Categories
Books Women in Ministry

Eldredge’s Captivating Distorts Christian Femininity So Read These Books Instead

See the excellent article just released on the web today by
Christianity Today senior associate editor Agnieszka
Tennant
entitled:

What (Not All)
Women Want

The finicky femininity of Captivating
by John and Stasi Eldredge.Captivating_2

This is the most popular non-fiction book on the Christian Bestsellers List,
September 2006
.  This is also a hugely popular book on Christian college campuses like Taylor University where I teach.

Tennant responds personally and thoughtfully to the
stereotypical view of Christian femininity advocated by the authors.  I
hope many students will read this article and begin to think more critically
about the book’s content.

I never like to be just negative without providing an
alternative so here are . . .

Some books we should be buying for the women in our lives.

On becoming a thoughtful Christian female theologian:

Confessions
of a Beginning Theologian

by Elouise
Renich Fraser

On femininity by Van Leeuwen of Eastern University:

Gender
& Grace: Love Work & Parenting in a Changing World

by Mary
Stewart Van Leeuwen

On the story of a woman with traditional views being
inspired by the Bible:

When
Life and Beliefs Collide

by Carolyn
Custis James

Lost
Women of the Bible: Finding Strength & Significance through Their Stories

by Carolyn
Custis James

On the journey of a woman searching the Scriptures:

Equal
to Serve: Women and Men Working Together Revealing the Gospel

by Gretchen
Gaebelein Hull

On the biblical issues:

Discovering
Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy

by Ronald
W. Pierce
(Editor), Rebecca
Merrill Groothuis
(Editor), Gordon
D. Fee
(Editor)

To be fair, see also the critique of this book at:

Journal
of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Responds to Discovering Biblical Equality
(IVP,2004)

For parents by McMinn of Wheaton College:

Growing
Strong Daughters: Encouraging Girls to Become All They’re Meant to Be

by Lisa
Graham McMinn

On scholarship and women:

Living
on the Boundaries: Evangelical Women, Feminism And the Theological Academy

by Nicola
Hoggard Creegan
, Christine
D. Pohl

On struggles as a woman:

Redeeming
Eve: Finding Hope Beyond the Struggles of Life

by Heather
P. Webb

On femininity and spirituality:

Eve’s
Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body

by Lilian
Calles Barger

Categories
Books

Good Books on Christian Community

Students and faculty at Taylor University, an evangelical Christian college, are beginning to think about returning to school. One of my students, S., is involved in leadership on campus. She emailed me to ask if I knew of any good resources on koinonia (Greek for "fellowship") or Christian community to read before returning to Taylor. I have put below her email and my response. Perhaps you have some other ideas. Feel free to comment.Dscn2038_2

Andy…

I hope summer is going well for you and Amy and little Ryan . . . Summer is winding down fast, though, so I’m starting to think more about school stuff.

[I’m in leadership at Taylor this year] and I thought koinonia would be a great theme to focus on. The Acts 2 style church is really already set up for us at Taylor. Being the master researcher you are, I wondered if you had any article, sermon, book suggestions on this topic? I want to explore it more before the school year.

My friends and I love your blog and read it often! Tell Amy we say hi!

Have a great week Andy!

S.

Dear S.,

Delightful to hear from you.

You have asked about resources on koinonia and what else to read on Christian community before returning this fall.

I have attached a little Libronix stuff on a Microsoft Word document.

Download Koinonia.doc

First I have put all the occurrences of the word in the New Testament. You could look those up and see what you learn. See my Basic Bible Study Links guide here.

Then I have pasted the BAGD lexicon definition of Koinonia. (It is sort of hard to read because of all the footnotes below. Just ignore those).

You could also get a good commentary on any of the passages to study more. See here for some good commentary suggestions.

Tell me more what you want and I will suggest some other things. Do you want stuff on church? Or habits of the church? Or fellowship and relationships?

My guess is that you are wanting to articulate more clearly and more biblically what it means to care for one another in Christian community.

I would suggest looking at these books in this order:

Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them (Hardcover)
by John Ortberg.  Zondervan (March 1, 2003)

Amy’s reading it right now and loving it. He is readable and fun. He is great to listen to on audio as well.

