a Quaker future for the church

just finished reading Phyllis Tickle's book The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. It is a brilliant pulling-together of the myriad factors over the past century that are leading us toward a massive reconfiguration of church and Christianity.

She says we are moving toward "a system of ecclesial authority that waits upon the Spirit and rests in the interlacing lives of Bible-listening, Bible-honoring believers..."

Conservative Christians (evangelicals) have "lacked the flexibility in both imagination and practice that is required to shift from democratic systems of organization to those of network theory, affinity grouping and open source discernment."

But Quakers (belonging in nobody's camp) "have from the beginning had a distinctly 'other' easiness with the paradoxical interplay of revelation, discernment, and Scripture in the life and governance of the body of Christ on earth. Not exactly a refusal to engage questions of authority, Quaker thought chooses rather to assume quiet engagement with God and the faithful, reveals authority from the center out to other centers of engagement."

here's to Richard Foster, Parker Palmer, Brent Bill, and John Wimber, she says.

[Foster, Palmer being tremendous influences on my thought and spiritual practices, along with Norman Grubb and the WEC community]

Comments

[Dan]

hmm... I guess that's where my Methodism, rooted in an Anglican frame, rather than a Reformed frame, kicks in... Wesley of course was also influenced by Arminius and the Moravians. Other people Reformers don't particularly value.

[John Galbraith]

Jesus tells us — “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Matthew 7:15). In commenting on this important verse Dr. Walter Martin once said, “If you don’t know the difference between fleece and fur, then you’re going to lose your spiritual arm right up to your elbow.” Phyllis Tickle has for some time now been espousing the future of Christianity from the Emergent camp.We already know this Emergence Christianity, a definitely inclusive and very ecumenical form of the Christian faith,in some sectors almost universalism, began as a rebellion against Sola Scriptura in order to instead embrace existential, and highly subjective contemplative mystical spirituality as its own authority. If you listen to Phyllis on youtube or in preaching a sermon on the feminine side of the Holy Spirit at Emergent Rob bell's church at Mars Hill you will soon hear some heresies such the whopper of a heresy that when we take communion we are actually feeding the God within. You can hear this for yourself at http://www.alittleleaven.com/2009/05/whats-being-taught-at-rob-bell.html