The New Christians
So I read through it all last night, up until about five minutes ago. I’ll say that I was rather impressed with it. I just wish I knew how to describe it. Josh (at least I think it was Josh, it may have been Nick but I’m pretty sure it was Josh) of the Nick and Josh podcast said that it was essentially what Emergent will be known for. I’m not doing his statement full justice, you should probably go listen to the podcast, but that was the gist of it.
Anyways, here’s my thoughts.
I’d recommend this book to those wanting to know more about the emergent movement as it describes the movement in enough tangible ideas that those not yet in the conversation can understand. I’d say while not on the theological level of an NT Wright essay (who does reach that level?) Tony brings up some good points, thusly the book would fit in with the collection of any emergent.
Tony does a great job of capturing emergent in a way that describes the similarities yet doesn’t confine any emerging church to anything. There are broad strokes painted on what emergent communities look like with fine details being filled in only on the four emergent churches he profiles at the end of the book. (More on my opinions on this later)
The book is somewhat broken up into three different sections (at least from my perspective). Tony starts off with the cause for the creation (and brief history) of emergent, the steps over to theology, and ends up with the church profiling mentioned above.
Being that my favorite thing of late has been to read theology it was the center chapters that grabbed me the strongest. It’s easy for me to pick a favorite part, there is a brilliant “conversation” between a Biblicist, a character called a brain (essentially a fundamentalist), and an emergent, attempting to recap it here wouldn’t even come close to doing it justice, so I’ll put in a plug and say buy the book.
I’m not sure that the descriptions of the emerging churches quite do the movement justice. I know that some people want to see descriptions of how emergent groups look, but honestly I think that there is entirely more to the movement than described in the four churches Tony looked at.
Like I said- I see the need for this section, but I wish that perhaps a larger grouping could have been shown. Maybe Mars Hill Bible Church in Minnesota isn’t truly considered an emerging church (I haven’t ever heard Bell straight up claim it) but I feel that MHBC would be another face of the actual ecclesiastical face of the Emergent movement. That is really my only caveat with the book.
One thing I want to know more about is the section entitled “Time to Rethink Seminary.” I’m aspiring to go to seminary, like I said before, I love theology and deeply desire to know as many viewpoints on it as possible. I also want to gain a deeper understanding of the historicity of the Biblical narrative. I salivate (sometimes literally… ok not really) when I hear someone with a decent enough grasp of history discussing the Biblical narrative, I want to learn more about it. Seminary seems like a great place to do so, right? You’d think… but Tony, towards the end of the section, talks about New Monastic Communities as places of learning. I want to know more.
Reading: Blue Like Jazz by: Donald Miller
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