Category: book club

Book reviews, thoughts and reflections

The end is near

While uploading the encounter podcast tonight – yeah I really got behind this week – I got back into “Everything Must Change” by Brian McLaren. I’ve been itching to read it lately but have set it aside while I wait for others in our book club to “catch up.”

Reading Chapter 10, McLaren talks about some of the differences between the conventional view of Jesus and the Gospel and the emerging view’s. He gives four comparisons and then suggests six unintended negative consequences of the conventional views of Christ.

Simply put, the conventional view of Jesus poses little or no significant challenge to the dominant framing story that currently directs our societal machinery in its suicidal trajectory. It only fails to confront and correct the current dysfunctions of our societal machinery, but energetically aids and abets its suicidal tendencies in at least six unintended but nevertheless harmful ways.

The conventional view:

  • relegates Jesus to practical irrelevance in relation to human social problems in history; His message is about the soul, its guilt before God, and it’s afterlife and not about our world and its current crises
  • offers relatively little hope for history but anticipates the complete destruction of the world; easily becomes an “opiate of the masses” pacifying people with dreams of a better afterlife rather than motivating and mobilizing them to transform the world here and now
  • tends to be dualistic, with human souls and other “spiritual things” in one category and human bodies and other “secular” things in another; it tends to keep faith private and personal so believers are seen as “just passing through” and steering away from “worldly” social engagements beyond their personal, family and church-related concerns
  • may view blessings as God’s blessings to an elect group and little or nothing else (except condemnation) to everyone else
  • sees God’s essential attitude toward the world as one of wrath and believers are discouraged from seeing God as an ally in the world’s transformation
  • by postponing the essence of salvation to the afterlife, and by assuming that God plans to destroy the earth, the conventional view leads us to assume that the world will get worse and worse and that this deterioration is in fact God’s will or plan. This assumption tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not only that, but in some versions of the conventional view, the worse the world gets, the better we should feel since salvation – meaning post-mortem salvation after the world is destroyed – is approaching.

McLaren suggests there are many lines between the conventional and emerging viewpoints that people may agree with or disagree with. Some may take the conventional view as their “contract” and portions of the emerging view as the fine print or vice versa.

But this really got me, when he suggest that our “framing story” in our modern Western culture has resulted in a “Gospel about Jesus” and not the “Gospel of Jesus.”

Share your thoughts. Comment away – and yes – you can do it anonymously.

grace vs accountability

bill clinton by sskennel

Just read an interesting and good post by Mark Batterson about accountability for leaders in the church.

It comes at an interesting time after having read Chp. 9 in The Ragamuffin Gospel.

Batterson points out that II Timothy 3:2 says, “The overseer must be above reproach.”

Being above reproach means having well-defined boundaries that we are held accountable to. I never want to do anything to compromise my calling at NCC so I submit my speaking opportunities to our stewardship team. I decide what invitations to accept. But I am alloted 30 speaking days. That helps me in two ways. First of all, it helps me say no. And that is something I have a very difficult time doing! And it keeps me accountable. I’m grateful for the opportunities to influence the kingdom of God at large. And I don’t take it for granted. I want to make sure I’m a good steward of every opportunity.

Brennan Manning on the other hand talks about giving grace and love to all.

If we believe in the exciting message of Jesus, if we hope in vindication, we must love, and even more, we must run the risk of being loved… God wants us back even more that we could possibly want to be back.

Manning then talks about the woman caught in adultery and Jesus’ response.

Now get the picture. Jesus didn’t ask her if she was sorry. He didn’t demand a firm purpose of amendment. He didn’t seem too concerned that she might dash back into the arms of her lover. She just stood there and Jesus gave her absolution before she asked for it. The nature of God’s love for us is outrageous… I don’t think anyone reading this would have approved of throwing rocks at the poor woman in adultery, but we would have made darn sure she presented a detailed act of contrition and was firm in her purpose of amendment. Because if we let her off without saying she was sorry, wouldn’t she be back in adultery before sunset? No the love of our God isn’t dignified at all, and apparently that’s the way he expects our love to be… once we’ve accepted it, he expects us to behave the same way with others.

