Brian McLaren and Boldness

Tim Challies heard Brian McLaren speak the other day, and he wasn't all that impressed. Why not? Lack of boldness:

Throughout the evening, boldness was absent. The faith of the emergents, the postmodern faith, is a faith that is devoid of boldness before God. It is timid, angry, tentative, questioning. It is not a faith of assurance and boldness. It emphasizes the unknowability of God more than what God has revealed to us about Himself. The faith McLaren commends is a faith that always questions, always doubts. It seems that the only faith McLaren hates is the faith of a person who knows what he believes and is convicted by Scripture and by plain reason that what God has revealed is truth--true truth. As others have observed, the real enemy of the Emerging Church is conservative, biblical Protestantism. McLaren will commend anything or anybody, it seems, except those who have a faith built upon the truths revealed in the New Testament epistles.

The whole post is well worth reading. And it pertains to the question I asked back in December - where is the EM unashamedly bold? Probably helpful to place this in the context of Mark Driscoll's understanding of the EM stratification...

Adrian Warnock Interviews Mark Driscoll

Good insight into where Mark Driscoll is coming from, and (most interestingly), how he sees stratification in the emerging church movement:

I see various teams flying under the banner of emerging:

• Relevants: theologically conservative, culturally innovative church forms.
• Reformed Relevants: theologically conservative and reformed, culturally innovative church forms.
• Reconstructionists: theologically conservative, reinventing church forms.
• Revisionists: theologically liberal, reinventing church forms.

I have no problem with the evangelical Relevants (e.g. Dan Kimball, Chris Seay, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus). I have respect for, but some concerns with, the house church Reconstructionists. I consider myself a Reformed Relevant. And, the Emergent crowd is Revisionist, which I have strong concerns about regarding such things as gender roles, original sin, substitionary atonement, homosexuality, authority of Scripture, hell, etc.

You can read the whole thing here...
(HT: JT)