Echoes in Eternity

I just finished D.A. Carson's book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. It is a deep read, as Carson is first and foremost a theologian, but it is also a very thought-provoking and worthwhile read. I plan on writing some sort of review of the book in the upcoming days/weeks and posting it on here. The book appears to be a good critique of both the strong and weak points of the Emerging Church (EC). Carson's biggest weakness is probably that some of his criticism and compliments do not apply to all ECs, but more to the leading thinkers of the movement, such as Brian McLaren and Spencer Burke. However, Carson acknowledges this weakness throughout the book, but also makes the point that if the weaknesses he sees in McLaren aren't inherent in all ECs, then their leaders should speak up about where they differ from McLaren, rather than staying largely silent.

For a short overview of what the Emerging Movement is within the Western evangelical community, you can go to Wikipedia's description here. To sum it up here, the Emerging Church is a movement aimed at engaging the postmodern culture in which we (in the Western world) live. At best, it serves as a wonderful way of getting young people into the church who are sick of dogmatic beliefs and hypocrisy and are searching for authentic relationships that speak to them personally. At worst, it serves as a breeding ground for morally-relative, theologically-shallow Christians who are unable to speak Truth to a dying world.

I just borrowed John MacArthur's book, The Truth War, from a friend and am intending on reading it soon. It also serves as a critique of the EC. I also hope to soon get a book on the EC from the perspective of Emerging thinkers, such as this one.