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Hope for the Emergent Church
Brian D. McLaren
"I was a freshman in college when John Stott,
Billy Graham, Rene Padilla, and others convened a group of Christian
leaders from around the world to compose and affirm a document known
as the Lausanne Covenant. I remember feeling a certain thrill that
there was section of the document called 'Christian Social
Responsibility.' Now, twenty-five years later, it's depressing to
see how little effect that document has had on the sectors of the
Christian community to which it was addresses. ... Perhaps momentum
for change has been quietly building all these yars, and now the
time has come for a global, Christ-entered, cross-confessional,
justice-oriented spiritual/social movement to be born.
My path to this moment came through getting
involved with what is now referred to in the U.S. as 'the emergent
conversation.' ... We were a little bank of lonely misfits on the
fringes of the American evangelical world, glad to know that we
weren't completely along. As that point, we had little to say about
matters of justice. Mostly we were preoccupied with the priorities
of the 'church growth movement' of the 1990s. ...
Many of us are coming together to say, The
Christian faith isn't all about getting to heaven. It isn't all
about the church. It isn't all about the individual spiritual life
or 'persona relationship with God.' It is about all of these things,
but they aren't the whole point, or even the main point. The main
point is God's saving love for creation, God's faithfulness to all
of creation, God's ongoing mission of healing a world torn by human
injustice so that it can fulfill God's original dream. It is about
God's kingdom coming to earth, and it about God's will being done on
earth as it is in heaven."
McLaren is a leader in the Emergent church
movement. "Introdution: A Conversation about Justice" in The
Justice Project edited by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla and
Ashley Seeber, Baker Books, 2009, 14, 18.
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