what should church look like (part 2)

as promised, here is the second installment…

let me start this post out by telling you a little about my own personal church history. the year was 1985. the place was doran, minnesota. i was a cute, fat-faced boy, all of five years old. well, cute by my mom’s estimation at least. each week my mom would lay out my “sunday” clothes for church, which typically consisted of worn out payless shoes, tan slacks, a pink (yes, pink) shirt and pink (yes, pink again) tie. gotta love the 80’s right? having adorned ourselves with our sunday best, we would walk the block and a half down the gravel road to the small white wood-framed presbyterian church.

latest book review

i finished the josh mcdowell book, “the last christian generation”…

i can’t give it two thumbs-up.  it was decent, but not good enough for me to tell anyone to put it at the top of their reading list.  in the book, josh shares with the reader the current “state of the union,” for lack of a better way to put it.  he then goes on to share different methods and approaches to help fix this problem.

the first half of the book was actually quite good.  in it, josh lays out the facts.  maybe its just because i’m a numbers type person, but i liked that he shared the statistics for what the younger generations of today believe, both from a christian perspective and a non-christian perspective.  sadly, there wasn’t much of a difference.  as i read through these chapters, i found myself dog-earing the corners of the pages so i could refer back to them at a later time.

the second-half of the book ended up with very few dog-eared pages.  once josh states the facts and lays the foundation, he begins to tell of his approach and solution to turning things around.  don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad.  i did tag some of the pages for reference later on.  overall, though, i got the impression that he was trying to sell something more.  i couldn’t help but think i got this book mailed to me for free because he and his publisher were hoping it would lead to me purchasing more resources and materials from them.  i came across several places where a resource was mentioned to help solve a problem and i was referred to the appendix to find out how to order that said resource.  to me, this kept nagging me, and probably kept me from really getting into what was being said.

another thing that caught my eye was the use of a fair amount of postmodern or emergent terminology.  this makes me wonder exactly where josh mcdowell stands in the emergent conversation.  i personally don’t have a problem with terms like “missional” or “community” -  i think its great to be a group of believers with a purpose – but it makes me curious to see where he goes from here.  is this his way of testing the waters, or slowly entering into being a ‘friend of emergent?’  i don’t know.  only time will tell.

so the real question i ask is, “was this book worthwhile?”  honestly, i’d have to say it was.  it was only 186 pages long, so it wasn’t a long commitment.  in fact, i started and finished another book while reading this one, so if i had focused my attention to this one alone, it would have been much quicker.  if you are cramped for time, though, you could read the first 6 chapters, skip chapters 7-10, and wrap up with chapters 11-13.  to me, these were the high points.