Mike McLoughlin's Blog :: Smacked by The Other Shoe of a Heresy Hunter

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop at Emergent No concerning the effort of Surphing to "expose" fellow Christians such as myself as lacking in orthodoxy. Sure enough, the latest post arrived today - New Life Church - Mixing the Charismatic with Emergent.

New Life Church Kelowna is where my family and I attend. We have been members since 1988. Surphing at Emergent No found this association in my bio.

Surphing at Emergent No links New Life Church to the Word of Faith movement which is completely inaccurate. Also, we have no association with the Emerging Church movement whatsoever. Check out the Wikipedia articles and see if they bear any relation to what Surphing at Emergent No writes.

Our roots are Fellowship Baptist (about as far away from Word of Faith & Emergent as you can get). We spent time in association with the Vineyard Churches of Canada. Presently, we are not associated with a particular denomination. We are governed by a leadership team composed of local and international ministry leaders. You can see who it is here.

Due to an unexpected visitation by the Holy Spirit in our early years we experienced a release of spiritual gifts including prophecy and healing. Thus it is not surprising that Surphing at Emergent No finds accounts of the exercise of these gifts on our site. (read the story here or you can purchase Wes Campbell's book Welcoming a Visitation by the Holy Spirit). Mr.Campbell is the founding Pastor of the church and serves an international ministry called Revival Now that is based in Kelowna.

Our present emphasis as a church is strongly toward missions, social justice and providing for children in need. We closely linked to Hope For The Nations which supports a number of orphanages and children's ministries.

Rather than examining New Life's Statement of Faith to see what we profess publicly at our website, Surphing at Emergent No continues to go fishing for suspicious associations so as to find me (and New Life) guilty by association with what she thinks is aberrant teaching.

You can read our statement of faith and draw your own conclusions. The very first paragraph states:

The Word of God

We believe that the Bible is the Word of God, fully inspired and without error in the original manuscripts, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and that it has supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.

This is word for word the same statement of faith as the Baptist General Conference in the US. Check it out here.

Yet Surphing at Emergent No has the audacity to wrongly assert that New Life relies on experience not Scripture and is man-centred not Christ-Centred.

Here is the quote:

" I think there are few reasons they meld the two movements into one: both rely heavily on experience not Scripture; both are man-centered, not Christ centered; both lack biblical doctrine; both want to be hip, happening, and relevent; both are entertainment oriented (I know the Emergent folks will heartily disagree here, but how else do you explain drama and bongo drums during the service?)."

Unbelievable! What can I say except I cringe at what's coming next from Surphing at Emergent No. She goes on to state " I'm sure there are other reasons why the two are being combined, but that's what I've come up with so far."

So far? Why all this effort to "come up with" something? I have nothing to hide. I have 92 articles on my blog and Surphing at Emergent No is welcome to take me to task on any of them. I have a statement of core values, I am accountable to my sponsoring mission organization, Youth With A Mission (which by the way is a mission organization founded by Loren Cunningham whose son David Cunningham made the movie "To End All Wars"). All the links are there and I am welcome to supply anyone who asks answers to any question concerning my "orthodoxy."

So my challenge to Surphing at Emergent No, rather than criticizing my associations or links why not examine what I say on my web site? Should Christians engage culture? What does the Bible have to say about work, business, marketplace etc.? What does it mean to be a Christian and in business? How ought the church help Christians live their faith at work?

Since Surphing at Emergent No is so concerned to live biblical truth, how do they suggest Christians do that at work?

Lets have a conversation centred on the Bible and life in Christ instead of slinging mud and making false assertions.

UPDATE: I have inserted the words "Surphing at" in front of "Emergent No" to be more specific as to who it is that is doing the writing at that blog about me.

Keywords: Theology, Emergent0Church, Church, Bible

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Re: Smacked byThe Other Shoe of a Hersey Hunter

by Anonymous on Tue 06 Sep 2005 08:52 AM PDT | Permanent Link

Actually Mike, I did discuss at least one of your articles previously:

"McLoughlin's article at his site: "A Cry For Authentic Christian Living" quotes two bible verses, not really even in context. But he does however quote heavily from Bernard Lonergan the Jesuit philosopher and theologian (if you want to get dizzy read his article where he quotes Lonergan about 'insight into insight' blah blah blah). McLaughlin mentions Lonergan 7 times plus two footnote citations. Seems unbalanced if one wants an 'authentic' Christian life." In talking about an 'authentic Christian life" you were short on Scripture and long on man's worldly philosphy. How can anyone grow more Christ-like if his mind is grounded in Roman Catholic philosphies? Answer is, he can't. He can, though, through Scripture and the empowerment of living it out through the Holy Spirit. I'd hope you'd agree with that. Scripture is enough to equip us to live godly lives through Christ. So why emphasize a Jesuit philosopher? Eph. 4-6, Rom. 10 (or there abouts)-16 etc. describe HOW to live Christians lives---after grounding us in solid doctrine in the previous chapters. Its something to think about.

