Since I was raving this week about the new Diana Butler Bass book, I thought I’d mention a few other new books about the church that I thought might be interesting. One is brand new and looks awesome, another came out a month ago and is unique as a voice of a 20-
something writer and nicely formatted. The third is, well, just listen…
First, there is the brand new Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture by Michael Frost (Hendrickson; $19.95.) Frost was a co-author of the very, very significant The Shaping of Things To Come and the lovely and creative Seeing God in the Ordinary. This may be one of the most important new paperbacks to explore the disillusionment of those who’ve had it with disengaged, boring congregational life and who desire a faith that is edgy, faithful, transformational and attends to the pains of our lives and our world. Trust me, you will be hearing more of this book. Hard-hitting, to say the least.
Dear Church: Letters From a Disillusioned Generation Sarah Cunningham (Zondervan; $12.99) I will admit that these letters are not the finest of brillant literary gold. They are interesting, honest, packed with good stories and solid sociological stuff. Each “letter” is a candid heart-cry from this twenty-something, asking the church to be what it ought to be. What is really helpful are the take home points at the end of each chapter and the helpful discusion quesitons, making this useful for a twenty-something study group or an any-age book club who cares about the fact that most churches have simply lost most of this age group. Does anybody care? If so, at least consider reading this book. Or give it to your pastor.
The Dust off Their Feet: Lessons From the First Churh Chris Seay, Brian McLaren and friends (Nelson; $9.99) Perhaps you have heard that a gang of mostly emergent voices— McLaren, Seay, Chuck Smith, Jr., Andrew Jones, and others writers like Phyllis Tickle, Lauren Winner and Bible scholars such as Darrel Bock and Peter Davids are doing a creative, multi-
faceted Bible translation called The Voice. This is their version of the Book of Acts. Along with the fresh translation there is some art, poetry and punchy commentary, even some case-studies of congregations trying to live out the narrative of Acts. Who thought that the First Church in Acts is actually the original Emerging Church? Ha! Dr. Luke gets powerfully updated here, and before the Greek language purists complain, I’m told that they do a good job. It sure looks cool. The first volume in The Voice project came out a while back and is a nicely produced hardback telling the story of the passion of Holy Week (called The Last Eyewitness.) This one is trim-sized paperback and well worth passin’ around.
Please visit the great project website at www.hearthevoice.com
Have you heard about the alt-folk albums they are doing, too? The first one was selected Psalms and we’ve got it; the next—-amazing!—will take the texts from Handel’s Messiah and put them to new contemporary tunes. How great is that?! (I’ll blog about that when it comes.) Performing artists such as Derek Webb, Waterdeep, Lori & Don Chafer, Jill Phillips, Jamie Smith, Sandra McCraken… Here is a good review of the first one.

Is Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith by Diana Butler Bass (Harper SanFransico; $23.95) the book of the year? Some surely think so, and we are very excited about it, as I posted earlier this week. As always, Diana is a gracious writer, an astute observer, and a faithful Christian servant, helping us all along the journey of faith as she explains the best practices of those vibrant mainline churches that she visited. It is quite a road-trip, a pilgrimage, and it is so well-written. I’ve got a few qualms here and there, some beefs I may write more about later. But, know this: it is among the best books I’ve read all year, and very important, interesting, and helpful.
Here are the chapter titles from Part II, which she calls “Ten Signposts of Renewal.” (Her description of why signposts, a playful comparison of driving by map and intuition and real-time looking around rather than MapQuest is clever and insightful.) So here they are, signposts for the journey:
Hospitality
Discernment
Healing
Contemplation
Testimony
Diversity
Justice
Worship
Reflection
Beauty
Know any churches that embody some of these practices as they form a counter-cultural spirituality for the sake of the world? Are they modeled after mega-churches? Did they get that way from strategic planning sessions and church growth seminars? Do they have strictly conservative theology? I didn’t think so. Ms Bass is on to something, here, debunking the myth that only evangelical churches are growing, and inviting us to serious reflection on what it means to come home to authentic community in a vibrant mainline church.
It really may be the book of the year…
See the last blog post for the 25% off BookNotes Blog Special discount deal. Call us soon.
For a great link to the research project site that Bass worked for, go here (The Project on Congregations of Intentional Practice.)

Before telling you about this thrilling and important new book by Diana Butler Bass, I should take this opportunity to publically thank my friends and hosts at Derry Presbyterian Church in Hershey, PA for offering such hospitality and interest during my lectures there this past weekend. As you may have seen from the previous blog posting, I gave a series of talks on contemporary culture, the art of Christian discernment, and how our Presbyterian and Reformed tradition can fund the project of a uniquely Christian discernment of the ethos of modern culture. This was me speaking in the broadest of terms about a wholistic, Biblical worldview, the call to think in ways which honor Christ’s Lordship, the dangers of dualism and gnosticism and cultural accomodation, the excitement of church ministry that equips lay folk to live out their faith in robust and coherent ways in the various social spheres and aspects of their lives. I told stories about those who are transforming the culture; some frustrating ones of those who are not. From worldviewish books like Transforming Vision and Heaven Is Not My Home to daily spirituality like Practicing the Presence of God; from books on vocation like Os Guinness’s The Call to guides to civility in the public square like Rich Mouw’s wonderful Uncommon Decency; from books on work to books on the arts, books on urban & suburban ways of being to books on the spirituality of the ordinary, we recommended resources all weekend long to the gathered community of learners and at their Sunday morning Book Fair. Thanks to all that came (including old friends) and to those who helped with food and books and details. At least one participant blogged a bit about my teaching, and it is more generous than I deserve. Still, you can check it out, and see the other very good stuff there, too, penned by Brian Rice, a local pastor, good friend, long-time H&M customer and leader in mentoring young pastors in missional settings.
Derry seemed to take well my passionate call to be more intentionally Reformed and more seriously engaged in cultural criticism. Of course they were open because, well, they are involved in just this interface of reading the Word and reading the world. They are a theologically rich, if moderate, mainline church with tons of energy and class. With the good weekend with these folks in my heart, it is a perfect time to celebrate this long-awaited, well-written and thoughtful book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, a book that, like some at Derry (it seems) articulates an experience of the faith that is something other than the typical one in recent press reports. That it, it is neither politically conservative nor mega-church evangelical, yet is commited to serious thinking, mature theology, caring community, and devout discipleship. This tells the tale that many of us know to be true–the one that the typical media report rarely gets right, namely, that not all mainline churches are sloppy or dying.
Bass’s description of the best practices of vibrant mainline congregations is fantastic and fascinating; Derry could even be one of the congregations that Ms Bass talks about here. I will blog and review this more later, but for now, know that her research has taken her to churches all over the theological and geographic spectrum and she is happy to announce that the much-reported death of the mainline church is, like Mark Twain’s death, seriously exxagerated. In …For the Rest of Us she describes those kind of things that she sees bringing renewal to fairly ordinary, often somewhat left-of-center, deeply spiritual mainline parishes. She does her “sociology of congregations” work in ways that are memoiristic and delightfully explained. It makes for a wonderfully engaging read.
You may know that I loved Diana’s award-winning memoir, Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community and raved about her powerful little book about undue patriotism in church in her Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith & Citizenship. Her more academic report of robust progressive churches, published by the Alban Institute, is called Practicing Congregations: Imagining a New Old Church. She then quickly edited a fabulous collection of stories about these churches called From Nomads to Pilgrims: Stories of Practicing Congregations. All of these are splendid, and this new one is no exception.