One of the things that has frustrated me about modern young Evangelicals today is a certain amount of theological arrogance. I’ve talked to many people my age who are convinced they are God’s gift to the church, that they have all the right answers and that they are going to bring about a new reform in Christianity. My problem is that they too often forget about the thousands of years of believers who have gone before them and dealt with some of the same issues we’re facing today. Homosexuality, yep, that’s been going on since Genesis. Drunkenness, look no further than Noah. Tattoos? Yep, that’s in there too (but not necessarily to say Christians shouldn’t have them as many people say today).

The Gospel Coalition has a fantastic blog today titled ‘We’re Not the Ones God Has Been Waiting For.’ In the article he offers 3 reasons why we tend to think we’re far better than those who have gone before us:

1. We make an idol of cultural acceptance.

2. We think we can do ministry better than our fathers.

3. We put too much weight in our own abilities.

The saying goes, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” This is also true in the church. Starting in the 90s we had a rise of a new church movement called the emergent church. Relevant, a magazine I subscribe to recently said,

(The emergent churches’) critique of rigid pietism and narrow theology devolved into a less interesting, rehashed theological liberalism. Driscoll and Seay fled the movement, and those who remained were either marginalized among evangelicals or became a a small avant-garde sect of mainline Protestantism. The emergent movement’s rise and fall remains a warning against reform movements that lack a theological center.

Again, it seems to me that the emergent church forgot about the thousands of years of church history and tried to rebrand the church as something new, but it’s all been done before. I’m grateful that despite a changing culture and a church doing its best to keep up with that changing culture, there is a solid rock who has never changed and never will. I hope and pray other church leaders my age will not neglect to study church history and read from other people who are much smarter than we are as we do our best to lead the churches God has called us to.