Erwin Raphael McManus is an author and pastor of Mosaic church in Los Angeles. this church meets three times a week at three different locations in the LA area, with the main meeting occuring Sunday nights at the Los Angeles Entertainment Center, a place that McManus describes vividly at the beginning of his chapter. it is a club whose walls “rumble from the sounds of rap, salsa, disco, and techno” and whose regular clientele includes sports stars, entertainers, musicians, and actors. all this changes when the church meets on Sunday evenings, however, as the building comes alive with the Mosaic “gathering.” McManus represents Sweet’s “park” clearing which relies on the message handed down from generation to generation, while seeking to find new ways of expressing that message. in other words, they fit into the “preserving message/evolving methods” paradigm. (more…)

Brian McLaren is an author, pastor, advocate of postmodernism, and a senior fellow in the Emergent Church. he represents the “meadow” clearing who, as Leonard Sweet described in the introduction to the book, fits into the “evolving message/evolving methods” paradigm. however, he begins his article responding to these claims and says that it is his view that the methods never change if methods mean “love, building friendships, being honest and authentic, treating others with gentleness and respect, praying, walking humbly with God while living justly and mercifully, becoming all things to all people.” likewise, he states that the message never changes as long as message means “the story that begins with ‘In the beginning, God created….’” (more…)

Frederica Mathewes-Green is a Greek Orthodox Christian, author, speaker, and commentator. she contributes regularly to beliefnet, National Review Online, and regularly appears on National Public Radio. like Michael Horton, she resides in Leonard Sweet’s “garden” clearing, unsurprising since she is an Orthodox Christian, and seeks to preserve both the methods and message of the church. her article, for me, was much harder to pin down than the other articles because of the style in which she wrote and because the content, for the most part, wasn’t exacly “on topic.” her article was much more a lesson in Greek Orthodox apologetics than it was a response to the question of the Emergent Church movement, although she does have some things to say about the topic at hand. because of this, this “review” will probably be pretty short as the purpose of these reviews is to respond, not to the theology of the Greek Orthodox Church, but the theology (or lack thereof) of those in the Emergent movement. (more…)

Michael Horton is a Reformed theologian, professor (i actually had the chance to take a class with him this past summer and didn’t, something which i now regret), author, the editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine, and hosts a regular radio program called The White Horse Inn. he is one of two writers in this book to represent the “garden” clearing (the other being a Greek Orthodox Christian) described by Leonard Sweet in the introduction which follows the “preserving methods/preserving message” paradigm in the postmodern, emergent church conversation. (more…)