Brian McLaren’s new book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Change and Revolution of Hope, is coming out in October. He’s provided a few samples from the book on YouTube.
The first video comes from the introduction. Be aware that the last 50 seconds of the video allow you time to reflect on what you’ve just heard…
A reading from chapter 24, reflecting on materialistic culture and the pressure to keep up with the latest.
An explanation of the title of the new book…
Brian talks about some of the examples of deep shift he’s been looking for…
From Brian McLaren’s Deep Shift site, he explains the background to the book and the speaking tour he’s doing around its publication…
We Are In Deep Shift.
A time of transition, rethinking, re-imagining, and re-envisioning. A time for asking new questions
and seeking answers that are both new and old, fresh and seasoned, surprising and familiar.
What does it mean, in today’s world, to be a follower of God in the way of Jesus?
What does it mean to be a faith community engaged in the holistic, integral mission of God in our world today?
How do we, as individuals and faith communities, respond faithfully to the crises facing our world?
What is our duty to God, ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our enemies, and our planet in light of Jesus’ radical message of the kingdom of God?
How can we engage in personal formation and theological reformulation for global transformation?
Brian talks about the trap many worship leaders find themselves in, trying to serve the needs of sophisticated consumers of worship products and prefabricated worship experiences.
He concludes that there’s a difference between propaganda and art. Art can be about telling the truth - even if it’s not pretty. Being honest about the ugliness of life can be a beautiful thing. But trying to make everything look pretty makes it look cheap.
I agree. But the most difficult art is supporting people in the transition from the safety of the ‘worship industry’ culture to the sometimes threatening environment of honest worship.
Today I caught the last day of Brian McLaren’s appearances in Melbourne.
This morning and this afternoon were at Tabor College. Brian started the day by giving us a basic introduction to the three worlds we find co-existing and struggling with one another: premodernism, modernism and post modernism. It was helpful to reflect on the challenge the conservative Islamic nations and religious institutions see in the dominant modernist culture as seen in the United States. After lunch we explored the implications of moving into a post-colonial paradigm. He explored with us stories of Christian collusion in colonialism in Rwanda and in the United States. Our challenge is not to lay blame with previous generations, but to learn from their experience so that we can honestly and courageously work differently now.
This evening was hosted by Forge Missional Training Network at Retro Cafe in Brunswick St. Brian talked about the challenge of rethinking the heart of the gospel around the life and teaching of Jesus. What would happen if we stopped interpreting the ‘kingdom of God’ solely in terms of life after death and began to cooperate with God’s dream or economy right here on Earth?
It was good to see Forge mending the bridges that were damaged last year during the release of Don Carson’s book, “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church’. Brian’s returning next year to speak at one of the Forge summits. It would be good to see if we can arrange a gathering in Queensland.
Zadok Perspectives is the quarterly journal of the Zadok Institute of Christianity and Society, based in Sydney. The most recent issue, Summer 2005, features articles on the Emerging Church, from an Australian perspective.
Stephen Said provides an overview of the ‘emerging church’ concept. In his article, “What’s in a name”, he suggests a few emphases associated with ‘emerging church’:
1. Attractional verus incarnational
2. Unleashing Christ from modern culture
3. The Kingdom of God
4. Sacred and secular
5. Alternative worship
6. Social justice
Barb Daws, SU Victoria’s Children and Families Mission Coordinator and part of the Solace Community, writes on “Children and the emerging church”. She remarks on the resonance between emerging church values and the vision painted in John Westerhoff’s 1980 book, “Will Our Children Have Faith?”.
Adriahna Jensen, 16 year old poet and missionary in Melbourne, writes on her experience of participation in an experimental church in Pomona.
Matthew Stone, missionary-apologist in Sydney, tells a ‘fish out of water’ story in his article, “Don’t Circumcise the Gentiles”. He writes about his own experience of developing Christian faith as a seeker out of the New Age Movement. He gives examples of modern-day circumcision of the Post-modern Gentiles - communication gaps over the use of religious language, focus on clothing style, neglect of the needs of vegetarians, demonising anything associated with the New Age. Matthew holds together a warning against cultural imperialism and a plea for Christian unity.
Mick Pope, review editor of Zadok, talks with Brian McLaren, in “Dialogue with the Jesus Movement”. Brian has some interesting things to say about an emerging global postcolonial theology.
Dan McCredden, lawyer and congregational leader with Northern Community Church of Christ in Melbourne, asks, “Can an existing denominational church be emerging?”
John Jensen, missional church planter in Melbourne, tells the story of “The Kids of the Black Hole”. At the age of 20 he invited his brothers’ punk friends to move into their apartment.
