A New Kind of Christian

One of the more interesting books I have read is Brian McClaren's A New Kind of Christian. It is sure to make most Christians reflect on the pressent state of the church, and where God may be leading us.Starting with the introduction, the reader realizes that A New Kind of Christian is not the run-of-the-mill Christian book. Author McLaren, an evangelical pastor, tells a story and uses his narrative to convey his ideas and opinions.

But let us look at another famous Christian storyteller: our Lord Jesus. The Lord often told stories to convey the truths he was teaching his followers. We call them parables. Are we to say that he didn't have an agenda? Of course he had a plan: he came to seek and save the lost.

Jesus effectively used narratives to force his listeners to grapple with the issue at hand. But a lot of time, even his closest disciples could not understand what he was talking about. In those cases, Jesus would stop and explain his point for them.

The main characters of the book are Dan Poole and Neil Everett Oliver
In order to understand the story, we must start with the characters. McLaren's story centers around an Evangelical pastor, Dan Poole, who is becoming disillusioned with his church, his ministry, and even the gospel. The narrative picks up when he meets Dr. Neil Everett Oliver, a high school science teacher who seems to understand what he is going through.

On one level the relationship between Poole and Oliver can be understood as something of an allegory. Pastor Dan represents today's disaffected evangelical church and Dr. Oliver, who insists on being called Neo (the Greek prefix for new), is none-too-subtly cast as a prophet for a new, postmodern Christianity.

Through this allegorical subtext and the conversations these two characters share, McLaren articulates a revolutionary vision of how the Church should accommodate itself to the changes going on in the culture.

The setting of the book is the dawn of a new age in the church. Neo leads Pastor Dan into an understanding of postmodernity. His first objective is to prove that such an age exists, that Christendom, the age in which the society at large, and institutions like government, supported the church, is over.

So McLaren has Neo, a history buff, present a Cliff's Notes version of history; explaining that the era of modernity is coming to a close and postmodernity is dawning. Neo claims that the year 2000 AD is a pivotal turning point just like 1500 AD. Appropriating the consensus that 1500 marked a shift from Medieval times to the Modern era, McLaren wants the reader to believe that finally, in the year 2000, the stars have aligned for the birth of a new era.

For both 1500 and 2000, seven categories of crisis are listed: a new communication technology, a new scientific worldview, a new intellectual elite, a new transportation technology that "shrinks" the globe, the transition of economic systems, a new military technology, and a revolutionary religious movement.

McLaren points to the "emerging church" movement of today,forwarding the ministry of Jesus in new and different ways,as the people of God in a post-Christendom context, as a new kind of reformation, producing a more enlightened, empowered Christian. There is a lot to think about in this book. Give it a read sometime.