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THEY LIKE JESUS NOT THE CHURCH By Dan Kimball

I always feel something of an affinity whenever I read anything by Dan Kimball - though I haven’t actually read much in fairness, only his blog and his contributions in the book Listening to the Beliefs in Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the fact that we both like odd music of similar tastes or that we both like spending time in coffee shops. Either way, I seem to always click with what he is saying.

And so I began They Like Jesus Not the Church. Addressed to church leaders (though obviously useful for all), the concept is that Dan has gone and actually spoken to people who aren’t Christians. And if you learn nothing more then learn that - know who it is you’re trying to share the gospel with! Dan’s purpose was simply to get to know where people are coming from. He found out that a lot of people speak highly of Jesus but speak incredibly negatively of the church. And what follows is, in a way, Dan’s ethnography of the emerging generation (Dan generally only focuses on those in their twenties since they are the ones most lacking in the US church). He explores the way that culture is, including how and why the church has become so ghetto-ised. Then he gets onto the problems that the people he spoke to had with the church.

Here he explores how the church is seen as homophobic, judgemental, organised religion with a political agenda, sexist and other things. In these he shows how and why the church unnecessarily displays these traits on occasions. There is a real challenge to change the way we do things and talk about things so that we don’t unnecessarily put people off the gospel with these barriers that really shouldn’t be there.

Inevitably the book is a little bit americanised, but that shouldn’t be an issue here really. I would say that in the UK we face similar issues to what Dan has said. But he does say throughout the book that we need to do what he did ourselves. We need to get out and talk to people and understand where they are coming from and what their hang-ups are. It’s a real easy to read, easy to understand book, yet I did find it quite challenging, particularly the bit on sexism. I’d definitely recommend it not just for church leaders but others as well.

FAITH OF MY FATHERS By Chris Seay

I’ve read books that involve some sort of conversation before but never anything like this. In short, Chris Seay has sat down with his two brothers, his father, and his grandfather (on his mum’s side) with a tape recorder (well it probably wasn’t tape, I mean what is this, the nineties?!) and he’s transcribed his conversation into a book with introductions, conclusions and explanations written by Chris. But here comes the best bit, in the conversation, there is a photo marking each person’s paragraph but each photo for each paragraph for each person, as far as I can tell, is different! Hey, I notice these little touches!

As you read through the book you really feel like you’re part of the family, you understand the tensions and you feel a part of the jokes. But the basic premise of the book is to talk about ministry, since all are (or have been) in some way involved in full-time ministry. Chris’s grandfather, dad and he are all pastors, his brother, Robbie, is a worship pastor and his other brother, Brian… well I’m not quite sure, something to do with bookings and copiers, but he was a church planter before that. I felt a particular affinity since, like Chris, I am a 3rd generation pastor!

They talk about all sorts in their conversations, and the first six chapters are great where they talk about changing a church, personal life, family life, theology and study thereof including the Bible, and coping with attacks from other people. Some of what is said is quite unique, stuff you might never expect a pastor to face. It then gets a little bit americanised with chapters on politics, social issues, racial issues, though there are some helpful bits in there such as being a pastor as a profession with a pay cheque and the question of how much should you let your tarred person show.

This really is a great read, really helpful and actually really quite enjoyable! I think it’s a must read for any young pastor (though perhaps skim-read the chapters on politics, social and racial issues!) though it’d be a recommended read for any church leader. I’m sure it’d be a help for anyone as well - kind of like a guide to knowing your pastor and the struggles and issues they will face!

Having had Don Carson’s book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, sitting on my shelf for almost a couple of years, and since I started engaging with certain emerging church leaders, and since I have now been referred to as one of the “emerging generation of thinkers in Wales”, I thought I had better get into this critique of the emerging church by the Don of the evangelical world!

Almost immediately, I reacted against the book negatively. The reason being, Don Carson is quite obviously a modernist. Although he’s a very clever bloke and has obviously researched modernism and postmodernism, it didn’t sit well with me as someone who was born into a postmodern world with a naturally postmodern mindset. Don affirms that we can’t know everything omnisciently and goes on to separate postmodernism into two, calling them hard and soft postmodernism. Hard postmodernism, he says, is the rejection of all possibility of absolutes, whereas soft postmodernism he says is where absolutes are accepted although not completely known but when we build on knowledge on knowledge on knowledge, we gradually come closer to a knowledge of the truth without actually knowing the truth. I dunno about you, but to me that sounds like a re-hash of modernism with a slightly more sceptical outlook.

Let me take it further. He uses the age-old modernist argument against postmodernism by highlighting that postmodernism claims there are no absolutes, but that in itself is an absolute. That’s such a modernist argument. It’s like telling an anarchist can’t be an anarchist because anarchy can be defined. Or like saying that the word big, can’t mean something massive because the word itself is physically small (as in it only has 3 letters). Paradoxes exist, get over it!

Since reading the book, I also had a trusted clever bloke tell me that it has been criticised for not having a broad enough view of the emerging church, simply focussing on one or two leaders that he has hang-ups about. On reflection, and looking back over the book, it’s actually quite true. Brian McClaren is very much the main focus of the book, with a little dig at Steve Chalke and one or two others. He’s most probably right to have hang-ups about these two, but if he’s supposed to be critiquing the whole emerging church then you would have thought there’d be a broader sweep of its leaders.

But despite my disagreement with his understanding of postmodernism (even though disagrees with the emerging church’s understanding of postmodernism) and despite my disappointment at the narrow focus of the book, I have to say, it was a helpful book. It does give you a basic understanding of the emerging church and it does affirm at least some of the good points about the emerging church, such as its aim of trying to reach a new emerging culture. It is worth a read if only as a basic introduction, but if you really want to understand the emerging church, then I would say the best way is to read the emerging church’s own material.