Featured in the Gospel Advocate
In this month’s issue of the Gospel Advocate, I am featured with a feature other excellent ministers on the issue of the emergent church movement. My article is titled “Missional Evangelism.” A few months ago, Phil Sanders asked me to be involved with this work. It was a great honor to work with him on this project. The gospel advocate is the oldest paper within the churches of Christ. It still holds a large readership throughout America and the world. I have been writing articles for the advocate for about 6 years now. Every time I am published in the journal it is a great honor and privilege. My article deals with some of the need to avoid becoming an attractional church but instead become a missional church that is interacting with the community around it. Instead of waiting for people to come to the building, Christians need to go to the people. Also I highlight some of the compromises within the movement such as moral compromise and doctrinal laxness in salvation. It is a great honor to have a voice in the brotherhood at large.
Related posts:
- Article in the Gospel Advocate
- Published in Gospel Advocate
- Published in May’s 2007 Gospel Advocate
- My History With The Gospel Advocate
- Featured in The Rocky Mountain Christian
About The Author
Please check out this month’s issue and I would recommend people to have a subscription to the journal too.
I would like to read it. Is it available online?
Glad it worked out. Are there other related articles on the Emerging Movement in there as well?
Terry, I do not know, but I do not think so. Matt, thank you for your help on this article. Also, there is a special section on the EM in the Advocate this month.
I like you Matthew and I like your idea stated here in article the about interacting with the community. However I disagree much with the GA’s stance on the emerging churches both within and outside the churches of Christ. The so called emerging movement is not really a movement like the restoration or reformation but rather a phenomenon within the broader scope of organized western Christian religion. It is probably the most misunderstood and most significant phenomena in both numbers and theology that has transpired in last 50 years within the broader scope of organized Christian religion. There was a major article recently in the Houston Chronicle entitled “Baptists consider what it means to be Baptist”. The content summed up a group of people who were challenging their religious roots. This is occurring in all fellowships, there is Presbyterian emergent, Baptist emergent, Methodist emergent, church of Christ emergent etcetera. In his book “The present future” Reggie McNeal explains that traditional church culture is collapsing because most churches are not really willing to continually restudy their convictions about the scripture based on a fresh unbiased approach to thinking about the Bible. Recently the GA published an article called “Size is not the issue” which attacked the so called emergent or community church movement. This was one of the saddest articles I have read in recent time. It basically said if you have the right theological and doctrinal conclusions everything else will fall into place and it really does not matter if young people grow up and leave the church or churches close down or if churches split, or if a church goes for years without any significant growth. Jay Guin had a great Blog post about it here http://oneinjesus.info/2008/08/19/the-gospel-advocate-creed-size-is-not-the-issue/. I am so tired of emergent church and community church bashing. It is hard for me to read the GA now because so much of the focus is still about how we are right and how everyone else is wrong. Thanks Matthew for your positive contribution.