Five Relatively Recent Theological Controversies That Have Faded

0:00Welcome to the Rayner on Leadership Podcast, your online home for leadership lessons and advice for the local church. We talk about practical solutions for pastors and church leaders. Episodes are hosted by Tom Rayner, Sam Rayner, and Josh King. Hello all of you happy people. I'm glad to have you on the show today. It's Rayner on Leadership and we're back again with another great episode. We are going to be talking about some stuff. It was controversial at least for a season. Yeah, for a season. Five relatively recent theological controversies that have faded. So we're going to take a little walk down memory lane and we're going to bring you back to the past where we had some things that came up. And frankly, we're going to learn from this too because some of these controversies though they have faded. Are still a pretty important part of recent church history, shall we say that? That's good. But before we get into the episode, we certainly want to think our great ministry partner, Brown Church Development Group.

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2:07But these are, these were very important at the time. So walk us through this. This is relevant to me when I was in academia. For a dozen years, I served as a dean of a theological seminary. And I encountered all of these, one where I know there's some of them actually had an influence on me as a pastor as well. So basically what I am saying is these are the late 1990s going through the 2000s, the first 10 years of the 2000s. And they may seem nuanced and they may seem a little bit out there. But boy, did they create a lot of conversations. Some of them for a prolonged time. Some of them for a couple of years in Dengong. But they all generated a lot of discussion. And I would call all of them controversies. And so we're going to go through these. The first one, the Mergent Church Movement.

3:07The Mergent Church controversy. There's a word that you need to know to order in order to understand that is the word postmodern or sometimes used as a noun, postmodernity. And that basically was a reaction to the way churches were doing things. That was the modern church. Modern church means something else today. But back then, modern was a close synonym to traditional. Not quite, but a close synonym. Postmodern means we're going to get beyond that. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to go into a new era. Another word that would help on this would be contextualization, which means trying to understand the culture and the context in which we live. Let's make sure we're irrelevant to it. So the controversy emerged when that attempt to be relevant in many ways extended beyond the truth of scripture. Relevance became more important than the scripture itself. And so this whole idea, the Mergent Church Movement had its good points, trying to be relevant, trying to be contextualized where we live.

4:12But it had its struggles as well because many times it started moving toward the compromising of doctrine. Yeah, and you've thrown out some big terms here. And if you are well versed in things like modernity and post modernity, these are philosophical movements that were broadly, that we're experiencing the academic world and the broader culture long before it hit the church. So let's just recognize that. I mean, many people think that post modernity began with World War I. Some believe that it began in the United States in 1968, a very pivotal year, a lot happened in 1968. I know the history there. So I want to acknowledge that these are broad-based movements that lots of people have talked about and are often talked about in non-church circles. And that's kind of a different discussion. What we are talking about is kind of what was going on in the church. And this emergent church movement was really about 25, 30 years ago.

5:14And this kind of when these discussions were happening, it's when I was coming of age in ministry in my 20s. I remember reading all of these books about the emerging church versus the emergent church. And which books were nuanced words too? Oh, yeah. So I do understand that in a 20, 25 minute podcast, we're never going to be able to unpack all of what was going on at the time and all of the philosophical underpinnings of these movements. But it was a controversy. And you just don't hear this anymore. That's the point that we're making is boy, this was you talk about 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Man, these things were hot. It was hot. And there was these key leaders involved. And you know, are you more on the emerging side? Are you more on the emergent side? Are you more on the, hey, we need to be relevant, but do you actually sound conservative or we need to be relevant and slightly more progressive? You know, these were fundamental questions for those of us who were in our late teens and early 20s during this time and trying to figure out ourselves as well.

6:20And I'm with you, dad. I think there was a lot of good here. The whole idea that you can deconstruct kind of began with this and there's a lot of negativity associated with that rightly so a lot of people like now we look back on this whole idea of deconstructing. And it seems to be more detrimental than it is helpful. But that concept really began with the emergent church. And again, there was some good there. There was some rethinking of the way that church needed to be that I think was helpful, but overall it shook up church is a good bit. There were somehow influence by it. It basically asked the question, do we do things because this is the way we've always done them. And we do things because we're really asking the question, how can we make a difference in the context in which we live? Yeah. Yeah. So some of the names that have, you know, you might have been reading back in the day, Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, there's Mark Driscoll was a part of this as well, although he later distanced himself from some of it.

