A New Christianity - Ch.3

McLaren writes ch.3 in a confessional mode. Drawing on Puritan pastor John Robinson's certainty that we await more light from God's Word, McLaren finds freedom to confess ecclesiastical missteps.
-"We acknowledge that we have made a mess of what Jesus started."
-"We affirm that we are wrong and Jesus is right."
-"We choose not to defend what we have done and what we have become.
-"We understand that many good Christians will not want to participate in our quest, and we welcome their charitable critique."
-"We acknowledge that we have created many Christianities up to this point, and they call for reassessement and, in many cacses, repentance."
-"We choose to seek a better path into the future than the one we have been on!"
-"We desirre to be born again as disciples of Jesus Christ."
-"We pray that God will create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to the glory of the living God."

These "confessions" and "hopes" for the future of the Christian movement are salutary.I hope we would all embrace them. They seem especially pertinent as we now enter Lent.

I find it interesting that in my own reworking of evangelism appropriate for the 21st century I concluded that a credible witness in our time must also begin with a confession. This seems to me a part of reading accurately the context in which we live. In short, I find ch.3 a quite helpful and genuine beginning on the "quest" Brian sees us needing to take.

My one reservation is the same one I noted in the first post on this book. I do not think the image of a "quest" is bears the "gravitas" needed to galvanize a "new kind of Christianity." Nor do I think it best captures the nature of the movement JEsus started, what I have come to call God's Counter-Revolutionary movement to re-establish God's reign over the world. More on this in later posts.