McLaren Books

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Permalink Reply by Larry on May 8, 2009 at 4:02pm

Mike,

Sorry it took me so long to see your post.

I just found my way back here to Christarchy.

You are going through a lonely time. I've read a bit but not ll the things that it seems you have.

To try to make a long story short...

About three and a half years ago I was disenchanted in my relationships with other Christians. I was reading everything I had time to read about home church. While researching home church I frequently stumbled into information about something called the "emergent church". I started reading as much as I had time and energy to read about the emergent church.

I started looking for a local contact to put a face on this emergent church. I found a church plant that claimed to be into this emergent church thing. However, when I got there I found that only the pastors were interested and the parishioners were mostly what I might call "traditional reformed Christians".

After three years of trying to go deeper with anyone other than the, very busy, pastors, I stumbled across an opportunity to pay for some spiritual direction. I was looking at a house for sale and I found myself talking to the seller about the journey of spiritual growth. She told me that she was trained as a spiritual director and lent me a copy of the book *The Critical Journey* by Janet Hagberg. After reading the book I called the person who lent me the book and asked her if she would be my spiritual director. Now I have had three sessions with my new spiritual director.

During the last session with my spiritual director (Her intials are LEF) we talked a bit about how lonely it is when you are looking for people to talk to about the exciting things you are discovering in your spiritual journey and no one else can relate. We talked about how this is "a wilderness thing" but it is still "a god thing".

I am hoping there is at least one person who would want to accompany me via the internet in this spiritual journey. I'd like to discuss ideas that my "traditional reformed" friends think are bordering on heretical.

You would think that with all the people monitoring the internet their would be more links between people who are like-minded but instead I see lots of arguements.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on May 11, 2009 at 7:21am

Hey Larry,

Thanks for replying. I thought you disappeared. Since my last post I've found a church that shares many of my views and have read a few more books.
Can you describe what you mean by a traditional reformed Christian? That sounds like another modern dead end to fall into. The church we're attending is very organic and currently in a time of upheaval. God has given me this infinite amount of hope and I feel led to keep exploring ideas from other parts of the country to share with the people around me that want to escape the typical right wing appalchia mindset.
Lately I read Everything Must Change then its predicessor The Secret Message of Jesus both by McLaren. All good, but the chapter in EMC about the parallels between the Roman Empire and our excessively confindent American Empire have altered my worldview forever.

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Permalink Reply by Larry on May 11, 2009 at 9:02am

I grew up in the Reformed Church in America. It is predominant Dutch church brought over from the Netherlands to "New Amsterdam" and everything related. Rip Van Winkel was probably a member. It's very Calvinistic.

I'm not Dutch. The Reformed church just happened to be the closest church to where my parents settled down. We were surrounded by Dutchmen.

Back to the history. In 1857 or so the Christian Reformed Church split off from the Reformed Church in America over things like sending kids to public school (the Christan Reformed are against it) and singing songs that aren't from the psalms (the Christian Reformed were against it bach then). So now we have two Dutch Reformed traditions as hard to tell apart as identical twins, only close friends, neighbors and family members can tell them apart without a name-badge.

Predestination and the sovereingty of God are the big things for the Calvinists, including the Dutch Reformed and the Presbyterians. I don't buy it. They have this TULIP thing (5 point Tulip and 4 point TULIP). Funny thing is, growing up in the Reformed Church in America, I never heard of the TULIP thing. That came much later.

Anyway, after being away from the Dutch Reformed crowd for most of the time since high school I got sucked back into on orbit by two things. First, our oldest daughter decided to go to one of the Reformed Church in America colleges, though she'd only set foot in a Reformed Church once. She just liked the school.

Whle at college our daughter kept telling us about this rival college in the next town over called Dordt College. I thought that was a weird name. What do you call some one who goes to a college called Dordt? A Dordt Dork?

Anyway, this church plant I found when I searched for "emergent" in my town (as I mentioned in the original post above) turned out to be a church plant of the Christian Reformed Church. There was already a Reformed Church in America in this town but that, along with several Presbyterian churches, could not possibly be enough predestination, Calvinist doctrine for a town this size so we must have a church plant.

So I got hooked up with the "emergent" Christian Reformed Church (IS THAT AN OXYMORON?) and discovered, like I said in the original post, only the pastors were interested in emergent thought. Granted, the rest of the congregation are a bit interested in Missional, but not so much emergent thought. At least they don't seem interested in talking about it or reading anything.