The two writers seem to be at odds with each other. Or are they? Are we to give grace and love to everyone but our leaders in the church? Seems as though they are required to live above reproach. But what about when they do fall?

Goethe said, “Men will always be making mistakes as long as they are striving for something.” Is that reason enough to let them off the hook? Or should they be held accountable for their actions while someone coming to church on Sunday without getting involved is loved and forgiven over and over again?

To put it on a broader sense, should a kid who commits murder be held to the same accountability and punishment as an adult?

These are some of the things I’m juggling through my head today. What are your thoughts?

re: Ragamuffin thoughts

fall from grace - todd baker

Been a while since I’ve updated much on The Ragamuffin Gospel – of course it would help if I’d read it over the last week or so.

I hope I’m not repeating anything here but some great stuff in this book so it’s worth repeating if I have.

Manning: Salvation is joy in God which expresses itself in joy in and with one’s neighbor.

Reminds me of one of the themes Rob Bell spoke on in Dallas recently. Part of accepting grace is giving grace to those around us as well. Loving our neighbor as ourselves. Oh how we I miss this point so often.

Manning: We miss Jesus’ point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us.

Manning: The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become – the more we realize that everything in life is a gift… The poor in spirit are the most nonjudgemental of peoples; they get along well with sinners.

Manning: Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, he may be in a Woody Allen film or a Bruce Springsteen concert (or a U2 concert). Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. (related post: Christian is a poor adjective)

Manning: while sin and war, disease and death are terribly real, God’s loving presence and power in our midst are even more real.

Manning: The gospel of grace is brutally devaluated when Christians maintain that the transcendent God can only properly be honored and respected by denying the goodness and truth and beauty of the things of this world. Amazement and rapture should be our reaction to God revealed as Love…. where justice ends, love begins and reveals that God is not interested merely in the dividends of the covenant.

referring to what Jesus told the Pharisees and others:
Manning: These sinners, these people you despise are nearer to God than you. It is not the hookers and thieves who find it most difficult to repent: it is you who are so secure in your piety and pretense that you have no need of conversion. They may have disobeyed God’s call, their professions have debased them, but they have shown sorrow and repentance. But more than any of that, these are the people who appreciate His goodness.

Manning: Grace tells us that we are accepted just as we are. We may not be the kind of people we want to be, we may be a long way from our goals, we may have more failures than achievements, we may not be wealthy or powerful or spiritual, we may not even be happy, but we are nonetheless accepted by God, held in His hands.

Manning: Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their since have not only been forgiven but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb.

Matthew 25:40.. “insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of min, you did it to me”

Manning: Quite simply, our deep gratitude to Jesus Christ is manifested neither in being chaste, honest, sober and respectable, nor in church-going, Bible toting and Psalm-singing, but in our deep and delicate respect for one another.

Manning: The ministry of evangelization is an extraordinary opportunity of showing gratitude to Jesus by passing on his gospel of grace to others. However, the ‘conversion by concussion’ method with one sledge hammer blow of the Bible after another betrays a basic respect for the dignity of the other and is utterly alien to the gospel imperative to bear witness. To evangelize a person is to say to him or her: you, too, are loved by God in the Lord Jesus. And not only to say that but to really think it and relate to it to the man or woman so they can sense it.

You may want to read that one again. I’ve read it several times. (related posts: And it was good, Quote(s) of the day,Everything Must Change: Chp 1 :: Hope Happens

A message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this.

Interview with Brian McLaren


Scott tipped me off to Next-Wave Ezine, where I found a recent interview with “Everything Must Change” author Brian McLaren.

Here’s a preview:

Question: At the beginning of the book ( p.3) you write: “And not only am I often unsatisfied with conventional answers, but even worse, I’ve consistently been unsatisfied with conventional questions.” One interpretation of this remark might be, “conventional questions produce conventional answers.” Is it your position that a large proportion of professed Christians have succumbed to a convenient living out of their faith that is askew with the teachings and life of Christ?

