Creatively Confused Heretical Generalists

The emergent church calls themselves the "doing"church. They claim to "live out"Christianity while other churches focus on orthodoxy. They embrace "contextual Theology" in which they define that as "A way of doing theology in which one takes into account: the spirit and message of the gospel; the tradition of the Christian people; the culture in which one is theologising; and social change in that culture."They focus on "orthopraxis (right action) rather than orthodoxy (right thinking). "In other words they say "it is all about being and doing church in our liquid modern times, which has created a new context of a culture of the spiritually restless and spiritual searching, or the openness of many to be spiritual tourists."They claim to pay more attention to "social, economic or ecological injustice, or the sense of God’s presence in human culture and the world and what is good in human nature, or the sense of God’s involvement in the world."They "attempt to listen to culture for basic patterns and structures, analyzing culture in order to discover its basic system of symbols. Out of such a “thick description” will emerge basic themes for the local theology."They are also apparently "not restrained by institutional expectations."In this emerging Church, "due emphasis will be placed on both theological rootage and contemporary experience, on celebration in worship and involvement in social concerns, on faith and feeling, reason and prayer, conversion and continuity, the personal and the conceptual."They claim: "It will bring together the most helpful of the old and the best of the new, blending the dynamic of a personal Gospel with the compassion of social concern."They also apparently "love and celebrate the arts and artistic expression, whether or not it is self-consciously Christian in nature."I tried to keep it short.Besides the fact that all I can seem to muster up as a response to this heresy is "ugh."On a good note: thankfully God's will cannot be thwarted no matter what means satan devises to confuse and deceive people. (e.g. the "Emerging Church")
It is a church, they say, for people who don't 'do church'?And if you want to know if they evangelise people... here is one of their reaponses to this question: "Good question - I hope not! I wouldn't want people to feel they were being targetted and that we were tricking them."Oh, and if you ask them to define worship... here another one of their responses: "It is a Celebration of life with God! We are exploring ways to worship and pray that reflect the kind of people we are coming across. We do not want to say to people - "here's what we do, come and do it with us"; we prefer to ask "if you came to worship and pray, how would we do it?" They won't necessarily know the answer, but we'd work it out somewhow."
(Wow. I'm confused... not about what I beleive and why... but about what they believe and why.)
Conclusively, if I were to define the "kind of people they are coming across" as mentioned above in how they define worship...hmmm... what would I say? (see title)
Now go to this site: http://purgatorio1.com/?p=105
This is one of those things that I will ponder in the grocery store and begin laughing uncontrollably as on-lookers glance nervously in my direction.