It was here in this Christian Reformed church plant that I learned about TULIP and that Dordt is a place where there was this big ecclesiastical thing where the Armenians (a doctrinal label I'd never heard of before I started hanging out with these Christian Reformed folks) were put in their place by the Dutch Reformed Calvinist powers. I found out that the rival school to my daughters in the next town over was Christan Reformed while her school was Reformed Church in America.

So I go to this CHRISTIAN REFORMED, emergent church and get 95% calvinism and 5% emergent. I was floored when one of the leadership group didn't know who Brian McLaren is.

My wish list of books to read is much longer than the list I have read. I just finished Blue Like Jazz (about time, eh?). I've read Brian McLaren's trilogy A New Kind of Christian, The Story We Find Ourselves In and The Last Word and the Word after That (I didn't get this one finished. I borrow from the library frequently and have to get the books back before I finish them.) I started both Everything Must Change and The Secret Message of Jesus. I get frustrated because most of these books I feel like I need apply somehow and can't seem to move on until I have internalized them. I read Shane Clairborne's Irresistible Revolution. A good one that I found kind just because of the title is The Gospel According to Larry. Oh, yeah, I also read The Shack.

A book that kinda changed me was The Street Lawyer by John Grisham.

I also read stuff on the internet and Christianity Today online.

My theology is a combination of Jeff VanVonderen, David W. Dyer and Greg Boyd.

I better get to work. Thanks for replying.

Larry

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Permalink Reply by Mike on May 11, 2009 at 9:31am

i'm working too so this is my last for today.

I'm in a personal struggle also with how to apply EMC and SMJ.

Now that our main conversation leader needs time to regroup for personal rasons I'm feeling led to take a turn on the stool up front. I'm looking for an outline to get me started...Mclaren has some online.
My wish list is to finally get to Blue Like Jazz (i'm reading "Jazz Notes" that I found at Ollie's Discount Outlet. Also to complete the trilogy with the Last Word...
Have you read any of Boyd's books? I've been ready to read The Myth of a Christian Nation for two years now but other books keep falling into my lap ahead of it.

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Permalink Reply by Larry on May 11, 2009 at 9:59am

I've only read things on line by Greg Boyd to learn about Open Future theology. I'm interested in his thoughts that help me clear my head of all this predestination stuff. Given time I will get to Myth of a Christan Nation (I am such an optimist).

I got started on this because our son struggles with "the god who is not God" described to him by the theologians. He has trouble with a God who controls the future like a director controls a movie. So do I.

My theology says God has a destination and he will get there but how he gets there depends on the actions and interactions of all of us.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on June 11, 2009 at 8:16am

Hey Larry,

Blue Like Jazz describes an view of the kingdom in a way my friends could finally connect with. i'm about 2/3 of the way through it. Pray that i can put action to my excitement about sharing the good news.

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Permalink Reply by Larry on June 11, 2009 at 9:55am

I suspect you might have been affected to one degree or aonther by the current economic situation. I have also been affected. I had a rather significant pay cut back in the early part of 2009 and now I will only be working three days a week for the job that gives me a paycheck every other week.

But God is good and I have at least one new internet project to work on that I believe will eventually be a source of income. I have been working on another internet project in my spare time through all of 2008 and now through half of 2009. That project was financed through a grant.

I also plan to write and learn how to get paid for it. If you were to offer any tips, I would be very thankful.

You might guess that when I able to think about what I want to think about I am usually thinking about the relationships between aspects of religion, culture and society. That is the area in which I believe I would do my best writing. I've got some fiction projects started in this area but I believe I should concentrate for now on short stories for magazines rather that try to jump right into novel-length stuff.

Reading Blue Like Jazz and such gets me into the mind set I think could help me do my best writing.

I have been doing some networking I hope will connect my passion with someone else’s need.

As far as my technical qualifications are concerned, I'd be best qualified to connect up with someone who has a business running on an IBM AS/400, IBM System i, or IBM iSeries. They're all the same machine, only the name has changed. I've been in either development, programming support or technical support for that system since about 1984.

Grace and Peace,

Larry

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Permalink Reply by Mike on June 11, 2009 at 11:05am

Actually i'm in a position that hasn't been affected much. My job is to keep a system of natural gas burning engines and turbines operating as efficiently and cleanly as possible. I'm not sure what tips i would be able to give you, but I'll keep my eyes open. Feel free to ask specific questions as well. I do have great interest in religion, culture, and society

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