Anne Wilkinson-Hayes, regional minister with the Baptist Union of Victoria, reflects on the place of the small missional church in the Baptist context. She asks if if ‘new missional churches’ are provieding a more authentic, gospel-centred approach to living our the faith in our society today. She highlights, from her experience in the UK, the small fragile groups that are not trendy, not led by people who publish every waking thought on the internet. They’re largely led by women. She says that if groups can move from the rhetoric and become truly engaged in their communities, then the “Emperor is fully dressed.” If groups settle for more interesting worship in a less formal setting, then the Emperor of Emerging Church is prancing around in embarssing nakedness.
Book reviews in this issue of Zadok include Rhys Bezzant, church historian at Ridley College, on The Da Vinci Code, Dan McCredden on Steve Taylor’s “The Out of Bounds Church”, Doug Hynd, lecturer at St Mark’s Institute of Theology in Canberra, reviewing Stuart Murray’s “Post Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World”, and Darren Cronshaw on “Bridging Divided Worlds: Generational Cultures in Congregations“, by Jackson Carroll & Wade Clark Roof.
Darren Cronshaw, adjunct lecturer at Bible College of Victoria and Whitley College, has written an introductory reading guide to the emerging church phenomenon, covering 50 books, a number of internet links and blogs.
OK. I’ve managed to track down some details on Brian McLaren’s visit to Sydney and Melbourne, courtesy of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. You can now download the brochure from the Mission Consultants site at UCA Queensland Synod. Or click on the brochure picture below to download the pdf file.
Friday 17 February
6:30 - 10:30pm: Exploring A Generous Orthodoxy
Dinner and conversation. (Numbers limited) Cost: $60
Saturday 18 February
9:00 am � 5.30pm: Exploring A New Kind of Christian(ity)
Cost: $100 (includes all meals)
Special rate for both events $150
(students and concession card holders $125)
VENUE: Ryde-Eastwood Rugby Club, 117 Ryedale Rd, West Ryde.
Please note: Standard club dress standards will apply.
MELBOURNE The Melbourne Events are being presented by Urban Seed Church.
Tuesday 21 February
2.30-4pm: Tabor College Seminar 1.
To Register phone Tabor College, 03 9844 8800. $10
Wednesday 22 February
9.30am -1pm: Rev Up: Whitley Baptist College.
To Register contact Simone Rickerby at Whitley College, 03 9340 8100
Cost $25
Thursday 23 February
10.30am-12pm: Tabor College Seminar 2.
To Register PH: 03 9844 8800 Cost: $10
2.30pm-4pm: Tabor College Seminar 3.
To Register PH: 03 9844 8800 Cost: $10
7.30pm: Postcards From the Edge.
New Zealand
Brian will be in Auckland on February 24. Rich Johnson has his ear to the ground there. Steve Taylor, Emergent Kiwi, has posted a pdf file with details on Brian’s visit to Christchurch on March 4-5.
I note on Brian McLaren’s blog that he’s going to be in Australia and New Zealand between February 15 and March 6 next year.
February 15 - Sydney, Australia
February 20 - Melbourne, Australia
February 24 - Auckland, New Zealand
March 2 - Christchurch, New Zealand
March 6 - Sydney, Australia
It looks as though there’s a bit of movement…
Sydney
Brian will be speaking at an all day conference for the Converse Network, supported by the NSW Board of Mission, Uniting Church in Australia, on Saturday 18th Feb at Ryde Eastwood Leagues Club. In addition, he will speak at a dinner for denominational leaders on Friday 17th February.
Melbourne
Brian will also be visiting Melbourne and speaking at events on Tues 21st, Wed 22nd and Thurs 23rd February. Anyone know where?
Brian McLaren’s written the cover article for the latest edition of Sojourners, on building bridges between extremes of liberalism and conservatism. I like what he has to say. He starts by drawing our attention to the commitment Jesus made to entering the culture he lived in. Likewise he looks at Paul’s call to ‘be all things to all kinds of people’, despite our saying that ‘we can’t be all things to all people’.
McLaren’s hunch is that there are four bridges we have to deal with in our hyper-polarized world today:
1. Religious Right and Secular Left.
“On the one side we have people for whom the good news of Jesus and the policies of George W. Bush are bonded with super glue. On the other side we have people who believe that all religion is superstitious mush and wish we would just dispense with the whole business once and for all and trust science and government instead.”
2. Religious Right and Religious Left.
“More and more supposedly “secular Left” folk are coming out of the closet as people of faith. For them, being anti-war is more important than being anti-abortion for religious reasons, and for them, some form of recognition for homosexual couples is a moral issue based in faith. They want to argue these issues not only on the basis of politics and sociology, but also on the basis of the Bible and theology.”
3. Secular Right and Religious Left.
“I suspect that hiding behind some religious conservatives are some secular conservatives who are manipulating their religious colleagues for a secular, cynical, ideological conservatism. These are the people who have (in the worst sense of the word) a relativist-postmodern conservative ideology, best articulated in Ron Suskind’s article “Without a Doubt,” published in The New York Times Magazine last October. These conservative ideologues are happy for religious conservatives to win support for their policies, but in the end it’s ideology, not theology, that guides them. Ironically, they have less in common theologically with those they have the most in common with ideologically, and vice versa.”
