The world is changing rapidly. Postmodern thinking is increasing in the west and the East is becoming part of the Global community. Many in the Churches of God General Conference are interested in what church will look like as fresh expressions in the 21st century. This blog has been encouraged by the CGGC but in no way reflects the official thinking of the denomination. It is a place for free flow of thought and conversation.
People in the Emerging Church are voracious readers. To scope out the emerging question in the CGGC, whether you consider yourself emerging or not, tell us what you are currently reading, what book you really loved in the last year, and what book has stood as a life changer for you.
posted by Brian at 8:10 AM
5 Comments:
I'll start...
Reading right now: Soul Talk by Larry Crabb and The Canon of Scripture by FF Bruce.
Meaningful In the Last Year: The Story We Find Ourselves In by Brian McLaren, The Present Future by Reggie McNeal
Life Changing: SoulTsunami by Leonard Sweet
Reading right now: Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller.
Meaningful in the last year: A New Kind of Christian & The Story We Find Ourselves In by McLaren; Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller; The Calvary Road by Roy Hession; The Present Future by Reggie McNeal;
Life Changing: um... all of them.
Reading right now: Bill Easum and Dave Travis's Beyond the Box and various fiction by Albert Camus
Last few weeks: Mission Mover by Tom Bandy, Put On Your Oxygen Mask First by Easum
Recent Meaningful reads: After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, the New Kind of Christian trilogy by Brian McLaren, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll
Not worth the time it took: Reclaiming the Center by Millard Erickson, etc.
WAYNE BOYER MENTIONED THAT Dan Horwedel, Fairview (MW) was really touched by Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz.
FYI, This book is our "unofficial" book of the year at Winebrenner Theological Seminary. We've featured select portions of it at our Theological Summit last August, and will probably use bits of it again at our January 10 Summit. The theme of that event is something like 'Connecting the Church to the Mission of God.'
We're also trying to get Peacock lined up to speak and perform (he's a musician) at WTS.
I think the key thing with Peacock is his engaging ability to communicate what is otherwise a very difficult concept for many modernists in the church (i.e., Boomers, Church-Growth types, etc.)--that concept being the need to live "into" the ENTIRE story of God: Creation-Fall-Redemption-New Creation. Emergents like Peacock, McLaren, et al. are keen to point to how little we draw from Creation theology, as well as a fully biblical eschatology (as opposed to the narrower version of 'Left Behind'). Its like Creation and New Creation are mere bookends to the redemptive 'project' of Jesus Christ. John Wesley, for one, would be horrified.
Peacock is definitely out of that box... and so is the church he portrays in the book-- a church truly engaged in transforming culture as part of the reconciling mission of Jesus Christ.
Our summit text is Col. 1:20-25, by the way. Its all there, folks--the WHOLE story.
I recently finished Blue Like Jazz, and found sever4al of Don Millers comments very insightful. His comments regarding the special forces soldier who sat down with the people who they came to liberate, in order to identify with them before informing them that they were free to leave. This identification before information should be a lesson for all who desire to share the Gospel so that others can really hear us.
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