Over the last few months, I've been hearing and reading more and more about the "Emerging Church". I have heard about it on Christian radio call-in shows and other programs, and I've been seeing articles in print as well. To be honest, I don't recall hearing the term before a friend of mine in Christian-chat made some statements concerning it about a year-and-a-half ago.

I had a very interesting conversation with my two Christian nephews at Thanksgiving about the emerging church. Their initial observation seemed to echo my own. We all felt that in an effort to reach the current generation of seekers, the emerging church has adopted an operating philosophy that tacitly expresses the need for a dose of relativism.

My other observations go a little farther. From what I've heard and read, the emerging church also seems to view most contemporary churches as absolutist organizations that like to create isolationist havens for those who don't want to be bothered with the actual, um, world.

From my own church experiences, that couldn't be farther from the truth. When I was a small child in the 1960s, our Methodist church pastor opened the doors of the church to all of the people who were quietly marching past one day, during the civil rights movement, and offered them refreshments. Since most of them were black, and since a lot of the people in our town were very prejudiced, our pastor took a lot of heat for that. Many of those people were Christians, but many were not. Taking some heat for their sakes is a way of "getting dirty" for the Lord. The pastor did what he did out of his own heart, he didn't do it to impress anybody.

At the church I belong to now, one of the main ways we are encouraged to share Jesus with others, is on a one-to-one basis, where we are, at home, in school, at work, on the street or wherever. This is just basic to Christianity. Learning the Bible, listening to God and being submitted to and following the direction of the Holy Spirit in order to seize on these opportunities to lead others to God's grace, "where we are", is vitally important.

Why not venture out then, why not make the smelly places under the highway overpass, where homeless people hang out, the "where we are?" That's fine. There again, that has to do with the leading of the Holy Spirit, and if He is telling one not to do that and instead to reach other executives, or other cops or other truck drivers for Christ, that should be fine too.

So much for being isolationist. What about absolutes? For me, that is the sticky part of the emerging church movement. Wouldn't want to offend anybody. It begs the question, "Can the gospel of Christ be given to others in a way that is dependent only on love, and without that nasty little subject of absolutes?"

Well, there are absolutes, and God's love is one of them. Some absolutes are just more important than others. (laughing here) Love is the most important thing we have to offer the world, but it should be an outgrowth from our response to who God is and what He has done for us. Because of that, there are also some important things we need to know about God, and about history. Jesus said things to people out of love that were absolutely true, and that they chose to turn and walk away from. They left Him. Think He knew they would walk away?

I can imagine saying to my wife, "I don't really need to know that much about you, I just want to love you." Knowing her and loving her are not something I can separate. It's the same way with God, and you can't love what you don't know. The danger in doing so is that one's love might be given to something that is not the God of the universe, who came to earth to die for the sins of men, and rise again on the third day, saving us from those sins. Those are things you just can't ignore if you want to be a Christian, if you want to have eternal life. One absolute is that, "5 For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time," 1 Timothy 2:4-6 Those words come from a man who knew more about Jesus and the Bible than most people do. One God, one mediator, one man, one one one. Sounds like an absolute to me, but it doesn't have to be a turn off. It can be shared in love.

I guess for me the most disturbing thing about the emerging church movement and its ongoing "conversation" is the sense of moral relativism that I mentioned before. That's why I've addressed the idea of absolutes as well. It seems to me that by infusing the church with relativism to make the church more appealing to today's seeker, that the emerging church is trying to cure a problem with another dose of the problem. Someone might be asking, "But what of those people who cried out from their deathbeds, 'Jesus, save me!' Those people didn't know of any absolutes." They may have, and they may not have. It depends on the person, and their particular situation, but that doesn't make the absolutes go away, and isn't every seeker on their deathbed anyway? Sure, some of them are walking around and active, but they are spiritually dead, just the same.

The job of sharing Jesus with the unbelieving is ours, and the responsibility for how we represent Him and His love is ours as well. His love for us, and our love for Him should be what motivates us to love other people. When we arrive at a morally relative, "something" that is not God, our love is nothing more than a philanthropic enterprise. That, I think, is the risk that is run. It's a characteristic trait I can't say I find acceptable.