You get up on Sunday and do what!? or the Church Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the sixth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Church Question: What do we do about the church?This is the first of five questions on how McLaren sees his vision of A New Kind of Christianity working itself out practically in the real world. McLaren paints a sad and realistic picture of the church. He says that owe are “divided, immature, confused about our purpose and identity, in danger of fragmenting our way into nonexistence, all at once bending over backwards and straddling fences, stiff of neck and soft of spine, and otherwise twisted and contorted in compromise. We have financial problems, sexual controversies, pride problems, schism threats, excesses...
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Extra, Extra, Good News!!! or the Gospel Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the fifth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Gospel Question: What is the GospelThe question of the gospel is critical. It is critical because in his letter to the Galatians, Paul says it is. McLaren specifically sets out to refute the following line of reasoning: I had always assumed that “kingdom of God” meant “kingdom of heaven, ” which meant “going to heaven after you die,” which required believing the message of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which I understood to teach a theory of atonement called “penal substitution,” which was the basis for a formula for forgiveness of original sin called “justification by grace through faith.” (138) This description...
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Who’s the long haired freak? or The Jesus Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the fourth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus and why is he important?In this the fourth question, the Jesus question, McLaren seeks to find an authentic representation of who Jesus is in the Scriptures. The issue is particularly stated: Among those who become more self-aware about the danger of distortion, and understandable fear arises: if all of us (not just “all of them”) are tempted to make Jesus in our own image, then we should be extremely cautious about compromising, letting Jesus be reimaged according to contemporary tastes…By holding a presumptive hostitlity to new views of Jesus, which may indeed reflect contemporary biases, we...
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Who’s the Big Guy Upstairs? or The God Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the third post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The God question: Is God violent? God is a tribalistic, violent, cosmic child abuser. Do you believe that? This is the question that McLaren undertakes in the third part of A New Kind of Christianity. He says that as you read the Bible we bump into God doing or at least sanctioning genocide and violence. This seems to contradict the picture that we find in the life and person of Jesus. This leads to the natural question, “how can this be?”Beginning with this question, McLaren, begins to apply to theological questions his understanding of the overarching storyline of the Bible and...
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Baseball. Redemption, and a Hospital Room (re-post from May 29,2009)

by The RevNo Comments
Today I have a little procedure to deal with some scar tissue in my esophagus. It is no big deal. Last summer though our family dealt with a big deal medically. I won’t be writing a new post today but I thought that this was a timely one to re-post (it just so happens that the first Tigers telecast of the season is today). This post is from May 29, 2009.A week ago yesterday my bride received a phone call. It was one of those calls that you dread. Her dad, Dennis, was in the hospital due to a stroke. It was “minor” but for a man like Dennis and for a family like ours it is major. Dennis is an athlete (at times becoming a scratch golfer!). Dennis is the life of the party. Dennis is the picture of the entrepreneurial spirit. Dennis is the kind of man that other men want to be. This is seen in the...
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Who’s the Boss? or The Authority Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the second post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Authority Question: How should the Bible be understood?As with the narrative question, McLaren, sets up two opposing views of how to understand the Bible. The first is what he calls the “Constitutional View (78).” He sees this view as the cause for three critical problems he highlights regarding our use and understanding of the Bible: The scientific mess (68) The ethical mess (68) The peace mess (69) We come out on the “wrong side” of these issues over and over again because we have missed the very nature of the Bible. McLaren argues his case by using the issue of slavery and comparing how...
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What’s the Story Jack? or The Narrative Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the first of ten posts on Brian McLaren’s, “A New Kind of Christianity”. As we begin this little quest of ours I want you to know that I am not commenting on the introductory chapters and just diving into the “red meat”, so to speak. Also, I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.Without further ado… The Narrative Question: What is the overarching storyline of the Bible? For us to make sense of any book we must come to some conclusion about what is its main idea. We do this so that we can make interpretive decisions regarding a text’s finer details. To answer this question McLaren contrasts two ways of understanding the overarching storyline. The first way is that of the “Six Line Diagram”:This...
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Leave your church? Yeah, he really said it.

by The RevNo Comments
OK, so before I get into A New Kind of Christianity, I had to write about this. Yesterday I ran across this story (this is a summary and includes some audio) about Glenn Beck thanks to Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed. In a nutshell he is arguing that churches which practice “social” or “economic” justice are covers for communism and nazism. I know, I could not believe it either. I am hoping that there is more to this. I have only the little clip on the link above. I want to believe the best in Mr. Beck, however, it is a bit disheartening when people like him choose to set aside the Bible for their political gains.Jesus cared deeply for the poor, the dispossessed, and the broken. The scriptures are very clear about the role of justice and how it so closely connects to the heart of God. Let us look at but one verse, Micah 6:8: “He has told...
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A New Kind of Christianity

by The RevNo Comments
I have been reading Brian McLaren’s newest book, A New Kind of Christianity. It has totally engaged me. My mind is wrestling through the challenges that he has laid out. I am about half way through the text and I am very frustrated that he end-noted instead of foot-noted, I have a callous now from marking my place at the end-notes (OK not really, but you get my point). I am going to write ten more posts on the book and in each one I am going to interact with the question that McLaren proposes.Here’s your chance to look into the future: What is the overarching story line of the Bible? How should the Bible be understood? Is God violent? Who is Jesus and why is he important? What is the gospel? What do we do about the church? Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it? Can we find a better way of viewing the future? How should the followers of Jesus relate...
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YOUR preacher is DEAD.

by The RevNo Comments
Holograph (left), Tony Morgan (right) Is the title a little extreme? Probably. But, that’s the point. Yesterday Tony Morgan sported some new technology on his website. It’s the same kind of technology that we saw on CNN during the presidential coverage, that’s right, holograms. Tony believes that this technology will be coming down in price such that it will become a regular in churches in the next year.I think that this is a sad commentary on the state of discipleship in the church today. We already have pastors of “multi-site” churches preaching via video screen because they are unwilling or incapable of training others up. This takes it to the next level. I can see the sales pitch coming now, “Imagine having Rob Bell or John Piper preaching at your church EVERY Sunday for the low, low price of…”I am an early adopter of technology. I am also a believer in the necessary availability of the preacher to connect with his...
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