the gospel and emergents

I'm still not clear why so many think Emergents, Seeker-Sensitives, etc. are corruptors (if not haters) of the Gospel. Here's a decent article offering good warning about compromising the Gospel. I like the William Booth quote;

I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.

But the article lacks any real demonstration that the targeted groups really don't know or promote the Gospel. At least they are not serving up the vile, godless garbage served at sites like Slice of Laodicea (now disguised as Christian Research Network even though none of those words seem applicable).

Unfortunately the folks at galatiansc4v16 seem charged up that Brian McLaren questions their over-simplified definition of the Gospel. Their definition is incomplete,it is only one component of a multifaceted, wonderful, deep truth. For some reason they take questioning their simplicity as disagreement.

From Emerging Churches building on teaching from N.T. Wright;

What is the gospel? Simply put, Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was arriving. Even though the Jews were living in exile, as they were sill under Roman occupation and thus overrun by evil, nevertheless, YHWH was returning, and now was the time of God's work, evidenced in the person of Jesus and in the signs that accompanied his ministry. Jesus urged his hearers to forget all that they were convinced had to occur to herald God's return and the nature of the reign he would usher in and to believe his reinterpretation of the Torah. He warned them that to oppose the coming kingdom was to oppose the work of God. However, it was good news (the gospel) that he proclaimed. Exile was over a time of forgiveness had come!

I like that. This forgiveness will come when repentance occurs. I think it is accurate and includes the work of atonement and redemption. But the critics are cruel and narrow in their thinking. One document I read today actually quoted the first line of the above but then stopped and said claimed "THE most important issue in the emerging churches is a redefinition of the gospel, or good news. The emphasis is no longer on sin, sacrifice and blood atonement, or eternal salvation ..." Concluding that the emergent church is selling out the gospel.

The view held by the emergent church is broader and more accurate than the limited thinking held those against it. Somehow the antagonists think the message of the Gospel is only that Jesus died on the cross to forgive sins. They rail against the whole view of the kingdom of God which according to Christ is the message He Himself brought.

Todd Hunter rightly said, "We got the gospel wrong; We were living in the wrong story. We were telling the story of modernity and baby boom aspirations rather than the radical message of the kingdom." but they don't like that because they have been too blind to see. They therefore attack the broader message by suggesting it doesn't include key elements such as atonement, repentance, etc.. It's sad because these are the ones that miss what the Gospel is. What are these people saying, that we should continue teaching their aspirations over the message of the kingdom?

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