Did Evangelicalism Fail?

I attended a conference recently on the "Emerging Church" in which the statement was repeatedly made that evangelicalism had failed to "deliver on its promises."

The charge appears designed to excuse the movement of the emergent church away from the traditional values of evangelicalism. The inerrancy of Scripture, the lost state of the sinner, the exclusivity of the gospel, even the deity of Christ: all are expendable for the sake of a new form of social gospel promulgated by the "emergents." Evangelicalism tried camping on these tenets and has failed. Of course, one of the strongest points of the conference I attended was that not all those who associate themselves with the emergent church would readily sacrifice any or all of these doctrines. At the same time, doctrine itself is given a negative connotation by almost all emergents.

But has evangelicalism failed? That statement alone seems worth challenging. No, the world is not saved. Where did we ever get the idea that it would be? No, my next door neighbors are still not saved. But don't we allow their choice? We have a new generation that may or may not be resistent to the gospel as presented by traditional evangelicalism, but that may simply suggest that new methods are called for, rather than a new message.

Evangelicalism, it seems to me, is neither a movement nor a denomination. It is simply a focus or a channel within the history of the church. Oh, I know that we have evangelical denominations and organizations, but I would submit that they do not define the term. The very amorphous nature that emergents claim for themselves they deny for others. Who would suggest that Ted Haggard defined evangelicalism? Or Jerry Falwell or Billy Graham? Not me. Instead, evangelicalism is simply a focus on the application of the gospel in the life of the individual. In the same way, we could say that Orthodoxy is a focus of the gospel in the broader organism of the church, Reformed thought is a focus of the gospel in our theology, mainline churches have focused the gospel on societal change, and on and on.

The gospel of Jesus Christ belongs to Him and will take a variety of practical applications within the Church. The important thing is that we do not forget our center. The center of the gospel is Jesus! Any time a group loses that primary focus in its desire to pursue the subsidiary focus, that group is in danger of becoming apostate.

Now if we wanted to discuss whether some parts of evangelicalism have wandered so far from the center in their pursuit of individual "conversions", that might be interesting. In fact, I might even suggest that the emergent church, in most of its forms, is doing just that.