What a great story, about a burned out pastor and an unexpected spiritual mentor. I have not read the two following books, but have heard great reviews. While many evangelicals are in opposition to McLaren's emergent church thoughts, it is regardless a well pieced together work. ( )

My first foray into emergent church theology. An excellent introduction. McLaren's explanation of postmodernism is particularly helpful. ( )

Perhaps it was not the best book to choose for a long plane journey.

I don't really know much about postmodernism but it struck me that for something that claims to be post-analysis and post-critical there was an awful lot of analysing and criticising going on.

Be that as it may, I like the approach Neo takes to some of the issues the book takes as examples, even if some of the issues seem to me to be specific to an American context. This is definitely a book to ponder further and I'm looking forward to reading the others in the series. ( )

Hugely stimulating book that serves as a wakeup call for the emergent church ( )

I just finished reading Brian McLaren's book A New Kind of Christian. It was a good book, I appreciate what I think McLaren is trying to do, though I don't think I'm probably his target audience. McLaren offers us a fictional narrative account of a series of conversations that happens between two middle-aged Christians. They explore facets of postmodernity; the inappropriate reaction of modern Christians to these facets, and imagine what an appropriate, postmodern-Christian response might be.

I've mostly heard Postmodernism described (philosophically speaking) as a "turn for the worst" in world history. The spectrum of analysis spans from one presenter who kept repeating the phrase, "Postmodernism is not in and of itself a bad thing," (until we were all convinced he felt it was), to a description by a friend of my father, who basically summarized it as the most effective tool of Satan to date: "Postmodernism trades logic for emotion. No one want to work in a skyscraper built according to someones feelings."

I don't beg...I just differ.

Postmodernity is little more than the result of the collective realization that empirical foundationalism is unachievable in the human experiment. Further, that the sciences are necessary, yet insufficient to assign meaning to existence. It's not about building a skyscaper however you feel like; it is about admitting that a skyscraper, no matter how tall and safe, will never feed starving children in Africa. Science is not equipped as a discipline to provide answers to the world's basic problems of pride, greed and lust. Postmoderns are starting to look for those answers elsewhere.

I imagine this book might be revolutionary for a middle-aged, evangelical Christian that has been sensing "a crack in the Matrix" for awhile. It describes with passion the direction of postmodern culture, and dreams of a "new kind of Christian" that can proclaim good news with love to this "new world." As an X, having grown up in the Pacific NW (in the most unchurched area of America) most of what is presented as revolutionary in the book is simply the familiar world in which I live. The conversations of the book reflect conversations I've been having with Christian peers for years: how to be true to ourselves/our generation/our culture in a church built during and for our parent/grandparent's generation. ( )