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The Emerging Church - A Book Review

Posted Oct 1, 07:24 PM | 1 comments | by Editor | Link

By Jonathan Brink, re-posted from Missio Dei:

It would be easy to read the title of this book and think I would automatically recommend it. But you would be wrong.

The Emerging Church by Bruce Sanguin was sent to me to review. I picked it up hoping it might provide some fresh insight into the emerging church conversation. It did not. It delves into the nature of “emergence” and applies it to the church.

Sanguin makes it very clear that he is influenced by Dominic Crosson and Marcus Borg. I have nothing against them per se but their approach to Scripture is deeply influenced by a scientific standpoint that does not accept miracles or anything that breaks the laws of science, thus rendering certain parts of the Scripture narrative obsolete. This divide is very clear in Sanguin’s defense of an evolutionary perspective on “emergence” (which is a scientific principle) that only made me more confused.

Sanguin’s desire and focus from what I could tell was good. But I kept feeling he and I came from entirely different paradigms. Sanguin even begins the book by creating a distinction between the “so called Emergent church movement” or earlier paradigm/church, and his, which he calls an “emerging paradigm/church”. What was funny was hearing that the emergent church is considered old school already.

I have to admit I kept thinking I don’t know anyone (which doesn’t mean they don’t exist) who begins with Sanguin’s foundation. Yet I could imagine people reading it and easily assuming that this book is what the emerging church movement represents and immediately disregarding it, which is sad.

If you can get past this concern, Sanguin does offer some keen insights on the nature of emergence, which is a scientific process of organization. He considers that nature of chaos and living in the tension which I appreciated. He also shares some insights on the idea of mission and vision that I resonated with. He also offers some interesting dialog on color-coding the human value systems in history, but at the same time he offers them in an evolutionary framework. Sanguin does reveal his Jesus Seminar influence here.

But then Sanguin offers an interpretation model of the Christ figure based on these color codings. In other words, our view of Christ is deeply influenced by our values. I get this, but kept wondering what his view of Christ was and he did not define it. I also realized that it would be easy to have a green/orange/red view, which would throw a whole new wrench in the works. But more importantly I kept looking for my image of Jesus, and couldn’t find it. There was no color for a Jesus who is the true humanity or a true image of the Father.

Sanguin makes it clear that he embraces and supports multiple worldviews. His centre holds multi-faith experiences. And it is here that his book will confuse a lot of people. He delves fairly deeply into the nature of the universe as an energy field. This is a deeply interesting scientific conversation but will make a lot of people squirm, wondering when they crossed into a new age world.

I have to say this book was one of the more interesting books to read in a long time—not because of the content, but because it felt like a carnival ride. He would say something really interesting and then something that I knew would make people cringe. And maybe I read it to0 closely to the chest, wondering how many people would assume this is what I believed. Oh well.

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Jonathan Brink is Managing Director of Thrive Ministries, a missional discipleship agency. He lives in California with his wife and three kids.

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