They Say the Emerging Church is Dead – The Truth Behind the Story

 

The

4th Annual National Conference on Innovation,
sponsored by the

Ohio Conference of Seventh Day Adventists,
will take place in October in Columbus, Ohio and will
feature New Age sympathizer/emerging futurist

Leonard Sweet. On the conference
website, it states:

“Partners in Innovation is
a convergence of people and organizations committed to
providing the environment, encouragement, resources and
support for the emergence of the Adventist Church of the
future in North America…. We ask you to consider
becoming a partner in developing this far-reaching
initiative to energize a new future for the Seventh-day
Adventist Church in North America.”

Leonard Sweet, who promotes
mysticism, christ-consciousness, and the “New Lights”
movement that touts people like Matthew Fox, Ken Wilber, and
other mystic proponents, recently spoke at Rick Warren’s
Small Groups Conference. Sweet states in his book Quantum
Spirituality that the “power of small groups is in their
ability to develop the discipline to get people ‘in-phase’
with the Christ consciousness (meaning the divinity of man)
and connected with one another (meaning interspirituality)(p.
147).

The emerging church has been making inroads into Seventh Day
Adventism as it has in most of “religion in the Western
world.” Roger Oakland, in his book Faith Undone, discusses
Samir Selmanovic, a Muslim turned-Seventh Day Adventist
pastor-turned emerging figure:

Samir Selmanovic … has
some interesting and alarming views on Christianity. He
states:

“The emerging church
movement has come to believe that the ultimate
context of the spiritual aspirations of a follower
of Jesus Christ is not Christianity but rather the
kingdom of God…. to believe that God is limited to
it [Christianity] would be an attempt to manage God.
If one holds that Christ is confined to
Christianity, one has chosen a god that is not
sovereign. Soren Kierkegaard argued that the moment
one decides to become a Christian, one is liable to
idolatry.”1

On Selmanovic’s website,
Faith House project, he presents an interfaith vision
that will “…seek to bring progressive Jews,
Christians, Muslims, and spiritual seekers of no faith
to become an interfaith community for the good of the
world. We have one world and one God.”2

While Selmanovic says he includes Christians in this
interspiritual dream for the world, he makes it clear
that while they might be included, they are in no way
beholders of an exclusive truth. He states:

“Is our religion
[Christianity] the only one that understands the true
meaning of life? Or does God place his truth in others
too? Well, God decides, and not us. The gospel is not
our gospel, but the gospel of the kingdom of God, and
what belongs to the kingdom of God cannot be hijacked by
Christianity.3

“While it is true that God
is the One who decides where He is going to place truth,
He has already made that decision. And the answer to
that is found in the Bible. When Selmanovic asks if
Christianity is the only religion that understands the
true meaning of life, the answer is yes. How can a
Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim fully understand truth
when their religions omit a Savior who died for their
sins?

“Though world religions may share some moral precepts
(don’t lie, steal, etc), the core essence of
Christianity (redemption) is radically different from
all of them. Interspirituality may sound noble on the
surface, but in actuality, Selmanovic and the other
emerging church leaders are facilitating occultist Alice
Bailey’s rejuvenation of the churches. In her
rejuvenation, everyone remains diverse (staying in their
own religion), yet united in perspective, with no one
religion claiming a unique corner on the truth. In other
words all religions lead to the same destination and
emanate from the same source. And of course, Bailey
believed that a “coming one” whom she called Christ
would appear on the scene in order to lead united
humanity into an era of global peace. However, you can
be sure that if such a scenario were to take place as
Bailey predicted, there would be no room for those who
cling to biblical truth.

“As is the case with so many emergent leaders,
Selmanovic’s confusing language dances obscurely around
his theology, whether he realizes it or not. Sadly, for
those who are lost and who are trying to find the way,
the emerging church movement offers confusion in place
of clarity. It blurs if not obliterates the walls of
distinction between good and evil, truth and falsehood,
leaving people to stumble along a broken path, hoping to
find light.” (from Faith Undone, pp. 187-189)

How far will the
emerging mystical church move into Seventh Day Adventism? A
2004 article in the Adventist News Network,

“Church, Congregations Increase Focus on ‘Spiritual
Formation,” gives more than a glimpse
to the answer to this question. “Spiritual formation is a
topic being raised by many pastors and church leaders in a
growing number of Christian denominations,” the article
states. It adds:

For the Seventh-day Adventist
Church, a “wake-up call” was sounded after a 2002 survey
showed that though doctrinal understanding was high, there
were several “areas of concern,”

The article says that
“concerns can be linked to how the church rates in the area
of spiritual formation, which has been defined by one
Adventist Church pastor as ‘the process of becoming a mature
Christian disciple of God.”

Spiritual formation, another term for
contemplative spirituality, eventually leads into the arena
of the emerging church (both are based in mysticism). The
article goes on: “Today this subject is receiving serious
emphasis in Adventist institutions, as well as in local
congregations.”

A case in point, in 2006, Brian McLaren was a

guest speaker at the Adventist Loma
Linda University. McLaren rejects the traditional view of
the atonement (substitutionary death of Christ for sins).
Loma Linda now has spiritual formation as an integral part
of school life. Interestingly, they are using the

Journal of Spiritual Formation that
is put out by Biola University (a strong proponent for
contemplative).

John Jenson, an Adventist pastor in Torrance, California,


says, “There’s a need for spiritual
formation with the [Adventist] Church . . . without
spiritual formation, a person would be ‘spiritually
uncivilized.'” If this line of reasoning is shared among
other Adventist pastors, then no doubt
contemplative/emerging spirituality will place its heavy
mark on the Adventist movement as it has already done in so
many other religious groups. And with Leonard Sweet speaking
at Adventist conferences, this process will be speeded up
all the more.

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Notes:
1. Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, An Emergent Manifesto of
Hope, Samir Selmanovic section, “The Sweet Problem of
Inclusiveness,” pp. 192-193.
2. From Faith House Project website:

http://samirselmanovic.typepad.com/faith_house/2.WhatisFaithHouseProject.pdf.
3. Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, An Emergent Manifesto of
Hope, p. 194.

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