The Safest Place On Earth (Hardcover)
by Larry Crabb.  W Publishing Group (September 10, 1999)

You may have read this for Personal Foundations class. I really was helped by Crabb’s books to get a realistic and sober and practical view on community.

Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community (Paperback)
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  HarperSanFrancisco (October 25, 1978)

This is another one that you may have read in Personal Foundations class. It is a classic and I was helped by it to think practically, theologically and less idealistically about community.

I hope this is helpful.

I think I’ll put this response on the blog tonight to see if we can get any more comments.

Grace and peace,

andy

Categories
Books Emerging Church

Gibbs and Bolger’s Emerging Churches Focuses Almost Exclusively On Small House Churches

Gibbs, Eddie and Ryan K. Bolger. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.

Disclaimer: I liked the book and I recommend that everyone read it. It articulates the ideals of the Emerging Church movement very well and gives practical examples of each ideal. Bravo! Now for the critique . . . which perhaps is no surprise considering the fuzzy nature of the movement . . . I didn’t like how they limited the definition of "Emerging Churches."

It seems almost everyone agrees that Gibbs and Bolger have written the most responsible, comprehensive and current portrait of the Emerging Church movement. Their methodology seemed sound. They interviewed 50 emerging church leaders and tried to collate those responses into a report from the frontlines. I thoroughly appreciated the work and plan on writing more about its positive points. But today I have a warning for the reader: Gibbs and Bolger basically just focus on small house churches. Though there are large church pastors, traditional church pastors, youth pastors, and Next-Gen pastors “in the conversation” at any emergent conference or emerging church website, you will not hear from them in this book.

Gibbs and Bolger have made the crucial decision to exclude Gen-X megachurches and Gen-X/young adult services from their portrait of the emerging church. They admit that these forms of church are often what people think of when they use the term emerging churches. But apparently Gibbs and Bolger have decided to try to change that. They write, “Popularly, the term emerging church has been applied to high-profile, youth-oriented congregations that have gained attention on account of their rapid numerical growth; their ability to attract (or retain) twentysomethings; their contemporary worship, which draws from popular musical styles; and their ability to promote themselves to the Christian subculture through websites and by word of mouth” (41). Though most people consider these youthful expressions of church part of the emerging church movement, Gibbs and Bolger dismiss these expressions as hopelessly “modern.” They write, “Taking postmodernity seriously requires that all church practices come into question. In contrast, Gen-X churches involve simply changes in strategy from what came before (e.g., adding stories, video, raw music, vulnerable preaching, art, and candles). However, to be missional is to go way beyond strategy. It is to look for church practices that can be embodied within a particular culture. In other words, theologies given birth within modernity will not transfer to postmodern cultures” (34). I think they are wrong to dismiss the possibility that Gen-X churches are missional. (Popularized by Darrell Guder’s The Missional Church, this term simply means a fresh application of the techniques of missiology to Western culture. There is no reason only church plants or house churches can do this. In fact, the book is written by Guder who is a PCUSA person with the intention to shake up the mainline churches especially). They are also naïve to assume that “emerging churches” can possibly remove themselves from the influence of modernity. Emerging churches will still likely use modern inventions such as printed Bibles, automobiles, public transit, computers, phones, etc.

Because of their definition, it seemed to me that the description by Gibbs and Bolger of “emerging churches” sounds a lot like “house churches” to me. A small group of 10-100 people come together, discuss some Scripture, care for one another, stress participation in worship, eat a meal together, share leadership, do good to those in the community, and do friendship evangelism. They write, “When emerging churches meet in a large congregational setting, they widen their community ties and build on the intimacy developed in their small groups. These networks of small groups may gather together on a monthly basis. However, the large group meeting is of secondary importance” (112). There are a lot of church leaders which are not specifically house church-oriented that have been highly involved in discussing how to minister to postmoderns.