7:20And I was, I personally was highly influenced by a lot of these movements like the fading of the movement. I've kind of moved into some different things too myself and I've kind of landed in my 40s as to what I believe and what I don't believe. But it was a point of discussion all over the place. You get into the discussion forums, you know, you had these forums back in the day because you didn't have streaming. You didn't have YouTube. This was pre-YouTube. This is pre-streaming. Everybody was getting into these discussion forums on the internet. Man, they were gold back and forth back and forth back and forth. And not so much anymore. You just don't hear people talking about it. Yep. Second one is one that it seemed to have a very short life as a controversy. I haven't done enough research on the Muslim insider debate to know exactly how long it lasted. I remember when it happened because some within the denomination of which I was a part were actually pro Muslim insider.

8:23And we're not talking about President Obama. No, we're talking about that's a joke for anyone that just may get offended by that. It's just a joke. We're talking about Muslims who came to Christ but did not leave the culture of the Muslim community of which they were a part. And they even continued to identify themselves within the Muslim community culturally. And you know, the question was can you really do that? Because if you are a Muslim, you are making a statement. If you're even if it's a cultural statement, you're making a statement about what you believe. And I think the conclusion of this is, you know, if you if you were a Muslim and you converted to Christianity, it's probably best that you just go in and state your faith whether you have to pull out of your community for safety reasons or whether you stay in the community, whatever, it's probably best that you just state who you are and you be unashamed to the gospel.

9:23Do you think this one lasted long? I don't remember it being around too long. Well, it was prior to my time because I believe you were this was in the 1990s if I'm not mistaken. Correct. So I think this debate ended with 9-11. That's a good point. And there's a very good point. I think everything kind of changed with this whole concept post 9-11. And there are some key maybe a demarcation line. Am I using that term appropriately? 9-11 in many ways is a demarcation line for a lot of theological debates and discussions because so much changed after 2001. That's a good point because this was hot if you will in the late 1990s and then you hit 2001 probably went away. Yeah, I wasn't too concerned about the Muslim insider debate when I was a teenager. It was hot if you had some type of mislead logical connection and talking about primarily beyond the United States.

10:26And so I was I was dean of a school that included global missions and international missions. And so it was part of the discussion that we had and we even had a professor that was probably too much of a proponent about the Muslim insider position. And for those of you who are watching on YouTube, let me introduce you to somebody. I've got my little puppy dog here. Lulu is a puppy dog. I would not put that just a little in front of her. Her fake. She's going to be really big. She takes naps while I'm doing podcasts with me and just so you know for those of you listeners, I do a lot of these from my home. We're way bigger on audio than we are YouTube, but I know some of you tune in of you YouTube. We're going to be trying to expand our YouTube audience here going forward. We're going to be doing that. But my new studio dad is currently being built at the church. Okay.

11:26So I will have some new digs here soon enough. And unfortunately for Lulu when I'm there at the church, I may not may not. Well, I should be no one's going to say anything to the lead pastor if I bring my dog. No, I mean, Lucy all those times after the post hurricane. Yeah, we're up together in your I wrote out I wrote a pretty substantial hurricane at the church with with my dog. Lucy in my office. I love it. Oh, yes, I still miss her. That's a whole other story. Hey, the third one here. So we've got the emergent or emerging church controversies. And yes, I do know a little bit about the distinction between those two things. You've got the Muslim insider debate. That's the second. The third one here is something I think we still talk about some, which is open theism. Yeah, it basically gets back to the doctrine of omniscience is God all knowing and open theism leaves the possibility that God knows all possibilities, but there's some futures decisions that hadn't been decided.

