“it is an important one to reach the increasingly unchurched youth in America.”
Not if it is corrupting the basic message of the gospel which from what I’ve seen and heard, it is.
My experience was with an entire church. My biggest frustration was with the youth pastor because he was the one putting nonsense into my kid's head. I'll give you a taste of what I found as I looked through his "church" materials. Go to innerexplorations.com and get a taste of what I am talking about. Or go to explorefaith.org and read their theology. Visit theooze.com. This is an article in their Faith section. Go to centeringprayer.com and really read it -- be sure to visit the links page. Just read every emergent and emergent recommended resource website. That nonsense is all over the web. There is something outrageous at every site. It's not hard to find.
Now, mixed in the group are a lot of people who have just gotten carried away with a movement they find exciting and a social group where everyone gets a stage, applause, and even a pat on the back for being a lazy couch potato; they don't really understand how bad it is. Fasting, spiritual directors, "spiritual disciplines," yoga, TM, Buddha hairdos....all make them feel and look real spiritual (Matthew 6:16). Those people will hopefully see the error eventually. Maybe they will just get tired of talking about themselves and their latest out-of-body experience. Maybe a lightbulb will go off and they will realize that their own carnal imaginations are not so sacred after all, and they will remember the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They will remmember that to love Him is to obey Him, which takes studying Scripture so that they can grow in the truth that really sanctifies. It might be too late for their children and the youth who passed through this phase at their churches. But they were grounded in true doctrine in the past and they will return to it. They will have a lot of repenting to do, and a lot of grieving over those they led astray.
The leaders of Emergent -- McLaren, Tony Jones, and all the rest -- are another story. They teach a different gospel and I would have nothing to do with them if I were you. They face judgment for the heresies they are teaching.
Don't be led astray. Run the other way from Emergent.
Dan,
Heed what Ghost of Freepers past is saying. Read and study 2 Timothy 3, this emerging church movement is fallen away from the critical theological doctrines that are the bedrock of Christianity. Those websites are loaded with moral and theological new age relativism which take Scriptural truths and twist them. Remember Satan presents himself as an angel of light.
2Tim.3
[1] But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress.
[2] For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
[3] inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good,
[4] treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
[5] holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people.
[6] For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses,
[7] who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
[8] As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith;
[9] but they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.
[10]
Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness,
[11] my persecutions, my sufferings, what befell me at Antioch, at Ico’nium, and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me.
[12] Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
[13] while evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived.
[14] But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it
[15] and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
[16] All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
[17] that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.