It seems to me most of the leaders of the emerging church they interviewed would consider the Gen-X church leaders part of the “emerging church conversation.” Listen to these definitions.

a. Jonny Baker: “Church, as we have inherited it, is no longer working for vast groups of people. The world has changed so much. So I think the term emerging church is nothing more than a way of expressing that we need new forms of church that relate to culture” (41).

b. Ben Edson: “So emerging church for me is quite simply a church that
is rooted in the emerging context and is exploring worship, mission, and
community within that context” (41-42).

c. Karen Ward: what is “coming to the surface that is new, unformed,
still happening, emerging” (42).

d. Mark Scandrette: “The emerging church is a quest for a more
integrated and whole life of faith. There is a bit of theological
questioning going on, focusing more on kingdom theology, the inner life,
friendship/community, justice, earth keeping, inclusivity, and inspirational
leadership. In addition, the arts are in a renaissance, as are the
classical spiritual disciplines. Overall, it is a quest for a holistic
spirituality” (42).

e. Doug Pagitt: “He sees three types of responses to the current
context: (1) a return to the Reformation (e.g., Mars Hill in Seattle); (2) deep
systemic changes, but Christianity and the church are still in the center and
theological changes are not needed (e.g., University Baptist in Waco and Mosaic
in Los Angeles); and (3) seeing the church as not necessarily the center of
God’s intentions. God is working in the world, and the church has the
option to join God or not. The third approach focuses more on the kingdom
than on the church, and it reflects the perspective of Solomon’s Porch in
Minneapolis and characterizes what Pagitt would classify as emerging”
(42).

Gibbs and Bolger essentially decide to accept Pagitt’s most exclusive third approach as their working definition and ignore the more broader definitions articulated by Baker, Edson, Ward and Scandrette. (It should also be said that the third approach is not articulated well in the quote above. How is the church not the center of God’s intentions? I think what they are trying to say is that these churches have a fresh awareness of the importance of a kingdom perspective but this is overstated and unclear in the quote).

I understand that Gibbs and Bolger could not profile everyone who is part of the emerging church conversation. They have to draw the line somewhere. So they have decided to argue that the emerging church is very different from other expressions of church. But it seems to me their definition ends up excluding some of the leading voices in the movement: Brian McLaren, Chris Seay, Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, and Erwin McManus. McLaren, indisputably one of the leaders of the movement, is rarely quoted in the book and his church is never mentioned as an example of an emerging church. Rob Bell, who is not explicitly part of the movement but was featured in the Christianity Today article by Andy Crouch on the emerging church and is extremely influential among young church leaders, is never mentioned. Chris Seay, who invited Tony Jones (coordinator of Emergent) to speak at the anniversary of his church, is dismissed. The Younger Evangelicals by Robert Webber, The Church on the Other Side by Brian McLaren, and The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball have other weaknesses but they do not exclude these other voices. They include the fact that many pastors are trying to help traditional, seeker and modern churches become more adept at ministering in a postmodern context. For Gibbs and Bolger, if you haven’t planted it from scratch, then it doesn’t count as an “emerging church.” I would say there is a range of emerging churches who are involved in the conversation. I’m interested in what all of them have to say. However, Gibbs and Bolger limit themselves to just numbers 8-9.

1. Mosaic (Erwin McManus)
2. Mars Hill Church (Mark Driscoll)
3. Traditional churches that are being led by young pastors who are trying to adapt them to reach a postmodern culture
4. Gen-X/young adult services
5. Gen-X Churches
6. Mars Hill Bible Church (Rob Bell)
7. Cedar Ridge Community Church (Brian McLaren)
8. Solomon’s Porch (Doug Pagitt)
9. House churches / post-modern church plants

To be fair, Gibbs and Bolger intend to include the overhaul of traditional churches and also large churches in their analysis. They write, “Most of these emerging churches are new, while others represent the rejuvenation of long-standing congregations and ancient traditions. Some of these frontline churches are large, the biggest attracting crowds of several hundreds or even thousands, but the majority are small, consisting of independent groups of less than thirty or clusters of house groups totally less than one hundred” (29). But in the end I had difficulty identifying any churches that have “thousands” in attendance or are the result of a traditional church being adapted. They also try to distinguish these emergent churches from “house churches” (60). “Unlike the stereotypical house church, emerging churches do not exist in isolation but establish networks for mutual support and encouragement” (113). Still I think the churches they describe are very similar to house churches. I think it would have been more fruitful to pick out how all sorts of churches are trying to reach postmoderns.