Book Review: Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications
Nathanael Sutanto

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D.A. Carson, Ph.D., is a professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has published over 45 books, including the Gold Medallion Award-winning book The Gagging of God.

There have been at least three major changes in the way people throughout history, particularly the Western world, view the origin, presuppositions, foundation, extent, and validity of their knowledge of truth. Prior to Enlightenment, there was Premodern Epistemology, that believes in God’s existence and omniscience. Without God initiating a communication and revealing the truth to us, men will not be able to obtain that knowledge. Starting in 17th century until few decades ago, Modern Epistemology influenced the world’s philosophy. Through great philosopher like Descartes, people were convinced that God does not have to be the only source of knowledge for truth. Men through their limitations can obtain parts of the truth. And this truth is believed to withstand the test of time and space. That is when the truth was proclaimed, it would hold its legitimacy across different culture and time period. However, for the past few decades now, Postmodern Epistemology has shaped the way people viewed the truth, its origin and validity. Postmodern epistemology acknowledges differences among culture and time period, and how these dimensions may affect the validity of truth. People from different group will have different set of values, cultures, assumptions, perspectives that would shape his or her own view. Foundations of and methods to attain the truths are shaken to its core. Postmodernism essentially states that there is no absolute truth, nor an objective knowledge. This view has been influential even to the Eastern world that often times still holds to mystical ways of obtaining knowledge of truths.

As an institution that tries to provide answers to questions about the truths and influence people’s behaviors, church is not immune to shifts of one worldview to another. To answer the challenges in postmodern world, a movement termed as emerging church has arisen. This movement is characterized by tolerance and respect towards people, who hold different and often time conflicting views. Carson through this book tries to explore this movement and bring up its strengths and weaknesses.

Most of these emerging churches share the same passion for evangelism. This movement springs about after discontents over the way traditional churches are structured in a corporation-like institution, which puts more weight to what the pastor says than what the Bible says. Often time these big evangelical churches are located in the suburbs rather than downtowns to avoid any disturbances or ugly sights from drunkards or homeless people during the service. The churches are built in isolated complex complete with gym, arcade, and entertainment center. In the end these churches lost touch of current culture and reality. Brian McLaren, a strong proponent of the movement describes the emerging church movement in his book, A New Kind of Christian: A tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey, to be among other things against analytical, objectiveness, critical, secular, organizational, individualistic, consumerist, and favors feelings and affections, experience (rather than truth), inclusion, participation, and “a move from the absolute to the authentic”. McLaren continues by stating that “it means taking into account contemporary emphases on tolerance; it means not telling others they are wrong. It underscores the importance of narrative – both life-narrative (as believers and unbelievers alike tell their stories) and in Bible study and preaching.” While objecting complete absolutism, McLaren does not fully support philosophical pluralism and relativism either. What he meant by philosophical pluralism is that “no single outlook can be the explanatory system or view of reality that accounts for all of life”, and relativism as “the theory that denies absolutism and insists that morality and religion are relative to the people who embrace them”. Instead McLaren proposes emergent thinking, the ability to integrate both old and new knowledge of truth.

After giving a big picture description of what emerging church movement is about, Carson moved on by presenting detailed analysis of where this movement stands on fundamental Christian doctrines. One of the most crucial weaknesses that Carson brought up is McLaren attitude that downplays the central role of Jesus Christ crucifixion on the cross as an ultimate source of atonement. While it is commendable that emerging churches try to reach out to more people that have been secluded or condemned by “traditional” Christians, such as homosexuals, however, I agree with Carson that emerging church’s interpretation of many texts in the Bible have deviated too far from the original intention of the authors. Emerging church movement has also failed to answer many of the truth-related questions. Emerging church movement has also wrongly emphasizes the steps of conducting evangelism. Instead of focusing on “becoming” before “belonging”, emerging church movement believes that it is more important to welcoming more people into the “club” and the conversion will follow suit. A practical example would be to allow nonbelievers to partake in Holy Communion of the Lord’s Table. Furthermore, Carson reminds us of the following truth from the passages found in Ephesians 2:1-3, 19-20 and Revelation 21:6-8, that “on the last day, there will be a massive divide between those who inherit the consummated kingdom and those who do not.” Finally, with regards to the validity of truth, I concur with Carson in that there is absolute truth or objective knowledge that can only be revealed by God through His word, however, we must do our part in persevering and seeking Him faithfully as well (2 Peter 1: 1-20).

I think Carson has written a good overview of emerging church movement in this postmodern era. Comments included in the footnotes have provided more elaborate analysis of the movement. I found the arguments presented to be balanced and comprehensive. I think the movement reminded us of how to conduct a more effective evangelism in this era, however, to quote G. K. Chesterton, “a man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth”.

Nathanael Sutanto currently works as a financial engineer in Washington, DC. He obtained a master degree in financial engineering from University of Michigan.

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