A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [141]
Book Two: Emerging and Exploring
1. Just yesterday I received a phone call from a fellow who described himself as an ex-Christian and nontheist. But after reading my book Secret Message of Jesus (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2006) and getting a glimpse of the gospel we considered in the previous chapters, he said, “I don’t know how to explain this, but even though I’m not sure about God, now I know I love Jesus—even more than I did when I was a Christian!”
2. Thanks to Rod Washington, personal communication, for the term “beology.”
Chapter 16: What Do We Do About the Church?
1. Alan Jamieson, A Churchless Faith (London: SPCK, 2002); David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UnChristian (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007); Dan Kimball, They Like Jesus but Not the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007); Julia Duin, Quitting Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008).
2. Two beautifully written examples in this regard would be Diana Butler Bass, Strength for the Journey (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), and Sara Miles, Take This Bread (New York: Ballantine, 2008).
3. According to a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, most who leave churches do so by drifting away. See http://www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042701460.html?hpid=topnews. Many of their reasons for doing so, I believe, are related to the issues we have addressed so far. First, the Greco-Roman six-line narrative is standard orthodoxy in many churches, and many people want God without Greco-Romanism. Second, most churches read the Bible as a constitution rather than a story and conversation, leading the church to take legally binding stands that more and more people find morally indefensible. Third, many churches unwittingly preach, sing, and celebrate a tribal, nationalistic, and violent Theos rather than the just, holy, and compassionate God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Fourth, people often can’t figure out which Jesus (of the many we considered earlier) their churches stand for, and too seldom do they feel that the church is actually helping its members become Christlike in the best sense of the word. Fifth, most churches are preaching a gospel that lacks the reconciling dynamic of Jesus’s good news of the kingdom of God. In this light, it’s a wonder more of us haven’t drifted away already, until we recall Peter’s reply to Jesus: “Where else would we go?” (John 6:68).
4. I don’t believe the old saw that hierarchical organizations are like ocean liners and you can’t turn them around quickly; I think hierarchical organizations are frequently the only ones that can be turned quickly. If you doubt that, imagine turning around a convoy of ten thousand motorboats, all of whose drivers are using their radios for broadcasting, not listening!
5. About the relative difficulty of starting new churches in comparison to renewing existing ones, people often quip, “It’s easier to give birth than raise the dead.” I have never heard a mother say this; for those experienced in either church planting or childbirth, the words “birth” and “easy” don’t generally appear in the same sentence. Even if it were relatively easy to plant new churches that simply compete within conventional paradigms for market share, it is far more challenging to start new churches that seek to participate in this quest for a new kind of Christian faith and life.
6. The Fresh Expressions Movement among the Church of England, British Methodists, and others is an encouraging example of this kind of “R & D department,” as are the various emergent networks in U.S. denominations. For links, see www.freshexpressions.org.uk/index.asp?id=1, and www.emergentvillage.com.
7. In The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox paraphrases Charles S. Maier: “Empires…use similar methods to control their subjects. That method is a combination of military might, either used or threatened, and cultural