Chuck's Column - 05/25/08

Brian McLaren, a progressive evangelical, has written a wonderfully challenging new book tilted: Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope. He writes, "As a follower of God in the way of Jesus, I've been involved in a profoundly interesting and enjoyable conversation for the last ten years or so. It's a conversation about what it mean to be a "new kind of Christian"--not an angry and reactionary fundamentalist, not a stuffy traditionalist, not a blasé nominalist, not a wishy-washy liberal, not a New Age religious hipster, not a crusading religious imperialist, and not an overly enthused Bible-waving fanatic--but something fresh and authentic and challenging and adventurous. . . . Part of what it means to be 'a new kind of Christian' is to discover or rediscover what the essential message of Jesus is about . . . more and more of us are realizing something our best theologians have been saying for quite a while: Jesus' message is not actually about escaping this troubled world for heaven's blissful shores, as is probably assumed, but instead is about God's will being done on this troubled earth as it is heaven. So people interested in being a new kind of Christian will inevitably begin to care more and more about this world, and they'll want to better understand its most significant problems . . ."

McLaren addresses what he considers to be four major crises. The prosperity crisis involves "environmental breakdown caused by our unsustainable global economy, an economy that fails to respect environmental limits even as it succeeds in producing great wealth for about one-third of the world's population." The equity crisis involves "the growing gap between the ultra-rich and the extremely poor, which prompts the poor majority to envy, resent, and even hate the rich minority--which in turn elicits fear and anger in the rich." The security crisis is "the danger of cataclysmic war arising from the intensifying resentment and fear among various groups at opposite ends of the economic spectrum." The spirituality crisis is "the failure of the world's religions, especially its two largest religions, to provide a framing story of healing or reducing the previous crisis."

McLaren describes "a framing story" as "a story that gives people direction, values, vision, and inspiration by providing a framework for their lives. It tells them who they are, where they come from, where they are, what's going on, where things are going, and what they should do."

According to McLaren an adequate framing story for addressing these major crises is to be found in the Jesus of the Gospels and Jesus' vision of the kingdom of God. He says, "The popular and domesticated Jesus, who has become little more than a chrome-plated hood ornament on the guzzling Hummer of Western civilization, can thus be replaced with a more radical, saving, and I believe, real Jesus." His presentation of Jesus is very similar to what I have been teaching and preaching about Jesus over the last few years.

This is a great book and I recommend it highly.

I will be out of the pulpit two Sundays during my spiritual pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Charles White will be preaching on Sunday, June 1. That Sunday (Family Sunday) we will have a combined service beginning at 10:30 (no early morning worship). On June 8 Lisa will be preaching in the early service and Alan Redditt will be speaking in the 10:30 service. Alan is from North Caroline and is being considered for senior pastor of Harrodsburg Baptist Church. The pastoral search committee from Harrodsburg will be present that Sunday to hear Alan; please make them feel welcome.

Servants together,
Chuck