12:27So we really didn't know how this is going to play out. It depends on what humans do. And so they're not fully norble is definitive events. There are different names connected with this, not the most prominent name, but the one that I knew the best was God by the name of Clark Pennock. Clark Pennock was a professor at New Orleans seminary. He came from Canada to Southern Baptist life. And he was the first in errantist that I can remember then disovaling in errantcy. And after he disovaled in errantcy within a few years, he embraced open theism. Now, is there a connection between the two? I do think so. I do think it's hard to be an inerrantist that believes the totality of scripture and to be an open theist that says that God is not really totally omniscient. He didn't know everything. It hadn't played out yet. But that was the name that I remember because Pennock was the controversial name in open theism in my context at the time.

13:34Yes. So we're talking 1980s and 1990s with this whole debate. Again, prior to my time, but I do think when you're talking open theism, I think the first step is often, as you said, the denial of the inerrantcy of scripture. Not everyone who denies the inerrantist of scripture ends up in open theist certainly certainly not. We'll have to go because you do you stop affirming some of those passages that we contradict open theism. Yeah. And I know a lot of the listeners here may disagree with me on this. And that's fine. You can put a comment in the chat if you're watching on YouTube. I think that the inerrantcy of scripture, however you define that, I know that that's a loaded term, but is all of scripture truthful or not? Every every part of it is kind of how I how I define it. In many ways, that is the dividing line between being a conservative evangelical and somebody who might be more progressive or liberal.

14:35And you know, if you deny the inerrantcy of scripture, you tend to lean more into liberalism or progressivism. Even if you don't go all the way down that line, and if you accept the inerrantcy of scripture, you tend to lean more into conservative evangelicalism. And I don't know if people may disagree with me on that, but that's kind of how I think of things as the spectrum of what is inerrantcy. What is the truth when the scripture scripture scripture? When the inerrantcy debate was hot, and it still is to some degree, but when it was when it was high as particularly as it related to the southern Baptist controversy, if you will, the conservative resurgence. If you will, one of the big issues of inerrantcy was second generation. And it was this the person who disavows inerrantcy doesn't usually go off the deep end to the left, but the next generation under them does. And so that whole generational idea was and I think it could be demonstrated. I don't think you could short and prove it, but I do think it led to a wayward direction among people, biblically and theologically.

15:38I do need to mention that even though Clark Pinnick was the name, I remember Gregory Boyd was probably the most prominent open thier in terms of his writings and in terms of his influence. I did not read him, so I don't know, I just know that he was. So this next one is still talked about today, even though it really is a product of the baby boomer generation. It is still something we hear about and it is the secret sensitive movement. And I still hear this in my church dad from my own people. I don't hear about emerging emergent Muslim insider, open thierism. I don't hear about that stuff from my own people. What I do hear about is either somebody saying, you know, maybe we want to be more secret sensitive or somebody saying don't ever make us a secret sensitive church. Everyone has a different definition of it. It depends on your perspective, negative or positive. This is a good thing or a bad thing. I only bring that up because it was a movement from the 80s and 90s, particularly a mega church movement from the 80s and 90s.

16:42And there is still a little bit of it out there, although people define it far differently now than they did in the 80s and 90s. So walk us through that. Seeker sensitive when I was a professor dean, okay. And it was a topic that since I'm teaching evangelism church growth, local church, local ecclesiology, it would be addressed almost every course I taught one way or another whether it was questions of the students, whether there's actually in the lecture. When we taught Seeker sensitivity, we taught it as being aware that there may be lost people present in the worship service and to be sensitive to that reality. We didn't talk about a worship style. We just said, you know you have people here who are potentially not believers in Christ. What does that mean for your worship service? So that's what Seeker sensitive means. We had another phrase that was called secret targeted and a secret targeted was where you designed the worship service only far these people who were not believers.

