emergent bend

it seems that the emergent church is picking up some steam here in central oregon…

as a guy in his 20’s (late 20’s) who works at a church and spends much of his time with others in their 20’s and teens, it seems that i am continually being faced with this thing called the emergent movement. as time goes on i find that i don’t even need to go out looking for it, but it comes to me, standing directly in front of my face. what do i mean? i have sitting on my desk right now a paper written by a local pastor, calling into question use of words like ‘infallible’ and ‘inerrant’ when speaking of the Word of God. though this pastor and church refuse to take the title emergent, their actions seem to be speaking more clearly than their public words. then take last night for example.

new read (#2)

so i managed to start and finish a book without ever posting about it…

i guess its partly because i’ve been fairly busy lately, but also because i made it through the book pretty quickly. following sunday morning service, i was approached by a lady in our fellowship who asked me if i had read this book yet, which i hadn’t. she said she had an extra copy, so handed me the copy she had. you can view the book on amazon.com by clicking here. its called ‘faith undone’ by roger oakland.

i got home on sunday and started into it and didn’t put it down until i was 100 pages in. just so you don’t think i’m some kind of super-reader, i’ll tell you right now i’m not. in fact, i’m notorious for dragging books out over a month or more. somehow, though, this book really grabbed my attention. why? well, i guess this is where i should tell you one reason it took me so long to make it through the josh mcdowell book. i was two-timing josh. yes, i admit. while i was reading his book, i was also reading another book. you’ve probably heard of it. its called ‘the emerging church’ by dan kimball. sorry, josh.

but seriously, i just finished that book a week ago and immediately following was given this roger oakland book. and just to clarify, i wasn’t reading the dan kimball book because i’m thinking of entering the ‘emergent conversation.’ i’ve found myself in the past months in several conversations about the emerging church and felt that i was really lacking in my ability to speak intelligently about it, since i didn’t know exactly what it was about. reading dan’s book helped me understand a little more about the emerging approach.

alright, i digress. enough about dan’s book. back to ‘faith undone.’ i won’t get into the details here due to lack of space, but i would say if anyone is flirting with the idea of entering into the emergent conversation, they should definitely put ‘faith undone’ in their reading list. study up on the emerging church, see what they’re about and what approaches they take. maybe even read some books by dan kimball or brian mclaren, but follow them up with this book. have i stressed that enough? good.

as always, your comments are welcomed.

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.