THE END OF THE WORLD...but only as we know it

As expected, some who posted earlier use such colorful words as “dangerous,” “mystical,” and “heresy.” I’ll give Morgenthaler a chance.

Basically, “emerging worship” is a reaction against the typical contemporary model, the “generic wrapper” (p.219) bringing the worshipper to “Aha, this is what my problem is and this is how I fix it” (p. 223).

Their concern is not so much making church postmodern (though that may happen as result), as it is accepting that we live in a postmodern world, with “a profound recognition of personal and societal brokenness” (p. 221), and working from there. Emerging worship contains “Creator-referenced, God-focused expressions” rather than the contemporary/seeker-sensitive “self-referencing—focused on human perceptions needs and desires” (p. 222).

Morgenthaler admits services like this will fail when they become “experiences for experience’s sake” (p. 230. In the same way, contemporary can become “newness for newness’ sake” and traditional “for tradition’s sake” and liturgical “form for form’s sake.” This is not a problem particular to this model.

The creative examples were not “this is what we do,” they were more like “this is what could happen.”

So is she deconstructing theology or just theology “as we know it?”