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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathan Zirkle

A Mighty Fortress

Dear Lord, we ask 1 more time that your Holy Spirit will be with us as we continue to learn more about the emergent church.

Lord, I pray that this will be a blessing to us and that we will be a blessing to others.

Well, when you think about all the things we're talking about, it's easy to get depressed, it's easy to have a negative outlook, and so I'd like to start off by talking about Martin Luther.

This is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

500 years ago Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the wall and the Reformation was started.

Well the Reformation didn't always go well and there came a time when people were disheartened and things didn't look like they were going as well as they should and because of that Martin Luther turned to scripture.

He turned to Psalms 46 and I want to read the first 3 verses of that.

He read this it said, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

He looked at this verse, he looked at this Psalms, and he did exactly what the Psalm told him to do, say lah.

So often when we read the Psalms, we come to that word and we just pass over it.

Almost like it was a piece of punctuation.

But what that word is telling us to do is think about it, ponder on this.

And that's exactly what Martin Luther did.

And because of that, he wrote the great hymn, a mighty fortress is our God.

And that hymn was then sung among the Protestants, and it gave them strength, and it gave them power to go forward.

And this is really what God calls us to do, to take strength in Him, think about Him.

Now, let's go back and let's start talking about the emergence.

This particular section I want to talk about the practical things of the emergent church and what you might see in your church and things you need to look out for.

I'm going to start by looking at this man, his name is Dwight Friesen.

I'm not sure if he's of any importance to the emergent church movement at all.

I know that he's a member of it, but what is very interesting about him is that I was able to find about his biography a little bit, and he's a great example of what an emergent looks like.

So let's read a little bit about what he has to say and then let's look a little bit about him.

He says this, the need to be right is a great threat to conversation.

Remember we were talking about the Hegelian dialectic.

The theological method of ortho paradoxy surrenders the right to be right for the sake of the movement.

Oh man, he gave us another big word, ortho paradoxy.

How many of you have been to an orthodontist?

And so the word ortho is to make correct or make right, and dentist, to correct your teeth.

So now here we're going to have a conversation and we have to have an ortho-paradoxy or a correct paradox.

And as we remember the Hegelian dialectic where the 2 ideas are fighting with each other to get the right result, well you gotta have the right starting point.

The theological method of ortho-paradoxy, and you know another way you can say that is called stacking the deck, of ortho-paradoxy surrenders the right to be right for the sake of movement toward being reconciled 1 with the other, while simultaneously seeking to bring the fullness of convictions and beliefs to the other.

Current theological methods that often stress agreement, disagreement, win-loss, good-bad, orthodoxy, heresy, and the like set people up for constant battles to convince and convert the other to their way of believing and being in the world.

He says this, the problem with orthodoxy or authoritative dogmatic claims is that they are conversation stoppers.

What is the ultimate authoritative dogmatic claim?

And the problem with scripture is it's a conversation stopper according to them.

He's the associate professor of practical theology at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.

Really interesting that these are the 2 things they bring together in a school.

If you know anything about psychology, it's got kind of a checkered past and it has a spiritualist past.

So we're gonna bring theology and psychology together.

Friesen brings more than a dozen years of missional, there's that word missional remember this is missionary without the evangelism this is just do-good like the Peace Corps.

He brings missional pastoral experience to the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.

He was the community curate of an East Side emerging simple church for more than 11 years.

He was ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance until surrendering those credentials in solidarity with women seeking ordination.

I'm telling you in the emergent church, what you're going to see is social justice warriors.

Anabaptists, if you study them, are very interesting because in many ways, Anabaptists are similar to Adventists.

And if you went way back into the time of the Reformation, there's certain aspects about Anabaptists that you might be more comfortable hanging out with them than say a Lutheran or a Calvinist.

So in a way, he's from a group that's somewhat of a cousin to us.

He's a liturgical Anabaptist with progressively evangelical and emergent sensibilities, actively seeking to root his faith practice within place, so he's not going anywhere, while linking globally with others who are seeking to live into their context.

So he's talking about other people, say a Buddhist.

He's gonna link with them, and he wants them to stay in their context.

That goes with the whole missional thing as opposed to missionary.

And that's really the way the emergent church likes to work.

Dwight earned his doctorate of ministry degree at George Fox University.

George Fox is the founder of the Quakers and we've had the Quakers pop up a few times in this presentation.

Well we should look at this because that doctoral of ministry degree he got at George Fox University is the degree that we send a lot of our Adventists to to get.

And if you look at the leading Adventist educational institutes in America today, many of the chaplains or spiritual leaders on campus, there'll be 1 person there who's got their Doctorate of Ministry from George Fox University.

So let's look at that degree, but before that, let's look at this scripture.

It says this in Romans 1 verses 20 to 22, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse.

You know, in my Bible, I like to write a little note as to what this text means, and I summarized it this way.

Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

We all start out knowing, because the things of God are known.

But when you have pride and profess yourself to be wise, you can become a fool.

So let's look at George Fox University and the degree that they're all receiving.

They're receiving this degree, it's being taught by Leonard Sweet.

Leonard Sweet is 1 of the other favorite emergent church leaders.

He's another 1 who is invited to speak from time to time at Adventist campuses.

He teaches demon in semiotics in future studies.

Let's look at the more description though.

The leadership in emerging culture doctorate of ministry tracks explore the character and shape of the effective Christian leadership in the emerging culture.

So if you had any doubt that this is emergent, you shouldn't have that now.

The semiotics and future studies doctorate of ministry, I guess I should explain semiotics.

Linguistics is the study of language and how language works.

Semiotics is the study of world events and how they work and what they mean.

So if I'm a semiotician, I may be really interested in say, iPhones, smartphones.

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A Mighty Fortress

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