Willow Creek + Brain McLaren = (???)
Dec 28th, 2007 by Michael Krahn
Willow Creek is inviting Brian McLaren to speak at their upcoming Shift conference. This post will be very odd because I love what I hear from D.A. Carson and I dislike most of what I hear from Brian McLaren very much.
It is indeed sad to see Willow inviting McLaren to influence their flock. I do believe this is a mistake. Part of me fears that they are afraid of losing market share and are just trying to get on board with the hot new trend.
The question has been asked (at a blog called The Gospel Driven Blog) “How can a man who denigrates substitutionary atonement have anything helpful to say to the church?” Quite easily - he understands other aspects of the church quite well. He will no doubt say many helpful things at this conference, but I would still not invite him to speak to my leaders. Ditto Rob Bell - many of the Nooma videos are completely appropriate and helpful growth tools, but I wouldn’t endorse them to my leaders because the trajectory of interest would lead them to other of his materials that are, shall we say, considerably less orthodox.
Regarding D.A. Carson - his book on the Emerging Church has been rightly criticized (by Scot McKnight for one) as being far too narrow in focus for its title. This, I believe, is fundamentally a marketing issue. The book is not so much about the Emerging Church as it is about Brian McLaren. The problem is that the Emerging Church is about far more than McLaren. McLaren is a major player, but only on one side of the movement.
Rather than reading Carson’s book, I would direct you to two articles written by Scot McKnight. McKnight has the rare position of being accepted by the Emerging left while maintaining an appropriate critique of it.
In the article “Fad or Future”, McKnight describes his own discovery and early experience with the movement and in “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” he offers a follow-up and a couple of strongly worded cautions to Emerging leaders including the following:
“So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.”
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I find the most distressing aspect of McLaren being invited to the “Shift” conference is that, since the “Shift” Conference is part of the Willow Creek Association, which is separated in name and finances (but not location)from Willow Creek Church, the Willow Creek Church members and attenders are not informed about what is going on… Thousands of people who attend AND support Willow Creek Community church and its regional sites, have no idea that this debate over Brain McLaren is going on. Brain McLaren will be talking to the youth leaders of these people’s children (in the same seats where we sit every week!) who will be influenced by what they hear, but the parents, and other church members and attenders will have no say in the matter. As a long term Willow member, I would feel much better if this issue would be addressed in our congregation.