Donald Miller – Blue Like Jazz

A friend of mine said I needed to read Blue Like Jazz. My young colleague often hypes things to the maximum, so I put off reading the book. Then I noticed the buzz in other circles, so I relented and wished I had been moved sooner. Donald Miller brings a winsome wit to the page and challenges current conventional categories … is he evangelical, post-modern, left coast, etc. … it doesn't matter.

Miller writes a string of essays that recount a journey of resolution.

I never like jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theatre in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxaphone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. Is as if they are showing the way.

I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened (page ix).

What a journey you take with Miller. He reveals his heart in so many dramatic ways. He also challenges us to reevaluate our assumptions. Take this quote on things he hates about churches:

First: I felt like people were trying to sell me Jesus. I was a salesman for a while, and we were taught that you were supposed to point out the benefits of a product when you are selling it. That is how I felt about some of the preachers I heard speak. They were always pointing out the benefits of Christian faith. That rubbed me wrong. It's not that there are not benefits, there are, but did they have to talk about spirituality like it's a vacuum cleaner. I never felt like Jesus was a product. I wanted Him to be a person. Not only that, but they were always pointing out how great the particular church was. The bulletin read like a brochure for Amway. They were always saying how life-changing some conference was going to be. Life-changing? What does that mean? It sounded very suspicious. I wish they would just tell it to me straight rather than trying to sell me on everything. I felt like I got bombarded with commercials all week and then I went to church and got even more.

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Timothy Tyson – Blood Done Sign My Name

In Blood Done Sign My Name the death of Henry Marrow is conveyed to the ten-year old Timothy Tyson with the words "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a n*****." Timothy Tyson tells his first-hand experience of the story of the murder of this African-American
Vietnam veteran in the late spring of 1970 in Oxford, North Carolina. Tyson tells us what happens as the small town deals with the murder, the marches, the bombings, the trial, and the acquittal of those who killed Henry Marrow. As an eight year old growing up in the state capitol of Raleigh I was unaware of what was going on just an hour north of my universe in Granville county. Later, my first appointment as a pastor was to two United Methodist Churches about ten miles from Oxford. David Graybeal taught me at Drew University that a pastor has to "pay attention to the community." I wish I had Tyson's book in hand as I cared for God's people who lived along the Vance-Granville county line.

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Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christian

Link: The Christian Century Magazine.

Every recent book review loves to quote Brian McLaren ‘s definition of his theological leanings as a “missional evangelical post/protestant liberal/conservative mystical/poetic biblical charismatic/contemplative fundamentalist/calvinist anabaptist/anglican methodist catholic green incarnational depressed-yet-hopeful emergent unfinished CHRISTIAN.” Take a moment to get acquainted with this voice … Brian has a depth of compassion and maturity that reflects his pastoral heart.

"New kind of Christian: Brian McLaren’s Emergent Voice" by Jason Byassee, The Christian Century (November 30, 2004).

Brian McLaren’s two most important books—A New Kind of Christian and the recent A Generous Orthodoxy—both open by raising the specter of an evangelical pastor leaving the ministry or the church altogether. The fictional lead character in New Kind is poised to abandon his ministry until a wise new friend initiates him into the ways of postmodern Christianity, rehabilitating his ministry and life. Orthodoxy reaches out to the disaffected in first-person plural: “So many of us have come close to withdrawing from the Christian community. It’s not because of Jesus and his good news, but because of frustrations with religious politics, dubious theological propositions, difficulties in interpreting passages of the Bible that seem barbaric, or embarrassments from church history.” Something has to change, or those on the ledge may go ahead and jump.

McLaren wants to make space for someone to be “postconservative.” According to the subtitle of A Generous Orthodoxy, he himself is a “missional evangelical post/protestant liberal/conservative mystical/poetic biblical charismatic/contemplative fundamentalist/calvinist anabaptist/anglican methodist catholic green incarnational depressed-yet-hopeful emergent unfinished CHRISTIAN.”

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The Emergent Matrix

Link: The Christian Century Magazine.

I have been paying attention to quiet revolution going on within Western Christianity … especially the next generations (whatever label you want to pin on them). The buzzwords are numerous, the spritual paths often divergent, and the theology is kind of fun. Scott Bader-Save explores the terrain here.

“The Emergent matrix: A new kind of church?” by Scott Bader-Saye, The Christian Century (November 30, 2004).

Last spring the Nashville Convention Center played host to both the National Pastors Convention and the Emergent Convention. While the former was largely geared toward evangelical baby boomers, the latter catered to Gen X and Millennial evangelicals ( and “postevangelicals” ) who are trying to come to grips with postmodernity. Though the two conventions intentionally overlapped, that proximity suggests a closer kinship than may actually exist. Indeed, the professed goal of many in the “Emerging Church” is to embody an alternative to the model of the Willow Creek, seeker-driven church that blankets the contemporary evangelical landscape like kudzu on a southern hillside.

At first glance the differences between the two conventions seemed to be primarily stylistic: the Emergent music was hipper, the videos faster, the clothes trendier, the technology more sophisticated. But for many of the Emergent leaders, the convention’s flashiness did more to confuse than to clarify the nature of the emerging church.

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