This is like watching a train-wreck, and it kills me; there are people I care about in the Church of the Nazarene. And it's horrible to watch the denomination that helped introduce you to Jesus Christ as Lord flirting (in some segments of her constituency) with Arian/Gnostic flavours of the month. Now, this sounds alarmist because there's nothing substantial - that is, demonstrably substantial - taking place yet; but many of us have seen this coming for a long time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22A48jCstJI
This is Nina Gunter at the M7 Conference with her frank assessment of the major challenges to the Church of the Nazarene.
And kudos to Kody for this one...
http://emergentnazarenes.blogspot.com/2008/04/emergent-church-in-nazarene-manual.html
This latter link is small, ambiguous, and yet to be fully seen in all its glory, but it worries me. Many Nazarenes seem to have a huge fascination with the 'Emergent Church,' failing to recognise this as yet another liberal (in the modern philosophical/theological sense) surrender of Christianity under other a priori agendas and concerns. As our Nazarene professor/leader Steve Hoskins has observed in this article, what Wesleyan-Holiness peoples desperately need at this point in history is something - anything - of a liturgical identity. The Church of the Nazarene is currently caught up in a 100-year-old identity crisis, not only between its various schools of thought concerning 'holiness' (as has been the historical case) and the Anglican vs. evangelical Protestant tension, but now the secret struggle with liberalism (again, modern theological term).
The 'Emergent Church' (yes, in the Nazarene manifestation, it's as arrogant as it sounds) is no solution for the Church of the Nazarene's current crisis; in fact, it only complicates the problem. Yes, we live in a post-modern world. Yes, we need to be reflective about who we are as Christians. Embracing further ambiguity because it glitters with 'social justice' and 'openness' only further compromises what has been compromised in dogma.
I'll spare my meta-commentary, because everyone know where I stand; I've left the denomination to be reconciled to the [Catholic] Church, if that's any indication of anything. I have doubts that the Church of the Nazarene will even be around (at least in any recognisable form) in the next hundred years, but embracing the Emergent Church in baby-steps is a sure-fire way to abandon any hope of an identity altogether. When church bus programmes were the 'next big thing,' we bought into that and suffered financially. If Nazarenes bank too heavily on the 'Emergent movement' because it's the next big thing, the Nazarene denomination will lose itself when the movement goes out of style.
-Rick
