront in many ways. If you listen to a lot of the messages from the pastor's conference, aside from the common misrepresentations of "Calvinism" and the lack of expository preaching, you'll note a very strong emphasis on evangelism. This in and of itself isn't bad, but what were the reasons given to DO it? What were the supposed benefits of sharing Jesus?

Later, during a brief delay in the business section of the Convention, Dr. Bobby Welch spoke from a passage in Matthew 13 (though I forget which part) and made a couple of comments which highlight the problems with how the SBC views evangelism:

There isn't a problem in your church that soul-winning can't solve.

Really? No problem at all? That's a bold claim, and one I'd have to disagree with. If a church doesn't know what the Bible teaches and is a bit lost doctrinally, just because people are won to Christ (a very good thing), the climate won't be helped in the church too much. Sure, there will be rejoicing over people saved, but now there will be fresh new believers in need of discipleship in a church that doesn't know its Bible. That part of the problem will likely worsen.

Dr. Tom Ascol submitted a resolution about integrity in reporting church membership. The committee decided not to bring it forward, and that in and of itself was disappointing. However, since the resolution was submitted properly, he was able to bring it up during a business time. When he did, it was soundly defeated. A member of the committee, Dr. French, when Tom read the resolution from the floor, responded (with emphasis mine):

Brother Tom, we understand and we are concerned about these things. However, we are also concerned about the accuracy of the claims because what we receive through the statistics are just those things that are reported by the local churches. And so we would have to challenge what they send us.

And we certainly do not want to throw away from our membership rolls the names of the non-attenders because we would be throwing away a very valuable prospect list for reclamation in evangelism. Now in Sunday School we don’t cull the rolls as long as those people live in our area so that we can continue to pray for them and visit them and secure them in Bible study.

I do not question Dr. French's motives, but this statement is reprehensible in more than one way. Comparing church membership to Sunday School membership is comparing apples to oranges, a God-instituted body versus a man-instituted organization. Churches can do what they want with their Sunday School rolls, but the composition of the church is much more important.

As Southern Baptists, we believe in a regenerate church membership; that is, that believers are to be the only members of churches, and this is appropriate because the only members of Christ are those He has saved. Furthermore, in Southern Baptist churches, we require people to have been baptized as believers before they get added to our membership rolls. The Baptist Faith and Message speaks to this very thing under Article VI, The Church (my emphasis):

A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.

So then, our church membership rolls, per the BFM (not to mention the Bible), CANNOT be a source of evangelism prospects! If people are not saved, then they should not be on any church roll in the Southern Baptist Convention[1], and I would argue, shouldn't be on any church roll anywhere. Remove such people from church membership by appropriate discipline as defined in Matthew 18[2], and take the Gospel to them!

Perhaps Dr. French misspoke, and in the heat of the moment said something he didn't mean, or didn't elaborate. However, if that is the case, I do indeed hope he would say so sometime in the near future.

Regardless, what he said indicates a serious problem. It is opposed to the BFM for sure, and sounds very much like compromise on a biblical tenant for the sake of a hope that more "might" be reached. The problem is, we cannot, CANNOT do that!

These kind of statements have led to many of the practices of evangelism that we have in the SBC today. Progressively, we have been moving down the road of an "anything goes" mentality to do what it takes to get someone into the baptistry and/or to pray a prayer. When they do that, we add them to the church roll, often with very little discernment in the whole process as to whether or not God has really changed them. The focus becomes more on man and his feelings than on God and His glory. Dr. Roy Hargrave, pastor of Riverbend Church in Florida preached an excellent message addressing this very issue. I find myself in near complete agreement with him, especially this statement from that message:

"If therefore the desire to evangelize is the priority of the church over God and His glory, then it becomes in and of itself, an idol."

I couldn't agree more. How often do we hear the Great Commission declared from our pulpits, but have a critical implication from it missed?

Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (19) Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Often we are told, "Jesus has all authority, and He is commanding us, so we should go! his authority is greater than anyone else's who might try to dissuade us." This is a true and trustworthy implication, and we should take it seriously, applying it to our practice! However, is this the ONLY implication we should be getting from this text, and the ONLY application? I say a resounding NO!

Jesus has all authority over heaven and earth. Not only do we go because He's told us to, but everyone, everywhere owes Jesus allegiance! Jesus has all authority -- the whole world, every tribe, tongue, people, and nation owes Him worship and reverence -- and people don't give it to Him! Our God is dishonored and blasphemed, and people do not worship Him! My brothers and sisters, this is HORRIBLE and ought not be!

Therefore, because Jesus has all authority and deserves the worship of all, we go to the ends of the earth with His Gospel and proclaim it to them that they might be saved and therefore begin to give God the glory that He deserves! THAT ought to be our primary motivation for sharing the Gospel of our God. Jesus deserves worship; we DO NOT deserve salvation. Jesus died on the cross to purchase a people for Himself. We deserve wrath; He deserves His reward, and the means He has ordained for that end is the preaching of the Gospel. We must then GO, because Jesus deserves the honor and glory! Evangelism therefore is not an end within itself; its end (and fuel) is the worship of the Almighty, Most Holy, Merciful, Gracious, Wrathful ONE TRUE GOD.

