GEORGETOWN, Ky. (ABP) — Challenging Christians to become “apprentices of Jesus,” emerging church leader Brian McLaren spoke at a Kentucky Baptist Convention-related school just a few weeks after being uninvited from speaking at a convention-sponsored event.
McLaren, one of the main leaders in the emerging church movement of post-modern evangelical thinkers, was among the featured speakers in early April at Georgetown College's 12th annual Pastors' Conference.
The pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington D.C., McLaren is the author of A Generous Orthodoxy, a book that has sparked criticism from some Southern Baptists and others.
In the wake of such criticism, Kentucky Baptist Convention leaders Bill Mackey and Dan Garland withdrew an invitation for McLaren to speak at the Kentucky Baptist Evangelism Conference in March.
“I respect Dr. McLaren greatly and have appreciated his insights on reaching people in today's culture,” said Mackey, KBC executive director. “I felt that in this instance, however, Dr. McLaren's position diverges too greatly to be appropriate for this conference.”
One of the passages in question was McLaren's suggestion that there could be circumstances in which Christians should “help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts.”
In an interview last week with Kentucky Baptists' newspaper, The Western Recorder, McLaren suggested the controversy was mainly a semantic one.
“I'm not saying I don't care if people are Christians or not,” he said. “I'm saying I want people to be followers of Jesus, but to be a follower of Jesus in some situations may not require them to affiliate with the Christian religion.
“This is a very well-known reality in missiology,” he added. “Many Southern Baptist missionaries are building disciples in communities of disciples … that are meeting in homes or other places, but they are not affiliating with the Christian religion and disaffiliating with their own religion.
“This is especially the case in Muslim countries. They're affiliated as followers of Jesus but for a whole number of reasons, they are not saying, 'I'm an affiliate of the Christian religion.'”
Noting that “there were followers of Jesus before the word 'Christian' was invented,” McLaren said, “They were first called Christians at Antioch — so I think we've got a biblical case for people being followers of Jesus without having to use that word.
“The issue,” he insisted, “is that people confess Jesus as Lord. I'm interested in helping people actively be disciples of Jesus as Lord.”
In a recent commentary published on the website crosswalk.com and Baptist Press, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler wrote, “McLaren effectively ransacks the Christian tradition, picking and choosing among theological options without any particular concern for consistency.”
Warning that “the emergent movement represents a significant challenge to biblical Christianity,” Mohler added, “When it comes to issues such as the exclusivity of the gospel, the identity of Jesus Christ as both fully human and fully divine, the authoritative character of Scripture as written revelation, and the clear teachings of Scripture concerning issues such as homosexuality, this movement simply refuses to answer the questions. … Orthodoxy must be generous, but it cannot be so generous that it ceases to be orthodox.”
McLaren acknowledged that “I do not like to use the term 'exclusivity of Christ' because I think that Jesus did not come to exclude people. I think Jesus came to seek and save the lost. That does not sound like an exclusive job to me.”
He added, however, “I believe Jesus is the only savior. I would be very comfortable talking about the uniqueness of Christ. Is Jesus exclusively the savior? Absolutely. I believe He's the only savior.”
Explaining Georgetown's decision to invite McLaren to speak on campus, conference coordinator Dwight Moody said in an interview, “Fundamentally, our role as a college is to teach kids to think and to open their minds to a broad spectrum of ideas. … In that sense, our mission is different from a convention or an association.”
McLaren “challenges us with a radical call to discipleship,” added Moody, dean of the chapel at Georgetown. “He holds up Jesus Christ as Lord and that call sometimes can be a disturbance to the complacency that so often marks our personal and congregational experiences.”
Georgetown President Bill Crouch agreed that as “a great liberal arts college, we have to have all the perspectives available.”
Citing diverse reactions to McLaren's recent book, Crouch added, “Until this controversy came up, he was and remains one of the most sought-after speakers in evangelistic conferences in the nation. He's saying things that need to be heard.”
During the April 4-6 conference, McLaren told participants that many churches today “find ourselves in the need-meeting business. It ends up being all about you.
“We're not chosen for privilege; we're chosen for responsibility,” he said. “What if the mission of Jesus is actually to form communities to rip people out of their self-centeredness? … To put the interest of others before the interest of myself is a radical transformation of our being.”
Comparing being an apprentice to Jesus to being an apprentice to a master violinmaker or stonemason, McLaren said, “What people are dying for is people who actually embody the message of Jesus so that people can be transformed just as apprentices are transformed by hanging out with the master.
“I believe that is what the Great Commission has been telling us all along,” he noted. “You have to trust yourself to the authority of the master. … The disciple is called in to learn and sent out to teach in the tradition of the master.”