Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: A Review
April 1, 2007
Thanks to my friends at Zondervan, I was able to read Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches and will be reflecting on it throughout the rest of this week. Tallskinnykiwi has a great review of it here, in case you’re interested.
Overall, I thought the book was okay. To be honest, I feel like I’ve read so many Emergent-ish books that sometimes I feel like I’m not really reading anything much that’s new. But I do enjoy the kind of conversation-oriented books that Emergent supports, and this one is a good example of the way in which there can be dialogue within a book, between the authors. I will focus on one chapter each day this week - some thoughts, a few quotes. I’m going to be traveling and my computer is being sent to Apple for some tender-loving-care this week, so I probably won’t be around to follow the conversations. But I hope you enjoy some thoughts on Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches.
Tags: Atonement, Emergent, Listening-to-the-Beliefs-of-Emerging-Churches, Scripture, Theology
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Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:55 am
I’m in the process of reading this book. I’ve really not read any emergent books (that I know of). I got this book along with “How Not to Speak of God” and Brian McLaren’s “I am a Missional, Emergent, Progressive, One Eyed, One Horned, Flying….” So far I’m not really thrilled with what I’ve read in them. Either I’ve been emergent longer than I think or I’m not reading the right books, because a lot of this doesn’t seem new to me. I agree with a lot of it, except for the first chapter by the Seattle guy in LttBoEC.
I’m looking forward to the Manifesto book, because what I am looking for is some descriptions of various emerging churches in different contexts. So far what I am finding is theological musings that don’t seem to me to be that new or different from a lot of recent theology.
If anyone has some good books top recommend, I’d appreciate it.
April 2nd, 2007 at 4:51 am
Yippee. Mark Driscoll Monday!!! Maybe it’ll catch on. I’ll already give away my favorite part. . .the quantities of footnotes.
Dan Kimball: 3
Doug Paggitt: 10
Karen Ward: 6
Mark Driscoll: 176
With all due respect, there seems to be a fine line between being a thoroughly documented Biblical literalist and being a pretentious. . .
April 2nd, 2007 at 7:32 am
Shawn…I think “How (Not) to Speak of God” is really one of the best Emergent books out there. Sorry if you don’t like that one - but I think it’s the perfect mix of theological and philosophical background and grounding for the movement, along with some good examples of then how that looks practically.
Rollins is great.
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:15 am
Man, those Apples are getting more like Italian sports cars every day. People love them, but they spend half their lives in the shop