Trevin Wax blickt beim Gespräch mit seinem Freund Robbie Sagers auf einige Jahre ›Emerging Church‹ zurück. Auf die Frage, was der langfristige Einfluss der Bewegung, die allmählich von der Bildfläche verschwindet, auf den Evangelikalismus sein wird, antwortet Sagers:
That’s a very good question, and I think that only time will tell what – if any – lasting impact the emerging church movement will have on evangelicalism.
Part of that uncertainty is due to the somewhat shifting nature of evangelicalism itself; after all, what is an evangelical? (A question for another day, perhaps!)
Regardless, these last months certainly do seem to have indicated the demise of the emerging church movement, at least in terms of comparing it to the furor surrounding the movement in recent years. After all, fewer books are being published by self-identified emerging church adherents, less conferences planned, Emergent Village has been disbanded, and some of the movement’s key leaders are now deeply entrenched not primarily in the church per se but rather in national politics–or, at least in one case, running for political office themselves.
I can tell you what I hope the long-range impact of evangelicalism will be. My hope is that conservative evangelicals, after having endured from some segments of the emerging church movement a challenge to doctrinal orthodoxy and orthopraxy, will avoid the temptation to a more-doctrinal-than-thou mentality that can be destructive to the soul. False teaching should be pointed out, yes, and corrected when possible. And there certainly is a place, biblically speaking, for sharp language in pointing out wolves among sheep. But such words should be spoken not with triumphalism, but rather with sobriety, in love.
Instead, I hope that evangelicals will discern humbly, through the lens of the Scriptures, those weak spots that led to some emerging church adherents’ exploitations of certain aspects of evangelicalism in the first place.
Klingt gut. Das vollständige Interview gibt es hier: trevinwax.com.
Das Buch:
- William D. Henard u. Adam W. Greenway: Evangelicals Engaging Emergent: A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement, Broadman, 2009, 352 S.
für das Robbie Sagers einen Beitrag geschrieben hat, kann hier bestellt werden:
Das klingt wirklich gut. Man hat hier den Eindruck einen Bruder zu hören, dem wirklich etwas an der (evangelikalen) Gemeinde liegt. Kritik, in der Weise geäußert, wird sicherlich eher gehört werden und zum Nachdenken anregen als eine „Wir-sind-halt-dagegen-weil-wir-dagegen-sind-Mentalität“.