Current Reading

I belong to a group of pastors. We meet weekly and talk and pray. We have been together long enough that we can be open, honest and vulnerable with one another. We all are discouraged with the normal church culture. Please understand, we are not discouraged with God, nor the real church, in fact most of us aren't even really discouraged with our own ministries. What bothers us is that there seems to be an over-arching church culture that seems to color the perceptions of what the church should be. This is seen both inside and outside of the church. Of course, inside -- most people think it's alright. Those outside the church don't like what they perceive the church to be. But there are a lot of us (not just our pastor's group) that are not satisfied with this culture. There must be more. The church -- or the perceived church -- seems to be missing it. This leads me to my current reading. The authors of the books that I am reading also share our dissatisfaction.

About two months ago I read Gregory Boyd's "Repenting of Religion". I was really blown away. I couldn't put it down. I found myself saying "yes" on almost every page. Essentially, he states that we are called to love. Original sin has to do with making judgments of others (which is God's prerogative). Our churches have become very judgmental places rather that places of love. Of course this is a generalization -- but there is certainly some truth to this. He backs this up with a lot of scripture. Some of you may think that Boyd is suspect because of his Openness of God Theology, but I don't think this book gets into that. It stands alone. He bases much of his thesis on the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Since Bonhoeffer is one of my favorite theologians, I have started to reread him also.

I came back from the conference on the Holy Spirit in Greenlake Wisconsin to find that my wife had read "The Shack". I told her that I would like to read it. I did. Again, I was blown away. In many ways this novel was continuing what I had already been reading. I know that this book is somewhat controversial, so I will be spending some time in another post to discuss it. "The Shack" led me to Clark Pinnock's "Flame of Love, A Theology of the Holy Spirit". Once again, I find similar themes emerging. He talks of the dance of love within the trinity. I am not quite finished with this -- but will be soon.

Then I registered for Transformation Ministries annual conference and received a gift book in the mail. It was Dan Kimball's "They Like Jesus but not the Church". Here again the theme of church culture missing much of the gospel emerges. Kimball is certainly coming from a different place than Pinnock, than Boyd, than the author of "The Shack", but the theme of love and not judgment is right there.

I think that God is trying to tell me something. I think He is probably trying to tell the wider church something also. In the next few posts, I will try to review each of these books and then summarize what I sense that God may be saying to me. I must emphasize that this is very personal to me and I can't speak for everyone else. Let me know what you think.