Rob Bell’s next speaking tour has been announced – “The Gods Aren’t Angry Tour“, subtitled how humans invented religion to make themselves feel better, will be coming late this fall in the US.  Like the “Everything is Spiritual” tour, the venues for the tour are primarily nightclubs and small public theaters (like the Murat, here in Indianapolis).  All proceeds from the tour will go to the Burundi poverty-relief program, Turame, which is part of Mars Hill Bible Church’s (where Rob preaches) ‘XYZ’ mission program.

It will be interesting to hear what he has to say, which will obviously – on some level – be differentiating what it means to follow Jesus from simply practicing religion.

Tickets go on sale Saturday…

[NOTE: The original version of this article referred to Ken as posting the C?N article about this tour.  However, the mysterious 'Editor' was the poster, not Ken, so we cannot make attribution of the C?N post.] 

While the announcement of the tour was one of the first useful things I’ve found on C?N lately, C?N couldn’t resist throwing in a nasty guess at what Rob will say (kind of like the preview nastiness about Sex God, though – interestingly - C?N doesn’t seem to be able to exercise as much prooftexting glee with Bell’s second book as he has with Velvet Elvis.

We wonder if he’ll lump Christianity and the God of the Bible into both categories; not angry with our sin and a man-made religion. (after all, Bell thinks the Bible is a human product)

I wonder if C?N will actually go listen to Bell before tearing apart whatever he has to say.  Something tells me that only one of the two of us has ‘wondered’ correctly…

[FYI: C?N's last potshot is part of a quote from a Bell interview in which he addresses the way some fundamentalist churches treat the Bible, as if it fell out of the sky (was created by fiat) with no contextual connection to those who wrote the words in it, inspired by God.  Of course, that doesn't say what they want it to say, so they have eisogeted the quote in a manner to give it a different meaning than intended...]

As I have been perusing the comments at Slice, I have been deeply saddened. These are usually in response to a piece on how evil the seeker sensitive church is, and how the church is being taken over by the devil as we speak. Some have good content, others are obviously written out of ignorance or hate. There is one common though that I see throughout them. It is usually something to the effect of, “Lord, how much longer can we endure this? Come Lord, come!”

I obviously don’t agree completely with their assessment of the church today. But, as I read that, I think to myself how much more selfish can that statement be? Here they are pointing out that people are being dragged to hell left and right. They have the answer to solve the problem. And what do they want to do? Leave the scene! I am not to sure if this is a product of reformed theology or just a self-seeking heart.

Imagine watching a building burn with thousands of men, women and children in it. You have the fire hose in your hand. But, you cry out, “The fire is too hot! I gotta get outta here!” To me, that is exactly what many of these people are doing. They are too concerned with their own comfortable way of life being preserved, that they leave the situation in fear of being burned while saving someone. I would rather smell of the smokes of hell in an attempt to help bring someone to Christ, than stand by and watch people I love fall away. “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers”

I have been reading a lot of posts from the watch doggie blogs lately that critique style much more that theology. This was Ingrid’s comment from a recent post

Imagine having to compete with the entertainment moguls. Imagine the money you’d have to spend staying cool and buying endless media equipment, attending endless conferences on how to generate the most buzz and investing in those expensive salon haircuts just to stay relevant.

Is she really now critiquing haircuts? After being quite cynical over a conference that had leather sofas for pastor to sit in, she quoted this line from an Isaac Watts hymn:

Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the fight and sailed through bloody seas?

Is she serious? I am tired of posts that deal almost exclusively with style. You know, I am perfectly fine with someone who comes up to me after a Sunday gathering at Mosaic and says I prefer hymns over modern music. It’s when someone says that GOD prefers hymns over modern music that my blood starts to heat up. It’s absolutely ridiculous to think that God cares about the seating arrangement at a conference. Here was Ingrid’s closing comments

As pomo pastors recline in their leather theater seats, plotting how to impress a jaded American culture, a generation is denied the preaching of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. What is wrong with this generation of boy/men emerging leaders with their fancy websites, their adolescent fascination with video games and movies, and their vulgar contempt for anyone who questions them? …What a strange world we live in now and how pitiful that this Buzz Conference is now the status quo for pastors conferences. It’s those reclining leather theater seats that really say it all. What a real slice of Laodicea.

So, I don’t get it. How exactly do websites and haircuts deny the preaching of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ? Maybe if some of these watchdoggies actually did their homework, they would find that the emerging movement goes way beyond the movies and seating styles. They might just find that we are not trying to be relevant to culture, but actually living in and affecting the culture of today. They would possibly see that the world isn’t stuck in the culture of the eighteenth century, and neither is God. That maybe he is actually moving and creating with culture today.

I know we have had a thousand of these posts before. But, I think it is a good reminder that God wants to restore this generation to himself as well as the generation that grew up in a very modern era.

**UPDATE**

Right after I published this, Ingrid posts this:

Church used to be a house of prayer for believers to come together, hear the preaching of the Word, worship the Lord corporately as those who belong to Jesus, share the Lord’s Supper and go out into the world as witnesses, strengthened and empowered by what the Lord had done in their midst. That’s all gone now. Church is now for the unbeliever. Christians are expected to put up with no end of insult, whether it be stupid movie clips, hot bands, Sundays at the theater, Elvis wanna-be’s, and the like, just so unconverted Joe will like church well enough to come back next Sunday for stupid movie clips, hot bands, Sundays at the theater, Elvis wanna-be’s and so forth. It never gets any deeper in these churches because it can’t. Joe Six-Pack will leave and that reduces the numbers.