Furthermore, evangelism is not the only item commanded in the Great Commission. If we are not discipling new believers and teaching them everything Jesus commanded, then we are in disobedience to the very thing we trumpet most often from our pulpits.

Lord Jesus, bring repentance to the Southern Baptist Convention and our churches. Please cause us once again to focus on YOU and YOUR glory and be God-centered in our evangelism once again.

For the Glory of Jesus,
David B. Hewitt


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1. This is of course, not to say, that such people shouldn't be on any roll at all. In many SBC churches, the Sunday School rolls double as prospect lists; I have no problem with that, or placing such people on a different prospect list all together. However, the membership list of a church ought not be such a list.

2. People that claim to be members but do not take part in a local church, in most cases (overseas deployments and crippling sicknesses excepted), are lying about their membership and are rebelling against Scriptural mandates, such as the one in Hebrews 10:24-25. Therefore, such people are candidates for discipline under the guidelines of Matthew 18 that I cited. This process of discipline needs to be re-instated in our churches, and I believe the current unbiblical attitudes about evangelism we have right now have contributed greatly to the demise of this biblical practice among us.

The Effects of the "Doctrines of Grace" on Evangelism

I was reading this artcile by John Piper, and I couldn't help but note what he said about evangelism and what these beautiful, biblical doctrines (the TULIP ones) do for evangelism. I'll quote him from that article below:

9. These truths reminds me that evangelism is absolutely essential for people to come to Christ and be saved, and that there is great hope for success in leading people to faith, but that conversion is not finally dependent on me or limited by the hardness of the unbeliever.

So it gives hope to evangelism, especially in the hard places and among the hard peoples.

John 10:16, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold, I must bring them also. They will heed my voice."

It is God's work. Throw yourself into it with abandon.

Beautiful; absolutely beautiful. Do you see it? There are others out there that God has marked as His sheep. Jesus must bring them in also! Those people will heed His voice. When we share the Gospel, we can be confident that God is the one working to make it effective.

It truly is God's work. Throw yourself into it with abandon!

SDG,
David Hewitt

Wimpy Preaching

Alan Kurschner has once again done a great service to me by reposting this article from Dr. White's weblog from a few months back. It asks the question, "Is your preaching wimpy?"

He asks some pointed questions in that article for sure, and I think any preacher and/or teacher of the Word of God needs to examine himself with those questions. I know I've slipped into the errors that Dr. White uncovers a few times, not speaking as boldly on a particular doctrine that I should have, and other things.

May God forgive me, and by His grace, may all of us who declare the Word do so unflinchingly, trusting that God will bring about that which He desires to bring about through His Word!

A Slave of Christ,
David Hewitt

SBC Presidential Candidate Frank Page on "Calvinism"

I really have no desire to engange in denominational politics -- really. :) However, with the recent nomination of Dr. Frank Page as a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, I figured it would be good to read up on him a little.

Baptist Press posted this recent article about Dr. Page, and put a lot of information together about his views about the SBC and various topics in denominational life that have received a lot of attention lately. I found the article very informative, and I found myself in agreement with several things that Dr. Page said. However, there were a few things included in the article that I had to differ with, under the subject heading of "Calvinism" in the article:

In his book, “Trouble with the Tulip: A Closer Examination of the Five Points of Calvinism,” Page said he expressed his belief that “God has foreordained the ‘how,’ not the ‘who.’” Those foreordained in Christ become the chosen elect people of God, he added.

When I read this, it sounded a little familiar, and then I remembered reading something Herschel Hobbs wrote in a book that he wrote to explain the Baptist Faith and Message from 1963. I couldn't find my book, but I did find this article on the internet, and this quote from that article:

In essence Paul says that God elected a plan of salvation (Eph. 1-2) and a people to propagate the plan (Eph. 3:1-6:20). But man is free to accept or reject either or both of them.

That kinda sounds like what Page was saying when he said "God elected the 'how' but not the 'who,' and that those in that plan "become the chosen elect people of God."

Hobbs, in his article, then goes into a discussion of Ephesians 1:4-5, and I cannot help but think that Page was making the same assertions as Hobbs did above, and basing it a particular interpretation of this passage. That is, that God elected Christ as a plan, and then all those who believe in Him are then the elect. However, is this the appropriate way to exegete that passage in Ephesians? Though I've exegeted part of this passage before, I wanted to address a larger section, so I've reproduced the text below, followed by some explanations:

Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, (4) even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love (5) he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, (6) to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (7) In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, (8) which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight (9) making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ (10) as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (11) In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, (12) so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. (13) In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, (14) who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

The reason I cited all of these verses is because of the context; all of these verses compose a single sentence in the Greek, and therefore should be taken all together. In short, the Father elects and predestines a people in Christ for His glory (3-6), the Son redeems that people for His glory (7-12) and the Holy Spirit seals them for His glory (13-14). All three of these activities are for the glory of God (verses 6, 12, 14)!