McLaren: Well, I think many people are doing their best to live out their faith in sync with the teachings and life of Christ, but it’s not easy to figure out what that means, especially in changing times. Some things are easy – like knowing you shouldn’t hate or commit adultery or kill. But pretty quickly, it gets complex – like knowing whether pre-emptive and hastily-launched wars fit under killing, for example. And that gets to what I mean about conventional questions. We have lots of religious arguments about the origin of the species, but far fewer dialogues about the extinction of species and what we can do to save species that we all agree are precious parts of God’s creation. We have lots of religious arguments about homosexuality, but far fewer conversations about the growing gap between rich and poor and what we can do about it. We argue about what to do about abortion, but we seem much less concerned about what to do about racial disharmony and political polarization and how we can be peacemakers and reconcilers. I’m not saying the common arguments are unimportant, only that less common questions deserve a lot more attention. I hope my book will help in that regard.

read more

re: Ragamuffin thoughts


grace – dearoot

Finished chapters 3 and 4 tonight after our community group (on a side note I think I’m feeling a bit queasy after an e-mail I just received)…

Here are some more quotes I loved from Manning:

We miss Jesus’ point entirely when we use his words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us.

The trouble with our ideals is that if we live up to all of them, we become impossible to live with.

…we don’t comprehend the love of Jesus Christ. Oh, we see a movie and resonate to what a young man and woman will endure for romantic love. We know that when the chips are down, if we love wildly enough we’ll fling life and caution to the winds for the one we love. But when it comes to God’s love in the broken, blood-drenched body of Jesus Christ, we get antsy and start to talk about theology, divine justice, God’s wrath and the heresy of universalism.

The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. … the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace.

I LOVE THAT! How true and how often we forget. “You must repent and live up to our guidelines for membership before we’ll forgive you.” “You must repent and clean yourself up before we’ll let you into our fellowship.” “You can’t hold on to any of your bad habits if you want to be a part of our fellowship.” Oh if only each of us could understand God’s grace.

“Grace, grace. God’s grace. Grace that is greater than all my sins. Grace, grace. God’s grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within.”

Ragamuffin thoughts

Back in the early 90’s Franciscan priest Brennan Manning released the book, Ragamuffin Gospel.
Way back in January 2008 I finally picked up a copy and started reading it. I’m in the middle of the third chapter and loving it so far.
Manning focuses on the grace and love God gives – and we so often overlook or forget about – only giving lip service.
Here are some of my thoughts and quotes from Manning through the first few chapters…

The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.
Amy Grant ring any bells?

Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if it is only personal discipline and self-denial that will mold the perfect me… In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time.

(Martin) Luther wrestled through the night with the core question: how could the Gospel of Christ be truly called “Good News” if God is a righteous judge rewarding the good and punishing the evil? Did Jesus really have to come to reveal that terrifying message?

Morton Kelsey wrote: “The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.”
How often that is forgotten.

Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace… And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance.

We tremble before God’s majesty…and yet we grow squeamish and skittish before God’s love.

The God of the legalistic Christian, is often unpredictable, erratic, and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease Him. Sunday worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against His whims.

If your God is an impersonal, cosmic force, your religion will be noncommittal and vague. The image of God as an omnipotent thug who brooks no human intervention creates a rigid lifestyle ruled by puritanical laws and dominated by fear.
Many folks have an extreme dislike for this idea of a post-modern/emerging/emergent church. There seems to be this idea that it’s turning people away from God’s holiness and the “fear of God.” I seem to feel that the “fear/knowledge” of God is already there but when they look at the church and look at the effect Christianity has had, they stand back and say, “a message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this.” Many of these seekers are wanting to serve a God out of love – rather than fear. They want to serve a God that’s real in every way and not a god just sitting on a cloud somewhere waiting to strike us down if we don’t live up to his expectations.
…A loving God fosters a loving people.
…Love is a far better stimulus than threat or pressure.

The Kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior.

For the disciple of Jesus “becoming like a little child” means the willingness to accept oneself as being of little account and to be regarded as unimportant.

When our inner child is not nurtured and not nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments, and the surprises of the Spirit. Evangelical faith is bartered for cozy, comfortable piety. A failure of nerve and an unwillingness to risk distorts God into a Bookkeeper and the gospel of grace is swapped for the security of religious bondage… If we maintain the open-mindness of children we challenged fixed ideas and established structures, including our own.

…the open mind realizes that reality, truth and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended.