Believing that the church is called to a deeply felt reconciliation between the races, Anderson and Zuercher strive to understand each other. They hash out their differences, giving voice to feelings most of us have had but would never express out loud. The result is a book that provokes thought, arouses emotion, and ultimately spurs actions, stressing that the most effective way of dealing with the many facets of racial reconciliation is through real and connected friendships.

It’s a great read, slow paced but moving. When I read it I read and listened to the audio version as well. Below is a short version of my on small town experience.

My Gilead was a small town in Florida called Apopka, pop, 2500. Apopka is an Indian word meaning “big potato.” That’s about the only thing there that was big. The town was essentially a block long in a square but not one with a court house sitting in the middle. My mom and dad’s place of business set just one business off the main driving street, Hwy 441 (running north and south). My family owned two businesses, my mom ran the clothing store and my dad, for many years, was the town’s only barber. The town had two brothers at opposite ends of the spectrum: one was mayor, the other was literally the town drunk. The mayor then is still the mayor now (some 53 years). There was only one short period of time that our next door neighbor was mayor (about two years as I remember). We had two “drug stores” only a city block separating them on the main highway. One had a pharmacy the other did not. I worked in the one that did not have a pharmacy during high school. The owners name was Elmer but fondly called “Tug” a nickname given him in his youth because he used to “tug” around (or pull) a wagon all over town. We had what we referred to as the town midget (although never to his face) who was married to the town beauty (drop dead gorgeous or at least to the guys my age, and whose mom could really look like that?).

The days were hot and muggy and the nights weren’t much better. Bugs were always present, everything from flies to mosquitoes to fire flies to cockroaches (palmetto bugs as the rich would call them) that sometimes could be three inches long. Oranges and ferns were the businesses to be in (of course my father never found that out). Orange trees as far as the eyes could see were everywhere. Pulling a tree ripe orange, peeling it and eating it on the spot, nothing better. The sub name of Apopka was: The Fern City and later became known as “The Indoor Foliage Capital of the World.” I didn’t mention that we had two Apopka’s: white town and “colored” town as it was called. (I really remember being told to only drink water at the “white” fountains not the ones marked “colored.” I disobeyed often, just for the hell of it.)

I lived with my parents behind the business they owned for 10 plus years where my backyard was an alley to the main four blocks of the town. We moved in my early teens to a house about four blocks away in the residential area. The school was only a block away from my house during my elementary school days and then the high school moved about a mile away (9 blocks from my new home) where I attended high school.

Everyone knew where the “parkin’ and spoonin’” place in town was. Now there’s a word that has changed its metaphorical meaning.

We had one movie theater that played matinees only on Saturday and Sunday. My family believed, especially my mom, that going to a movie was a sin so it was always a small war to get a quarter to attend a matinee and watch Abbot and Costello along with a five minute serial production in which the protagonist would always be in a “fix” and one had to wait till the next week to see the next in the ongoing story. (This is somewhat like watching the recent Alias TV shows in which Sydney Bristow gets in a fix about every 10 minutes or so and one has to wait for the commercial to see the outcome).

BTW: My mom’s parting shot every Saturday of my life as I wiggled a quarter from her to “go to the matinee” was: “just remember son, if Jesus comes while you are watching the movie, you won’t go to be with him, and you will spend eternity in hell with the devil.”

We had one cemetery in town which was just two blocks from where my family moved. My dad would often report that when he drove by the place it seemed like the “loneliness place in town” and one day he would be there along with others. It’s true, his body and that of my mom, oldest brother, and only sister are there, the latter not 12 feet from the former.

The church we attended was a small Pentecostal church that my mom and dad attended from the time it was organized. (Church of God, Cleveland, TN). I lived in this small environment for the first 19 years of my life before leaving to join the USAF. Later I asked my sister to help me remember who the pastor’s were because I remembered some rapid change during my teens. When she made a list (she was the church piano player for 64 years of her life) there were 20 pastors in the 19 years that I lived there.

