In this article, Ken Silva tries to link the emerging church movment to Catholicism.  He uses this quote from Driscoll in his opening lines

Driscoll says his movement seeks to synthesize the best parts of many religious traditions—fundamentalist Christian liturgy, Catholicism’s appreciation of art, and mainline Protestantism’s general cultural tolerance. Also, postmoderns preach the sanctity of community and argue that the Enlightenment’s focus on the individual led to tragedies specific to the baby boom generation—namely, high divorce and abortion rates. (emphasis his)

He then follows it up with his own commentary and conclusions

Here is a fatal flaw in this movement, which by its impudent attempt at reversing the Protestant Reformation by its open embrace of apostate Roman Catholicism as a legitimate form of Christianity reveals that it cannot possibly be from God.

Did Mark Driscoll embrace Roman Catholicism?  Hardly.  He said that we can borrow their appreciation of art in our own religious practices.  This is really a huge jump in logic.  If I was to say that Christians could embrace the value of living a quiet and focused life as the  buddhists have, one ceratinly could not say that I was embracing buddhism as a legitimate true religion.  First, to claim that nothing good came from the Catholic religion until the reformation is rediculous. Second, to claim that by embracing the good, one is embracing the whole theology as legitimate is laughable.  Once again, we see Ken making leaps and bounds in logic to prove his point.    

Confirming what many of us already knew (or at least suspected), there is a Jesus shortage in Tampa Bay, Florida, for which churches have to plan months in advance of Christmas.

[HT: FARK]

Just thought I would add this to the relevant conversation.

In this article from Steve Camp’s blog, he talk about the evils of contextualizing the gospel. I am not going to re-hash the argument that has been made here over and over about contextualizing the gospel. However, I found it ironic that Camp used this image of Christ in his article. Any ideas where it’s from? You guessed it… Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, in which he contextualizes the gospel for film, to present to a theater audience. I guess it’s ok to contextualize the gospel, as long as it is your style…. tear drop from God, and all.

P.S. — I loved this line from the blog… “In the name of connecting with “the culture” they want their people to know they have … learned the lyrics to countless tracks of gangsta rap” You know… all of us crizzzazy emergizzle pastors learning the gangsta rap… raise the roof, fo shizzle.