On his blog, Alan Creech has some interesting things to say about the emerging church and its various strains. One post I appreciated was his explanation of the growing interest in liturgical and sacramental practices in the emerging church and the growth of post-protestant communities.

His discussion reminded me of one of the reasons Peter and I left a thriving, growing church plant that was on its way to becoming a mega-church for seminary then church planting. I grew tired -especially in the Bible church arena – of the emphasis on "right theology" without any connection with the historical conversation regarding certain texts. This usually took the form of a theological fad of the moment, or, even more dangerously, of some teacher saying I have sat down and studied this and now I have the authoritative understanding of what this difficult passage says or I know what the new testament church really looked like or whatever. The only problem is there are multiple teachers among evangelicals teaching wildly different versions so who do you believe?

That is what has lead me to be more catholic or post-protestant. A lone Christian sitting down with his or her Bible - the ultra-sola Scriptura approach - often comes up with ERROR, not a true understanding of the Scriptures. That is why God gave us the church and the creeds and history and tradition. St Vincent’s formulation to embrace that which is believed everywhere by all is good to help us stay anchored within the bounds of orthodox Christian belief. We ignore the voices of saints and theologians throughout the ages to our peril.

Now division within the body of Christ makes consensus difficult but at least by being small c catholic we can eliminate most of the pop-theology that parades itself among evangelicals as truth.

With its fascination with things catholic, there is one thing I think emerging church leaders need to grapple with. To some degree, to be catholic is to give up dreams of saying something new about the gospel. Certainly there are new realities in our world today that challenge traditional evangelical structures, and the church must always proclaim anew the gospel of Christ in a way that speaks to the questions people today are asking. Often, though, the quest to be new and innovative overtakes the desire to be true to the gospel – error becomes mixed with genuine critique and reformational impulses, so much that it is difficult to tell truth from error. Christians then are involved in just a series of fads rather than the timeless truths Christianity should be known for. This is what I am afraid the emerging church will devolve into over time without the anchor of history.