4. Secular Right and Secular Left.
“In spite of the widespread assumption that religion is the new politics, there still are secular forces on both sides for whom a thoughtful Christian (or generically spiritual) voice is seen as stupid for actually believing in such unscientific and impractical things as God, hope, forgiveness, sacrifice, and prayer.”
McLaren says that there is a rising ‘purple peoplehood’ out there - people who don’t want to be defined as red or blue, but have elements of both, and for whom faith speaks to both abortion and war, both sexuality and ecology, both family values and fair, respectful treatment for gay people - then we will need to learn new ways of communication. He finishes with suggestions on how to engage in conversation that takes this complexity seriously.
Over at PostKiwi’s Generations in Conversation I’ve reflected on Don Carson and Brian McLaren and their varying interpretation of the word ‘post’, as in ‘post modern’. I argue that ‘post’ does indeed refer to coming after in terms of time or space. But ‘post’ does not necessarily mean discontinuity. In some cases trends are accentuated rather than left behind. I like the phrase, “This, and more”. It’s what I live by. I am never ultimately defined by any category. I am liberal, and more. I work in literary culture, and more. I am modern, and more. I am Christian, and more.
At PostKiwi I’ve put in themes and variations I used at a multi-media conference two years ago. They’re for post apocalyptic, post bellum, post charismatic, post christendom, post classical, post coital, post colonial, post communion, post diem, post diluvial, post doctoral, post echo, post embryonic, post entry, post Evangelical, and post existence.
Here’s Post Liberal to Post Mortem. What do you think? What would you add to these definitions?
Post Liberal school of theology founded in the 1970s by Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, affirmed the decisive significance and the integrity of the biblical narrative.
Post Literary Communication no longer dominated by written text.
Post Lingual Post-lingual hearing impairment is a hearing impairment where hearing loss develops due to disease or trauma after the acquisition of speech and language, usually after the age of six.
Postliminous
Postliminium
The return of a person to his/her own country and privileges - especially a person who has been away in exile. (liminal refers to threshold).
Postlude
(Music) a final or concluding piece or movement2 a voluntary played at the end of a Church service. (As in ‘after game’.)
Postmenopausal of or occurring in the time following menopause.
Post Menstrual
of or occurring in the time following menstruation.
Post Meridian
after noon
in the afternoon or evening
Post Meridiem
ADVERB & ADJECTIVE:abbr. P.M. or p.m. or p.m. After noon. Used chiefly in the abbreviated form to specify the hour: 10:30 p.m.; a p.m. appointment.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin post mer diem : post, after + mer diem, accusative of mer di s, midday.
Post Millennialism
The doctrine that Jesus’s Second Coming will follow the millennium.
Post Mistress
After the Affair
Post-modernism of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes.
Post Mortem
1 occurring after death
2 analysis or study of a recently completed event
It’s been a fascinating couple of days in the Emerging Church international movement. Forge Missional Training Network distanced themselves from Emerging Church movements in the United States and UK in their response to DA Carson’s “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church”.
Tuesday July 19
The pdf file, created at 6.52 am and modified 4.53 pm, titled: Don Carson and the Australian Missional Church Movement: A Forge response. The nine-page paper’s aim was to help frame responses to the various reactions brought about by Don Carson’s critique of Emergent and how it might have an effect of Forge’s ministry and that of the emerging missional church in Australia which Forge serves.
Wednesday July 20
The pdf file was posted, 11.05 pm, at Andrew Hamilton’s site, Backyard Missionary
Thursday July 21
received a copy of the file by Forge Queensland, 10.37 am.
4.26 pm Andrew Jones posts at Tall Skinny Kiwi
11.28 pm Tony Jones, Emergent National Co-ordinator expresses concern in comments at Backyard Missionary and Tall Skinny Kiwi. Alan Hirsch responds.
Friday July 22
1.16 Steve McCoy of Reformisssionary posts on Drawing Lines. and again at Emerging SBC Leaders.
2.09 am Stephen Shields gives his commentary at Emergesque.
9.20 am Jordon Cooper points out that despite advanced technology, we do a lousy job of talking to each other. What might have happened if Carson had sat down and talked with McLaren? What might Frost and Hirsch’s paper looked like if they’d included McLaren’s input? He’s since deleted the post.
9.25 am Andrew Hamilton places an apology from Alan Hirsch and withdraws the pdf.
9.43 am Subversive Influence post
4.30 pm I finally get to read the document I’d printed out earlier. I post something here and then discover the conversation’s happened already. I delete the post when I get home later in the evening.
In the meantime, I finally manage to read Brian McLaren’s “The Last Word and the Word After That”, and start on Don Carson’s “Becoming Conversant”. Reviews coming when I’m finished.
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
Friday 17 February
February 15 - Sydney, Australia
Brian McLaren’s written the cover article for the latest edition of 