Notice how she talks about the non-beleiver.  It’s pretty sad and pretty selfish if you ask me.

Several years ago, after the great explosion of 24/7 News channels, a problem arose.  Once the Clinton scandals settled down, there was little real news to be had that would fill 24/7 programming.  So, to fill the air, a lot of ‘fluff’ stories and sensationalist segments took on lives of their own.  One in particular was that of “El Niño” – a weather pattern in the equatorial ocean which has an affect on world weather.

As the summer wore on, it seemed like everything was being blamed on El Niño, even when the remotest of plausible connections seemed ludicrous.  You knew it had reached a tipping point when Jay Leno was blaming a lack of good summer movies on the effects of El Niño.

That time has passed, but the need for some sort of all-encompassing scapegoat has not.

Case in point today is the ‘Emergent Church’.^*

First, we have the issue of an Episcopal (NOTE: Not Emergent) priest (NOTE: Emergent and emerging churches do not have priests, and shudder at such heirarchies which run opposed to a fully encompassing view of the priesthood of all believers), Ann Holmes Redding, who has embraced Islam without leaving the Christian church.  I happened to see this same story on the cover of the Seattle newspaper on a Washington state ferry a couple of weeks ago, with ‘I am a Christian Muslim’ emblazoned above the picture of Ms. Redding.

Though I have not conferred with the other writers here at CRN.info, I would be willing to bet that – to a one – the idea of Christianity and Islam being a compatible match would strike every one of them (as well as me) as sheer lunacy.

Now, there is no indication that you would find broad support of a ‘Christian Muslim’ faith within the diverse Emergent/emerging churches.  While some Emergent Village (a small liberal subset of the entire EC movement) figures fall somewhere between open theism and universalism, most emerging churches (which are the majority in the EC) do not.  Mark Driscoll, Dan Kimball, Bob Hyatt and a host of other ‘emerging’ church figures I am certain would not (and do not) support such pantheistic/univeralistic theology.

Which is exactly why it is not surprising that Ken Silva would trot out his El Niño for a sick exercise in attacking part of the body of Christ.

In today’s miss-ive, Mr. Silva writes:

note also that her spiritually obtuse “Bishop Vincent Warner of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia told the Seattle Times that Redding”s embrace of Islam has not been controversial in his diocese.”

His next paragraph is this:

Did you catch that? The effect of the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church upon American Christianity is such that embracing two diametrically opposed faiths hasn’t even “been controversial” in her diocese.

Did you catch that?  In the entire first half of the article and in the linked articles, the Emergent Church is mentioned exactly zero times.  Now, jarringly, it is El Niño’s the Emergent Church’s fault that one of the most liberal of mainline churches (NOTE: Not Emergent Churches), the US Episcopal church, in one of its most liberal diocese, western Washington State, has a nutcase priestess who has attempted to be a Christian Muslim (which is like trying to be a fertile eunuch).  And somehow, this is the fault of a hugely diverse (but yet, broadbrushed) group of churches who have no broad support for wacky ‘Christian-Mormon’ doctrine.

This is just one more example of C?N’s complete lack of research and zeal to slander, smear and divide the church.  But there’s more:

Well guess what, since I first covered this at Christian Research Net this sickening story hasn’t even been controversial to the Christian public at large either. Which is even more evidence of the fetid fruit of the egregious and ecumenical emerging church movement.

Really?  It was published in the Christian Post and elsewhere.  I saw it two weeks ago in the secular press and commented to my son how sad a thing it was that someone who was supposed to be a church leader didn’t have the sense to see that Allah is not YHWH and that you cannot have both in existence.  Additionally, there are significant Anglican voices speaking out against this woman’s lunacy (for those of you who need a scorecard, the Episcopal church is a part of the Anglican church).

Additionally, SBC radio host and frequent Silva whipping boy, Al Mohler, Jr., and other prominent Christian voices quickly noted that Redding was off her rocker and that being a ‘Christian Muslim’ is about as orthodox as baptizing farm animals. 

Interestingly, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has spoken several times about Islam in very black/white terms, and about its ‘truth claims’ which are incompatible with Christianity.  So – the pastor of one of the largest emergent churches in one of the most liberal cities in the USA – the same city as the “Christian Muslim Priestess” – is publicly on record vociforously opposing such nonsense.  But does Ken take this into account?  If you’re reading it here, you already know the answer.

At Apprising Ministries I have been attempting to warn you that at the heart of this Emergent Church, which is not a move of the Holy Spirit, is the eventual bringing together of all religions.

Really, Ken?  That’s an awfully self-assured statement from one not in any place to know.  About the only thing you’ve proven in this article is your divisiveness, which, sadly, is addressed in Titus 3:11.

As I remember that summer of years past – the summer of El Niño – I take a bit of solace remembering that eventually it passed, and by the next summer season, a new scapegoat had surfaced: La Niña.  And so, I wonder, when will this season pass – and who will be blamed for all ills next?

*This is not differentiating between the Emergent Church (an actual network of left-leaning churches in Emergent Village) and the emerging church (a movement within multiple branches of Christianity, from conservative to liberal), as the author of the hit-piece in quesion does not make the distinction, and at least one writer on C?N blatantly (and intellectually dishonestly) refuses to even acknowledge the difference between the two.