Just as Calvinism cannot be defined solely by
the unfortunate event of the burning of the
heretic Servetus or by the claim that John
Calvin was a theocrat, the
emerging church cannot be narrowed to Brian
McLaren or to the denial of truth and the
traditional church cannot be solely linked to
fundamentalism or sectarianism.
Belcher, 44, was part of
the emerging church circle even before the term
"emerging" was coined. In the late 1990s,
he teamed up with Mark Oestreicher in ministry
to launch an alternative service for Generation
X; started up weekly conversations in Southern
California with such young
pastors as Rob Bell; and attended a Gen X
conference where Mark
Driscoll first started the buzz about
postmodernism when many were still unfamiliar
with the term.
It's not so much that he gave up on the emerging
church and returned to the traditional route,
but it was his attempt at
finding "a third way," or what he calls "the
deep church" – a phrase he borrowed from C.S.
Lewis.
In his quest to find the third way,
he was motivated to help
heal the divisions in the church. And with a
foot in both camps, Belcher was able to
move beyond the assumptions and rhetorical
shoutings and present both sides without any
bias – at least judging from the feedback he's
been getting.
He boiled down all their dissatisfaction with
the traditional church to seven main categories
of protest: captivity to
Enlightenment rationalism; a narrow view of
salvation; belief before belonging;
uncontextualized worship; ineffective preaching;
weak ecclesiology; and tribalism. After
studying arguments from both sides, Belcher
found that the emerging
church is "thinking deeply about how
postmodernism and the gospel of the kingdom are
to interact, and how Christians can create and
transform culture."
Deep church may not be the answer
to reconciling the traditional and
emerging camps, but he's hopeful that his book
has at least broken down some of the distrust
from each side. "They're not as threatened by
each other," he said. "I
think that's good for the church."
Belcher wants more than anything, unity in the
church. "What I’m after is
getting the church to be united around deep
church or mere Christianity, as C.S. Lewis said
first, so that we can work together and move
into mission and really present a unified front
to a watching world instead of one that’s always
arguing and complaining," he said.
"Why would someone out there want to join a
family that’s always arguing?"
