If I were to have written the book of Colossians Remixed, I would have given the subtitle as “Speaking the Language of Postmodern People.” I initially thought this was going to be a type of commentary on the book of Colossians, but the authors expand the book to be much more. Yes, they cover what the gist of Colossians is about, but more importantly, they use the book as a backdrop to illustrate the tension between the absolute claims that are often made in biblical texts, and postmodern thought that tends to eschew absolutism in any form.

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One of the subtitles of this book is “A Master Teacher Offers A New Model For Authentic Teaching and Learning,” and I think it’s quite accurate.

Screenshot from the cover

To Know As We Are Known is written by Parker J. Palmer, who won the 1993 award for “Outstanding Service to Higher Education,” and is a sought after speaker in secular and religious communities. Now that I’ve set some pretty high expectations for you, let me address why this book, and his teaching method, is quite revolutionary.

He essentially uses the discipleship model of Jesus and later apostles as a framework for how to engage your students and teach. The three metaphors, he says, are “the study of sacred texts, the practice of prayer and contemplation, and the gathered life of the community itself” (p. 17). We’ll come back to what these mean for the classroom in a few moments.

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Every year Nelson Searcy releases a list of the top books he’s read in the year. Like I’ve said before, he’s a prolific reader, reading about 200 books per year, which is a lot.

Here they are:

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Our world is filled with pages of books devoted to addressing issues of church growth, discipleship, and conversion. And though it seems that there are more resources then ever before to promote spiritual growth and discipleship, many have wondered (myself included), if people are actually being transformed and changed on a deep level.

What The Book Is About

It’s within this context that Alan Kreider, in his book “The Change Of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom” seeks to go back in history to examine how exactly people were converted, initiated, and baptized. He does this by examining the writings of many of those that were converted and baptized.

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I just finished reading another book by Alan Roxburgh, Missional Map-Making: Skills For Leading In Time of Transition (affiliate link).

What The Book Is About:

The central premise of this book is that you can’t lead in the same way as before, because we’re living in drastically different times. In the past, and mostly still today, pastors lead based upon a very modernistic framework. It’s an understanding that, if we just know what the problem is, we can figure out the solution. He says, “This longing for absolute clarity reveals just how much the church has been shaped by modernity. Modernity is all about control, clarity, and certainty” (p. 24).

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I just finished reading an interesting article that Mark Driscoll wrote called Navigating the Emerging Church Highway. It’s an interesting critique and analysis of the emerging church movement. From his perspective he divides this movement into four main theological “lanes.”

1. Emerging Evangelicals. Those in this lane will tweak things like worship style or preaching in order to seem more relevant. They won’t be very invested in “social justice” type issues.

2. House Church Evangelicals. In this lane are Christians who believe that the house church is the best way to reach people. In this lane are those such as George Barna, Neil Cole, and Shane Clairborne. He mentions that a common critique of this movement is that they’re filled with disgruntled Christians.

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In this video I take 5 minutes to give a book review on “Introducing the Missional Church” (affiliate link) by Alan Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren.

Thoughts? What do you think of the concept of the western world becoming the mission field? Accurate?