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Great Leader, Great Teacher: Recovering the Biblical Vision for LeadershipOne of the recurring themes in Great Leader, Great Teacher is Bredfeldt’s strong resistance to the Emerging Church emphasis on communally derived truth and its devaluing of propositional truth. Bredfeldt devotes an entire chapter to the twin dangers of cultural accommodation (manifested most clearly in the Emerging movement according to Bredfeldt) and cultural isolationism (a fundamentalism that loses all cultural relevance) (70).

Bredfeldt is right to see accommodation and isolationism as two “ditches” that should be avoided. When he speaks of cultural accommodation, he begins taking broad swipes at the postmodern Emerging movement, quoting specifically from Donald Miller and Stanley Grenz. The section he quotes from Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz ends with Miller’s question, “Who knows anything anyway?” Bredfeldt uses this paragraph as evidence of a growing postmodern paradigm that sees truth as constructed and sees anyone who believes in absolutes as seeking to make a power play (74). But a closer look at Miller’s paragraph reveals what is actually an attitude of humility that seems to closely resemble the mindset of Solomon in Ecclesiastes.

Bredfeldt correctly points out some of the weaknesses of the postmodern view of truth, but he fails to mention the ways that postmodernism’s critique of modernism is sorely needed and that many of postmodernism’s critiques can be cautiously applied to leadership strategy. Of course, a myriad of problems exists in the Emerging Church’s understanding of authority, communal sense of truth, and accommodation to current societal mores (most obviously in the reticence of many Emerging leaders to say anything at all about homosexuality). But there are also expressions within this movement that seem to more closely resemble the New Testament teaching on humble, servant leadership (Mark 10:35-52) than evangelicalism’s current CEO-manager style of pastoral authority.

Bredfeldt believes that cultural isolationism is also dangerous, but the space he devotes to isolation is only two pages, compared to the nine pages he gives to cultural accommodation. It is clear which ditch Bredfeldt believes is the more pressing threat – cultural accommodation. But a significant segment of evangelicalism seems to be heading in direction of isolation, surely a large enough group to warrant more than just two pages of warning. One thinks of the evangelical groups that continue to splinter and fracture over minor issues that have little bearing on the Christian mission in the world (such as private prayer languages, Bible translations, etc.).

written by Trevin Wax  © 2007 Kingdom People blog

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