Things get more interesting when we start talking about verses 4 and 5 and who or what is being "chosen." Some insist that the main issue of God's choice here is a plan to save people, and then the elect work into that plan; i.e. those who believe are the elect.

I don't disagree with that really; it is true that those who believe are the elect and that Jesus was the plan for the redemption of God's people from before the foundation of the world (verse ten mentions God's plan to some extent). The question is why they believe. Are they elect because they believe (their belief caused their election, as Page and Hobbs indicate) or do they/we believe because they/we are elect? Further, is verse four really that ambiguous, or is it truly clear what Paul was saying?

In addition to the context indicating that God is doing all of this for His glory and working out the entire process[1], the grammar of the sentence can help us out tremendously here. The verb we have is "chose." Now, what is the direct object of the verb? The direct object cannot be "in Him" as some suggest, and therefore it cannot be that Paul here is talking about God's plan and that everyone who ends up elect is because of God's chosen plan and that they get in if they exert their own faith. The reason is this: direct objects can never be prepositional phrases, which is just what "in him" is! I'll quote briefly from that article I just linked to above:

The direct object must be a noun or pronoun. A direct object will never be in a prepositional phrase. The direct object will not equal the subject as the predicate nominative, nor does it have a linking verb as a predicate nominative sentences does.

Grammar is trans-language in many ways. All languages have nouns, pronouns, verbs, direct and indirect objects, prepositions and prepositional phrases, etc., and they are used in the same way too (though they are not always in the same places; Greek has some odd word order). This is why I keep telling my Spanish students that they need to know their "English" grammar, or what I'm trying to teach them won't make a lot of sense. :)

That being said, the object of the word "chose" is "us." If we break that part of the sentence down, it would be correct to say the following:

1.) God chose us before the foundation of the world.
2.) God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.

Both are true, and they are necessarily linked; the latter (which is just a restating of the verse) simply gives us a bit more information about God's action. Before the foundation of the world, God chose who would be in Christ. This is the teaching of the passage, and that understanding in verse four flows naturally from verse three. God is blessed and is to be praised because of His blessings on us, the first of which Paul mentions is the fact that He chose us. Who is the us? We know from verse 1:

Ephesians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus:

So then, the "us" would be Paul[2] and also those to whom he is writing, which would be the "saints who are in Ephesus."

There is a lot more that could be said about this passage, and how God's predestining of His elect to adoption was an act of His love, but this is sufficient to show that God did indeed choose the "who" as well as the "how". I do not want to be rude to Dr. Page in any fashion, but his statement doesn't hold up to the teaching of Ephesians (or the rest of the Bible's teaching on election for that matter). I cannot help but conclude that he is in error.

Second quote:

Noting that Reformed pastor John Piper’s books are among the most read books on seminary campuses, Page said the movement is huge and growing -- “bigger than Texas,” he stated. “We must have honesty about this issue. There are churches splitting across the convention because pastors are coming in quietly trying to teach Calvinism or Reformed theology without telling the pastor search committees where they stand. The vast majority of Southern Baptist churches are not Calvinistic in their theology and it’s causing some serious controversy.”

Well, part of the reason "Reformed" pastors don't often flat out say that they are "Calvinists" is because organizations like the now defunct "BaptistFire" have poisoned the well so to speak, and have cast the term in a negative light -- a light which it doesn't deserve. The truth is, the term is very misunderstood, and if we use the term, chances are we'll be dishonest! The reason for that is we'll merely be telling most people we are something we're not, because in their minds they think a "Calvinist" is "A" (and often includes unfounded charges of being anti-evangelistic) when we know it is "B."

In the last couple of days, I've read some very eye-opening material over at Founder's Blog that deals with this quote more than I could here, and Dr. Tom Ascol's ability to communicate information in a humble, Christlike way is about the best I've seen. I refer you to then to his excellent post on the matter, and the comments that have been put to it. It will take a while to go through them, so if you don't have the time for that, at least read the blog entry. I'm fairly confident that you'd be blessed.

May God be Glorified!

David Hewitt
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1. Remember, verses 3-14 are one sentence. When you consider verse eleven, it indicates clearly that God is working all of it out according to His will; there is no room for what Hobbs suggested. Man cannot mess up God's plan; those who come to Christ do so because God predestined them to do so. Those who do not remain in their sin in willful rebellion; they are the ones who God has not chosen.

2. All pronouns have antecedents; that is, there is always a noun (or nouns) that the pronoun is replacing. Since this is a first-personal plural pronoun, the first person must be included (Paul) and also some other noun already referred to. The only other nouns used in passage so far have been "God" and "Jesus Christ," and it makes no sense at all to say that Paul was expressing how awesome God is by saying that He chose Christ to be "in Him (Christ)" or God to be "in Him (Christ)" along with himself (Paul). The only logical answer for the other antecedent for "us" would be the Ephesian believers.