Sweet Insights on Emerging Churches?

I found an interesting article on George Fox interviewing Leonard Sweet on the Emerging Churches.

Leonard Sweet, a best-selling author, shared his insights into the Emerging Churches in the interview and the following insights are what I found most interesting and challenging for me (especially those that I highlighted in italics here):

"George Fox Journal (GFJ): How are emerging churches any more relational than evangelical mainstream churches? Isn’t this what small groups are all about?

LEN SWEET: Much of the evangelical mainstream makes small groups a program of the church. It’s an add-on, or a drive-through. In emerging churches, community is constitutive of their identity. It’s the very essence of who they are. There is also a relational component of the theology of the emerging church, where truth is seen more in relational than in propositional terms. After all, God didn’t send us a principle. God sent us a person. God didn’t send us a statement. God sent us a savior . . . who is Christ the Lord."

"GFJ: How are emerging churches distinctively missional?

LEN SWEET: Karl Rahner, the great 20thcentury Catholic theologian, referred to what he called Thermos-bottle Christianity. This is a form of pseudo-church where you keep everything inside warm and cozy and fresh, but let the outside freeze and take care of itself. Missional churches are focused on what God is doing in the world. Their circles face outward, not inward. This is a culture that loves gated communities, and there are gated churches to match. Missional churches are putting back together what for too long has been rent asunder: the whole gospel, both the personal gospel (evangelism), and the social gospel (justice and kingdom ministries)."

"GFJ: Finally, why might a pastor of an emerging church tell me I should follow Christ? And so what if I don’t?

LEN SWEET: Everybody follows someone. We all give our lives to something. The only questions are who, or what? I invite you to give your life to Jesus. I like how philosopher Dallas Willard does it: He challenges his students to the reality test: Put Jesus into practice. Go ahead. Got someone better than Jesus in mind to follow? OK, try someone else first. Put Sigmund Freud into practice. Put Charles Darwin into practice. Put Karl Marx into practice. Put Aristotle into practice. Put Plato into practice. Put Pablo Picasso into practice.
The only who or what that can stand up to the reality test is Jesus the Christ, who is bold enough to say to each of us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
There’s only one reason to follow Christ: Truth. Truth or consequences. "

"Taste and see that the Lord is good.". Put Jesus to the test.

In the long journey of life, perfection is not required, only faithfulness in following and practising Jesus.