Brian McLaren is kinda the spokesperson for the generation that wants to speak for itself, and so he's sort of the "victim" of a built in obsolescence. He tends to pander to the pied piper of "post modern" relevance, all the while failing to recognize that Christianity missed that boat thirty years ago. It's easy to pick on Brian McLaren because his name is so well known and associated with emergence, but the fact is that what is "emergent" was, a long time before it was labeled. Before the novelty of A Generous Orthodoxy, was generous orthopraxy being practiced by people in their every day lives. A movement is far more than a couple of talking heads who claim ownership and spokesman-ship for it.
Brands aside, it seems that from where I stand, that there is something of a thread running through the last two decades stemming from the indirect influence of Toronto, Brompton, and Brownsville coupled together with the influence of John Eldridge's "Sacred Romance." The former turned many people to question their faith, and the latter egged some on toward a different path. This just illustrates that it doesn't all have to do with Brian McLaren, and Doug Paget, and the Emergent Church.
Christianity is at least a hundred and fifty years over due for a crisis of challenged assumptions - Deep doctrinal evaluation. This is far more than the superficial "relevancies" of "is God violent," and alternative worship, but have to do with how a Christian can rightly understand God in the light of a universe we live in, revealed to us by the natural sciences. We've tried to mask the issues, defeat science, and contort our logic, making the gospel nothing more than a laughingstock. We preach the foolishness of man and claim it is the foolishness of God, having lost claim to what that really is. We've dumped anything uniquely identifiable about our faith except for the mantle of rejecting reality.
Anyway, here's my ten answers:
1) What is the overarching story line of the Bible? - The uniqueness of God
2) How should the Bible be understood? - As an imperfect yet essential and definite record of this unique God's pursuit of his creation
3) Is God violent? - Is God non-violent... if he who shall not be named breathed life into me (the sound of which is YH-WH) who am I to "define" Him: better to let him define me.
4) Who is Jesus and why is he important? - Jesus is exactly who he said he was
5) What is the Gospel? - The Gospel is the good news that I am not in control
6) What do we do about the Church? - which Church? those who follow the Way are doing just fine... the local country club, not so much.
7) Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it? - that all depends, it only takes one person who wants to fight. Better lets understand morality and sin with wisdom instead of our small minded human judgmentalism
8) Can we find a better way of viewing the future? - yes, it's called the present.
9) How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions? - As they relate to anyone else. since when is following Jesus a religion anyway?
10) How can we translate our quest into action? - Do something.
Steve Hayes - Khanya
Beth Patterson - Virtual Tea House
K.W. Leslie - The evening of Kent
Lainie Petersen - Headspace
Phil Wyman - Square No More
Ryan Peters - Blogs and stuff
Josh Jinno - The AnteChurch
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