So I never really knew a country pastor who got to stay around and care for his flock. For the most part I only remember the “backside” of the pastor as he was leaving, another causality of the next largest midget in town whose wife looked like the south side of a cow walking north.

Because my dad was the only barber, everyone in town knew him and by extension knew me. Ya couldn’t get away with anything, a curse that I am sure now was a blessing. We had great traditions that were passed on from one generation to another. One of the fondest ones was finding an outhouse, hopefully empty, putting in on the backend of a truck on Halloween and hoist it onto the top of the school house, and all that without getting caught by the local police who doubled as KKK members.

I remember the first “white” cafe who hired a “negro” waitress. The next day there was a “red” cross painted on the window. The police did nothing. The owner fired the waitress and things returned to normal or abnormal as the case may be.

So that a bird’s eye view of my Gilead.

Raschke begins with a detailed analysis of the current state of postmodernism and evangelical thought. He provides a background to the controversy, revealing what the term has meant in different contexts and how it relates to contemporary evangelicalism. He describes the development of postmodernism, explores the writings of early postmodernist thinkers, and examines how postmodernist thought has influenced contemporary theology from Derridian deconstruction to Radical Orthodoxy.

Raschke then reveals the opportunities postmodernism brings to Christian faith. He examines how postmodern perspectives bring new meaning to the doctrines of faith alone and sola scriptura, illustrating how these doctrines can be revived by means of postmodern language and philosophy. Raschke goes on to explore how postmodern views of hierarchy and organization could alter the structure of the church toward the Reformation theme of the priesthood of all believers.

The Next Reformation finishes with an analysis of postmodern culture and ministry. Raschke examines postmodern strategies of outreach and evangelism as well as the impact of charismatic renewal on postmodern evangelism. He concludes with a plea for the beginning of a new appreciation of the relationship between faith and philosophy (From Baker).

Endorsements

Sooner or later it was bound to happen: a thoughtful professional philosopher with Christian faith would engage the emerging/postmodern church conversation. The right person for the job, Carl Raschke, has risen to the occasion. Intelligently written for those already knowledgeable and accessible to those needing an introduction, The Next Reformation will become a primary trailhead for thoughtful people who are embarking on the faith journey into postmodernity.”
—Brian McLaren, pastor (crcc.org) and author (anewkindofchristian.com)

Raschke offers a broad overview of the postmodern situation and addresses particular concerns as they relate to the changing context, including ministry and worship in the church. The fact that such proposals come from an acknowledged authority on postmodern thought will make the book attractive to both students and pastors.”
—John R. Franke, Biblical Seminary; coauthor of Beyond Foundationalism

Frost and Hirsch think of the church as incarnational, not attractional. As an incarnational church, it’s main purpose is to “come into the neighborhood” and minister for the sake of the world rather than created a “sacred place” where believers gather to encounter the good news of Jesus.

When I read the following on page 15 “Christendom is not the biblical mode of the church. It was/is merely one way in which the church has conceived of itself.” I thought of the following questions.

• How many of the churches represented in this cohort are more aligned to Christendom (as these authors, and other authors as well, define the concept) than missional?
• How many of the churches represented in this cohort who might be aligned to Christendom think they can be missional in a Christendom skirt? How?
• What do you think “revolution” means to the authors?
• How many buy into the author’s concept of revolution over reorganization?

As one who has a “classic” Pentecostal background (Church of God, Cleveland, TN; Assemblies of God; and Foursquare plus a so called “Third Wave” movement (Vineyard) I often wonder why there is ongoing resistance to the Pentecostal/Charismatic church in USAmerica? While the traditional Pentecostal movements tend to be inbred (opinion), the Vineyard opened up its arms to any Evangelical who wanted to participate before entering into a partnership with a “latter reign” type ministry during its prophetic phase, which made it much more like the classical Pentecostal groups and caused many Evangelicals to view the Vineyard as caught up in a “silliness” itself. During the Vineyards formative days there was an openness to charismatic issues by English speaking Evangelicals who were ripe for a paradigm shift because it didn’t appear to have all the “silliness” of the televangelist. So, what does count for the cultural acceptance of charismatic/Pentecostal issues in the two-thirds world and not so much in the American and English(?) version of the church? What matters of worldview are we still facing?