Secondly everyone has a statement of faith which doesn't hold much water when compared to the things they write AND endorse. Just as you can tell a lot about a person by the books or authors they read, so you can tell a lot about a person/website by the links they post. At the very least its inconsistant, at worst contradictory.

Newlife is certainly WOF. Tales of gold dust, personal and ongoing prophecy, interpretive dancing, drama...these are all ingredients of Emergent and WOF. Ties to the Arnotts shows the WOF influence.

As I stated in my articles, what DOES Scripture say? I left that ball in your court.

Re: Smacked byThe Other Shoe of a Hersey Hunter

by Robbymac on Tue 06 Sep 2005 10:11 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

A common reaction at EmergentNO, whenever somebody questions their tactics or their beliefs, is "look, we've written tons of articles. Read them for yourself; we're not going to repeat ourselves again."

Since Mike has written tons of articles here, I think the onus is on Denise/Surphing et al. to follow their own advice, and do their own research, rather than attacking Mike on their own website with spurious accusations and expecting him to explain himself all over again -- out of context of his original writings.

I don't attend New Life Church, although I've visited there on occassion when I've been in the area, and it's certainly NOT Word of Faith -- it's ludicrous to even suggest this. Denise/Surphing was once a Charismatic herself, so to use her guilt-by-association logic, she is still WOF even if she claims she's not. (I don't actually believe she is WOF, I'm just using her own background as an example of the silliness of GBA.)

It's a common mistake for non-charismatics to (wrongly) assume that charismatic=WOF, but since Denise/Surphing is a former charismatic herself, she should know better than that. A little more responsible research would reveal that the WOF is actually only a small part of the overall Charismatic movement, and has actually been criticized quite sharply by other Pentecostals/charismatics.

As for emphasizing a Jesuit writer, when Scripture should be sufficient, the same thing could be said about Surphing's own website (Surphside), where John MacArthur is quoted extensively in many posts. If Scripture is sufficient, why so many long-winded quotes from a man (MacArthur)? It's a silly accusation, either way.

Re: Smacked byThe Other Shoe of a Hersey Hunter

by wejrd79 on Tue 06 Sep 2005 01:56 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Mike,

My suggestion to you is stop responding to these people. No matter what you say, they have you labelled and they will not change their minds.

I visited their blog and shook my head in disbelief. First, I know you from the work you have done with Scruples. Second, after seeing what the bloggers said about a variet of others, I came to the conclusion that they have an incredible narrow view and are basically clueless. When they say that Richard Foster and Dallas Willard are liberal and emergent - WOW are they clueless. I attended the conference that Richard and Dallas gave in June on the new Bible that they published. The entire four days was devoted to illustrating key points from the Bible. If the hersey hunters want to accuse these two of anything it would be that they have a rock solid Christian worldview, but an ecumenical outlook - found guilty. I join them in that outlook.

They will probably accuse Chuck Colson and Nancy Peracey of hersey because they write about the cultural mandate.

What I am aware of is that one can have a Christian worldview and then develop a mental map to explain the world. A mental map would be a Calvinist, Wesleyian, Roman Catholic or an incredibly narrow view that excludes almost everyone else except for those who subscribe to a limited and limiting perspective. They will tend to be extremely anti-intellectual and can get down right petty. That is the hersey hunters.

So, Mike ignore them and keep posting. Those of us who respect you will ignore them. I would also suggest that you eliminate any postings from them as it will not contribute to any meaningful discussion. You can not hold an intelligent discussion with hersey hunters.

Jack Wilson

Re: Smacked byThe Other Shoe of a Hersey Hunter

by Mike McLoughlin on Tue 06 Sep 2005 03:44 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Surphing makes a good point in that you can tell a website's affinty by the links it posts. So I have approximately 100 links on my site plus lots more in my articles. I think if you did a proper analysis you'd find that most of my links are to organizations that relate to the subject of my blog which is Faith at Work. However, Surphing follows the few links I have to other organizations and then follows the links on those sites to links on other sites and so on until she finds what she is hunting for. Anyway, enough said on this matter. I think Emergent No is wasting its time investigating me and needs to move on to other matters.

Still, I am tempted to take up that challenge about what Scripture says. Why don't we examine what Scripture says about how fellow believers ought to critique one another's positions in areas of disagreement? What tone ought we to have? How should we represent one another's viewpoints? What's fair? What's not? Does Scripture guide us in these matters?

So this is my challenge to Surphing. I am going to read the book of Ephesians for answers to these questions. Ephesians mentions the "mystery of the gospel" What is the mystery of the gospel according to Ephesians and how ought the gospel to influence how one relates to fellow believers especially those who attend different church traditions? What does Epehsians tell us about the universal church?

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