The Emerging Churches in the Book of Judges

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My investigation into the emerging church movement (ECM) was motivated by finding out that my alma mater (Biblical Theological Seminary, Hatfield, PA) has adopted the goal of being the seminary of choice for the emerging church. This essay therefore will focus on matters which are relevant to BTS. This means that this essay will also focus on Brian McLaren (not the emerging church movement in general), since McLaren’s influence on BTS has been evident in a number of ways, the most obvious being that in a 20 minute presentation on the new direction of BTS ("Seminary on the Mission"), president Dave Dunbar quotes Brian McLaren (but not anything in the Bible) as justification for this new direction: "If you have a new world, you need a new church."[1] McLaren is one of the leaders of an organization within the ECM called "Emergent Village." What I have learned keeps reminding me of my studies in the book of Judges, especially the two so-called appendices (chapters 17–18 and 19–21). Unlike the rest of the book which deals with how the judges led Israel, these two stories each feature a Levite, or what in emerging church terminology is called a "missional leader" (if you’ve never heard of this terminology, what you’ll learn first about the emerging church is its apparent dislike for Biblical terminology). These missional leaders of emerging churches in Israel are, to put it mildly, not positive role models for us.

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The title does suggest, however, that in the phenomenon of ECM there is nothing really new. We can note many differences of detail between what we read in Judges and what we see in the modern scene; sometimes we will see opposites. But I would say that there is a fundamental similarity between then and now, namely, that the emerging churches then and now are doing what is right in their own eyes, which includes a selective obedience (thus also selective disobedience) to Scripture. This description seems to be what binds together the different manifestations of religious impulses in Judges, from the emerging missional leaders of chapters 17 and 19, to the emergent village of Dan in chapter 18, to the emergent village of Gibeah in chapter 19, and to the emerging churches led by Judah and Benjamin in chapters 20 and 21.

The following is not written simply "on behalf of" the traditional churches of today, and "against" the emerging churches of today. Today’s traditional church (if there were such a unified concept) cannot be our standard by which we measure other churches. Many Christians’ functional definition of Protestantism might be not far off from "we have no Pope, we do what is right in our own eyes." It is fitting for all of us, then (I include myself), to constantly take warning from this portion of Scripture, as from all of Scripture, lest these narratives of unfaithfulness be found to describe us as well.

The Bible does not describe churches as "emerging." A description drawn from the book of Judges itself would be more like "departing": "They turned aside [departed] quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked [in the time of Joshua] in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do likewise" (Judg 2:17). In acting this way they were like the generation that left Egypt only to die in the wilderness: "They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!’" (Exod 32:8; cf. Deut 9:12).

On the other hand, sometimes churches are departing from error and turning to truth: they are reforming. Departing from Babylon, and returning to Jerusalem. "Emerging" then is not very descriptive or helpful terminology; it is value neutral. Is it departing or reforming? Politicians seem to always assume that we are stupid enough to think that change is inherently good, but in the church not all change is reformation; more often in the Bible and in church history it is in the direction of error. The change in question might be more like "out of the frying pan and into the fire."

What follows, then, are descriptions of various aspects of the departing, apostasizing people of God in Judges 17–21; different players in different scenes, all of which is summarized by the narrator, "In those days, there was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes." And Paul tells us, "These things happened to them as examples, and are written for our instruction."