17:46And those were the ways we distinguished it. It didn't always happen that way. It didn't always go down those two paths. But that's the way we taught it back then. Give a little bit of credit. Well, give credit to Dr. Tim Buker, who spent a lot of time distinguishing between the two. And he would say, Seeker sensitive, as we defined it's not bad. Seeker targeted it's a different story. That's a good distinction by by the way, shout out to Dr. Buker. He is at least at the time of this recording the interim pastor first Baptist church, Mount Washington, Kentucky. My wife's home church her parents still go there and boy am I glad that he is there. He's a good friend breath of fresh air. So first Mount Washington, you got a good one. You got you got a good one. The thing was secret sensitive that we still hear about today is I'm going to be a bit punchy here dad.

18:46I hear the church. People will say this, we're the church for the unchurched. No, you're not. No, the unchurched or not in church. Like get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. Like we want to reach people who want unchurched. But what do we know about the unchurched? They're not drawn in by a certain music style or you know, the preachings this certain way. Now that most people go to church because of an invitation like somebody. Relational relational. Relational. Relational. So when you use as marketing language, we are the church for the unchurched. All that you're doing is sitting signal to the church community that you're the cool church in town now. So stop it. Stop it. This is one of my big pet peeves. We're that church for the unchurched. Oh, one. One. I know this is my opinion. One. I'm just go the church is the gathering of the saints. All right. So it is it is the gathering of the saints for the glory of God. To say you're the church for the unchurch one is theologically incorrect. And two is just marketing language to get transferred growth. So stop it.

19:52Yes, I know you're passionate about that. The final one on here is the King James only resurgence. King James only has been around for quite a while. King James has been around since 1611. So King James only has been around for quite a while. And the King James only is this is the English translation or this is the translation we should use. And we should not use any others just as simple as that. I have never been a KJV only I love the poetic language of the KJV. I love much of what it stands for, but I cannot preach from the KJV and I have trouble listening to the KJV for any length of time. But there there still some when I was at lifeway one of our editors that I think published our KJV curriculum believed it was the only one. And he he told me that he said in fact his vice president said I want you to meet with him because he's KJV only. And he had a great heart. And he said I'm not going to interfere with all the rest of what's happening at lifeway, but I believe I have the true curriculum because I have the KJV curriculum.

21:00Well, he was in the he was in the right seat. Yes. Don't put him on the NIV team. There's another story. He went and done well with that. No, don't. But yeah, I'm with you dad. I have sympathies to the King James translation. Like I really enjoy it. My second favorite translation is actually the new King James. And I really enjoy the new King James and I know that there's probably some listeners that do as well. I think it is it is a great translation, but it is second to my favorite the new living translation. We've got some good ones out there now. I mean we've got NLT. We've got the NKJV. We've got the CSB. They're just some really and then the the tried and true NASV even there was a bit witness definitely accurate. And so yeah, and then and then the legacy Bible is a newer one as well that my own people have told me they have not been in it as much. Just you know, I haven't read it myself as much, but my own people tell me that's that the people I trust to tell me it's a good one too. So yeah, there are there are some very good translations that are out there.

22:07Good. Good choices. I still believe the best to preach from is the new living translation though. I absolutely love preaching from the NLT. It's probably the best to listen to as well. Indeed, and hey, thank you for listening to us. You have made it all the way to the end. And so congratulations. You win a prize. What prize do you win? Well, you win the opportunity to hear about our wonderful ministry partner upward sports. Get a part of the fall challenge. And get going on this running fall challenge. No running experience required. Upwork and help you through it. You can train for a 5K 10K half marathon or marathon expert coaches, faith field community. This is a good program. You can go stronger in your fitness and your faith with devotionals encouragement and training plans designed to help you succeed as a runner myself. I absolutely love upward running dot com. So go to upward running dot com learn more about the challenges that they have. You can succeed and get in shape and run that race that you have been wanting to run.

23:19So I encourage you to go check them out upward running dot com and check us out on the next episode. We'll be coming back at you very soon here at Rainer on Leadership. Thank you for joining us today here on the Rainer on Leadership podcast. Be sure to watch on YouTube or subscribe and listen on iTunes, Google podcast, Spotify or in your favorite podcasting app for additional resources on church leadership and to join the conversation online. Visit church answers dot com where we are growing healthy churches together.