On page 9 Jenkins says:

In their own way, secular, liberal Americans have distinctly apocalyptic view of the future, while a millenarian expectation of the uprooting of organized religion. At the least, there is a widespread conviction that Christianity cannot survive in anything like its present form

Is this really a “secular, liberal American” view only. It seems that within the church world that there is a growing view that the church must become something other that what she presently is. If apocalyptic can roughly mean “removal of old in favor of new,” a removal of the traditional church forms with something different, then how can one hold in tension the both/and of post Protestantism with the either/or of apocalypticism? Or is it really a “modified” apocalyptic view?

In “Mission Church” (p. 4) Christendom is defined as “the gospel as passed along in the cultural shape of the Western church. Jenkins seems to be saying that the “Next Christendom” will be formed in the South and will not necessarily be Western rational in is focus. I think that would surely “scare the dickens,” as my Southern mama used to say, out of the USAmerica church where we think that we have it “correct.”

In a presentation by Rich Nathan (pastor of Vineyard Columbus, OH) he suggests that in the two-thirds world that the issues that we seem to want to deconstruct like modern/postmodern is not even an issue? Could he be right? [An address delivered to the Vineyard 2003 Leadership Conference pointed out to me by fellow cohortian Jason Clark]. How would that statement reflect on the discussions that we have about postmodern/post protestant deconstruction? Are these global churches in the moving center of the Next Christendom EPIC? because of their openness to being Pneumanauts being blown by the great WindBlower himself? Are we limiting EPIC to some new programization (if there is such a word) within the Western church? Can we be conduits through which EPIC flows to already formed churches as well as newly formed and newly forming communities of faith? This could drive us NUTS! and maybe well should.

The journey of faith is not easy, particularly for those who find themselves inextricably drawn beyond the confines of established religion towards the unknown horizons of Christian belief.

Journeying in Faith is a provocative and moving book exploring the kind of faith that is built up by many church leavers in the dark and lonely places of faith, and how that faith can be nurtured and developed.

Alan Jamieson, author of A Churchless Faith, uses the testimony of those who have experiences of the darkest places of faith and characters from the Bible to provide a light to the path of those who have moved away from the Church, either physically or in heart or mind.

Also written for those who want to provide support and resources to those in the deserts of faith, this book provides insight into how we can embrace an altogether larger vision of God at work in our post-modern, twenty-first century world.

I attended a conference recently and met an author who has moved away from her faith and church. She was an engaging person and her conversation had not a note of bitterness. She simply moved. If this book lives up to its billing it may help those who find it difficult to embrace the Story of God in our time and space. Take a read and tell me what you think about changing one’s life story.

Conversations That Matters

Through our conversations the stories and images of our future emerge, and never has this process been more critical. We now have the capacity, through neglect of the planetary commons on which our lives depend, to make the precious earth, our home., uninhabitable. We now have the capacity, through escalating violence and weapons of mass destruction, to make our precious human species, along with many others, extinct. Yet this is also a moment of opportunity. We are connected as never before in webs of communication and information-sharing through the Internet and other media that make our collection predicament visible on a much larger scale than we could have imagined only a few years ago. And for the first time, we have the capacity for engaging in connected global conversations and action about what is happening and how we choose to respond—conversations that are not under the formal aegis of any one institution, government, or corporation. It is time for us to engage in those conversations more intentionally. Our very survival as a human community, both locally and globally, may rest on our creative responses to the following questions:

• How can we enhance our capacity to talk and think more deeply together about the critical issues facing our communities, our organizations our nations, and our planet?
• How can we access the mutual intelligence and wisdom we need to create innovative paths forward?

What say ye?