adam moore | blog

I recently had the opportunity to read Brian McLaren’s new book, “A New Kind of Christianity.” As I’ve posted before, the book addresses the following questions that McLaren believes are shaping the future of the faith today:

1. The Narrative Question: What Is the Overarching Storyline of the Bible?
2. The Authority Question: How Should the Bible Be Understood?
3. The God Question: Is God Violent?
4. The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus and Why is He Important?
5. The Gospel Question: What Is the Gospel?
6. The Church Question: What Do We Do About the Church?
7. The Sex Question: Can We Find a Way to Address Sexuality Without Fighting About It?
8. The Future Question: Can We Find a Better Way of View the Future?
9. The Pluralism Question: How Should Followers of Jesus Relate to People of Other Religions?
10. The What Do We Do Now Question: How Can We Translate Our Quest into Action?

This book, along with “Everything Must Change,” is clearly the culmination of McLaren’s previous books. Whether you like it or not—and it appears there are quite a few who don’t—this is where McLaren has ended up. I appreciated that McLaren does really lay it out in this book. He pretty much says where he stands on these questions right now. And as always, he does it in a gracious manner.

So here’s the deal, I’m not really going to write a proper review of this book. All in all, I didn’t find the book to be particularly new. It’s a good book and I can recommend it, but primarily for those who are really struggling with the questions listed above, and are looking for an entry point into a conversation around those questions. I’ve thought about these questions a lot. But for whatever reason, I’m not feeling the need to think about these questions very much right now. Maybe I’m just taking a break. Or maybe I have it all figured out.

What I most appreciated about this book is that it brought me back to McLaren. I just can’t say enough positive things about this man. I want to be just a little like him. He really cares about these questions and he really cares about helping people to consider these questions, even if they disagree with him. I think there is so much to learn from McLaren as a person - his commitment to people, to the church, to Christianity, to the good of the world are evident in all he does. I can’t praise him enough. I hope that in reading this book some of him has rubbed off on me.