I am a bit confuzzled over this hit piece against Dan Kimball over at Apprising and CRN. There are a number of inconsistencies within Mr. Silva’s accusations. Here are a few surface issues that I immediately saw. Ken Says:
O I know that Kimball’s ashamed of guys like me, whom he actually knows next to zero about
However, knowing next to zero about someone never stopped Ken Silva from writing extremely strong words against people like Kimball. Silva has probably written and published the same amount of material on the web as Kimball (and Silva’s is free), so ironically Kimball may know more about Silva than Silva does about Kimball.
Ken Says
but let it also be said that there are plenty of Christian pastors—also like me—who are sick and tired of having effete emerging ministers speak as if they are the ones who truly represent the Body of Christ.
Yet, a few paragraphs later he writes
…I still maintain that the Emerging Church movement that Kimball is an integral part of is itself not a genuine move of the Holy Spirit. Rather back in 2005 Apprising Ministries pointed out that it’s really a man-centered semi-pelagian postliberal cult operating within nearly completely apostate American evangelicalism.
Wait, Ken’s complaining about Emerging pastors thinking they are the only ones who can call the shots? He just deemed and entire part of Christianity man-centered, semi-pelagian, posliberal and a cult.
The rest of the article was a rather sad attempt to make sure that the blogosphere knew that Kimball’s was no better than his church, Connecticut River Baptist Church. Ironically, Kimball gave all the “right” answers in the Christian Post article in question. Silva rarely (if ever) questioned Kimball’s answers. It was all basically Dan making a statement and then Ken saying: Oh yeah, well our church did that too! You don’t have to be emerging to do that!
Silva kept making the assumption that Dan felt only emerging churches were giving these answers and living out the faith. The funny thing is that Kimball never made a remark that was remotely close to that. The only possible explanation that Silva gave for his reasoning was this
Whenever I hear Kimball it seems that apparently we’re all supposed to believe that this so-called “emerging generation” is a mighty special class of human beings. So special perhaps that those of us who are ministers of Jesus Christ, Who happens to be the LORD God Almighty Himself in human flesh, are no longer to boldly proclaim the Gospel of our Lord. No; for fear this might hurt their fickle feelings, instead I guess we’re to all hold hands around a campfire and ask sinners for whom Christ died how they happen to feel about this subject and that.
no proof, to text, no links … just assumptions on Mr. Silva’s part. I had the privilege of sitting down with Dan Kimball this past April in Pasadena, CA. I can tell you that he is a genuine man of faith, filled with humility and compassion for anyone he interacted with. It is a shame that the ODM community have had to stoop to such lows to find something to pin him with. If it isn’t his sweet rock-a-billy hair style, they criticize him for having the right answers and not sharing the limelight.
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Just further evidence of Ken’s descent into insanity.
While Ken is wrong in how he has been acting/writing, I hardly think that qualifies to call him insane, or becoming insane. We’re trying to be graceful, peaceful, and kind with our words here, Ian, and admittedly we will fail, but that’s no reason just to fire off a 1 liner at a brother. If you have a point to make, make it, but we don’t need to call each other names and make attacks on each other; how would that make you or anyone else built up? You know? Just some advice. Thanks.
Joe
Ken’s post(s), which is his fruit, shows his heart.
How much of the truth do you have to mangle before you are just flat out being deceitful?
Joe C,
I would agree (re: “insanity”). What I see happening with Mr. Silva is more of a pathology of projection.
In this particular case, Kimball makes no claims of exclusivity of the Emerging Church as “true” Christendom. However, because this is the framework Ken operates from (that only those who adopt his overly-narrow band of “reformed” Christianity are “true” Christians), he projects this on Kimball (along with Bell and others).
Much is the case with the other withering criticisms he casts about – they are simply projections of his own warped theological methodology upon the targets of his wrath. And so, as time goes on and his library of hate grows, it descends into pettiness and describes a mirror that only reflects back on the author…
Fortunately, God does not act in this manner…
Right, I agree with what’s been written about by Nathan here in this article, it’s just, I think “insane” is too harsh, and unwarranted. Now, over the past 2 years I’ve seen CRN, AM, and Slice go from bad to much worse, but I think that’s only logical given their standpoint. It’s deception, but I don’t think it’s insanity.
Joe C, I agree, and I apologise. In fact, immediately after pressing submit to that comment I had second thoughts and pressed the stop button – unfortunately it was too late!