Book Reviews (Part Two)
Today I continue and complete my lately read summaries. There is not nearly as much of a theme with this bunch as there was with the previous list. However, each of these four books were no less formative. Let’s dive in.
1. Pagan Christianity - George Barna and Frank Viola
Straight into the fire. First, the airing of grievances. Frank really diminishes his very important points in two big ways.
First, the word PAGAN. From various interviews and responses to critics it is clear that Frank’s argument in this book is not that Pagan = Evil. The discussion goes along great until the inevitable mentions of the P word. It’s gets to be just about as bile-inducing as Heretic, or Biblical, or American Beer. I wish the title of the book was something like “The Fossilizing of Christianity” or “Calcified Christianity”. I don’t know. The idea that the God of the universe would be concerned with paganism is so daft to me.
Second, there is a lot of rigidity in the way Viola and Barna present this organic dream of church. Josh Brown’s misgivings after hearing Frank speak in Florida speak a bit to this. I really was taken back by the idea that someone so infatuated with an organic church model could be so rigid in how that works itself out. I just don’t understand the New Testament community as being meant to be prescriptive to all eras. Certainly Jesus’ reminder to make love of our neighbor on par with our love of God (indeed the two should be and must be indistinguishable and inseparable) is a very really need in every faithful community, but not the skins that we wrap around it.
Viola’s warnings to avoid deifying our church structures that are not “biblical” (ew!) are very important to heed when these structures obscure a picture of loving, worshipping, formative community.
There are a few opportunities for imagination that I have taken from the reading of this book:
- Full understanding and implementation of the priesthood of all believers.
- Movement toward every member functioning, and given space to contribute in our meetings
- Imagination with regards to compensation to staff (bi-vocational pastorate, etc)
- Revisiting giving
- Communion in community (Party!)
- Reworking Christian education and programs
I am very glad to be done with this book though. It was not a pleasure to read. I did not leave it feeling positive, but I am determined to work with it and leave behind the foulness and build love and creativity from Frank’s work. Not in an effort to be more biblical or less pagan, but in an effort to be a fuller representation of Christ’s body and Kingdom resident.
2. The New Christians - Tony Jones
Two words sum up this book for me. Inviting and Hope.
This is a book that is very inviting to anyone who has questions about the bold frontiers of Christianity in America and the world. This is not a harsh book. Tony is gracious in his arguments and easy to engage throughout the work. He is honest when it comes to past criticisms of Emergent and even includes a fairly even handed early history of the friendship. Incidentally if anyone was skeptical about that word choice (friendship) to describe emergent, I think TNC does a great job of laying bare just how much this really has grown out of friendships. And it continues to evolve new kinships and conversations. Discussions with Jewish communities who also find themselves in this emerging landscape gush with grace and honesty.
The New Christians helps us to understand that we can’t pigeonhole emerging into a Christian phenomenon. This is just one part of a world wide shift. We can either embrace the changes and live fully into this moment God has given us, or we can continue to recede into our caves of comfort and modernity. One thing is clear, the God’s world will not stick around to wait for you.
I really appreciated the final chapters where Tony engages with a variety of emerging communities and developing philosophies (wikichurch). The beautiful messiness of these communities really draws me. These communities are nobody’s attempts to be trendy or relevant, they are just the only way we know how to do things. Sitting in church structures that were normal for our great grandparents just doesn’t make sense anymore. This is the Hope. God is not done yet. See, he is doing a new thing. Even now it springs up. Can’t you see it? Our hope is fully in him as we march on into the frontiers of now.
Man, now that was meandering…
3. What is the What - Dave Eggers
I don’t know how this book pulls it off! And I don’t know how I’ll explain that exclamation without giving away too much of the story!
One day, around 10 years of age, I was deep in my own dreamland as usual. I miss-judged the edges of my bed and summersaulted right out into open bedroom air and landed squarely on my upper back. I felt that horrible woosh as the last pockets of air jumped from my lungs and I wheezed and cried feebly for them to come back inside. This book is that experience, but repeated every 10 minutes for 350 pages.
The plight of the Lost Boys of Sudan make me wonder if I will ever experience life. How could I really know what a good day is when I have been able to avoid seeing my friends snatched away in the jaws of lions. Or had to walk past children barely old enough for school as their life leaked away from starvation. Reality is too real. My selfishness inside wishes this book was not around to confront my fat belly and overextended credit.
It seems that great stories of life aren’t read so much as they read us.
4. The Shack - William P. Young
A book that opens up a possibility of what it means to claim you can say anything of substance about what God does or doesn’t do. Secondarily this book imagines possible dance steps of a God who is Three in One (Father, Son, Gardener). William Young seems to have provoked the wrath of all those critics who just can’t stay away from their keyboard long enough to wait for Brian McLaren’s next book. Personally, I loved it. This book claims nothing about truth, but rather dreams a dream. I haven’t studied trinitarian thought enough to say anything about the theology in this novel. So I will end here. It didn’t change my life as some have said, but I won’t deny the tears on my cheek near the end. Good stuff.
