Rating: 
Summary: New Wine? New Wineskins?
Review: Although some would question whether there is such a thing as 'postmodernism', many would agree that we are presently in some sort of cultural transition period, or at least our children are, regardless of what label we would put on it. To paraphrase Judges 2:10 (KJV), "there arose another generation after them, who knew not" the Enlightenment or the 'rationalistic' forms of Christianity which came about in opposition to those ways of thinking. As one of the 'younger evangelicals' in the book says, "God has always raised up an effective apologetic for His sovereign plan to save the world through Jesus". The goal for many of these leaders is to rediscover a 'pre-Constantine form of Christian life' so that the new generation may see Jesus in ways that speak more clearly to them. It is another way to take the Gospel to 'the ends of the earth' even if the 'ends' are in Berkeley or Boston or Seattle. This book describes the 'new wineskins' which are arising to 'seek and save' the culturally 'lost'.
Rating: 
Summary: insightful book on post-contemporary christian leadeship
Review: for many years there were only classes to describe christian leaders and churches -- traditional and contemporary. but many began to feel that there was an emerging third category although they couldn't articulate it. webber has done a good job in describing this third category of churches and leaders alongside traditional and contemporary ones. i found his descriptions right on for the most part from my perspective, especially his insights on why many baby busters are opting out of baby boomer congregations with seeker-friendly services -- they find the staged performances too inauthentic, the high-tech equipment too circus-like for their tastes, which favors a more simple and less fancy format coupled with relationally rich environments and live interaction. twenty and thirty somethings want reality-based church over production-quality church. Gen X pastors lead in low key ways, rather than the high profile super-charged ways boomer pastors tend to. webber points this all out and more in his book. excellent description of what is playing out before us all in churches across america. traditional and boomer pastors should read this book to understand why the younger crowd does not respond to their efforts.
Rating:
Summary: an excellent resource
Review: I give this book to anyone who wants to know what the whole emerging church movement is about. Webber does an excellent job of placing emergent Christianity in a historical context with fundamentalism and pragmatic evangelicals (your Willow/Back churches) and shows how each came from the other in succession... and how each is distinctive. Want to know about the practices and beliefs of many in the emerging church? Start here.
Rating:
Summary: Heart Freshly Stirred, But Read With Discernment
Review: I highly recommend "The Younger Evangelicals." Dr. Webber has portrayed a stunning mosaic of what God is freshly stirring in many hearts today. God is moving many with a fresh desire for a church community that knows each other well enough to have authentic relationships. We see ourselves as a people of God's Presence with our corporate life as "mission," something we are and not just something we do. We don't just want to hear the wonderful stories in Scripture, but we want to experience them so that His story intersects our personal stories. We desire to share Jesus with others in our sphere of influence in natural, non-religious ways, living out the Good News and not just verbalizing it. A new leadership is developing with servants becoming participative leaders, a team without any abdication of healthy leadership. Dr. Webber threads this fresh move of God throughout "The Younger Evangelicals" in a way that stirs a, "Yes, Lord!" from within.What concerns me, however, is HOW this mature man of God encourages these younger leaders to find the answer. First, his book seems to imply that the norm today is to leave the established church and start a new church plant from scratch. There's nothing wrong with that as an option, but the existing church also needs these impulses. Many of his arguments describing the established church set up the mega church as the "straw man." The mega church is only one expression of the church, and certainly has built-in problems when the goal is a relational community of believers. Second, candles, incense, icons, silent retreats, etc. are the methods that I see salted throughout the book. Methods could have been communicated in a way that heal the gap with the existing church instead of intensifying it (for instance, use "an intimate devotional time with Jesus" instead of Lectio Divina). I'm concerned that this book may splinter the western church even more by encouraging younger evangelicals to embrace outward methods that isolate them from the present church life. Third, I also believe God is after something much more central and essential than new methods. The Lord of glory wants us to change the way we experience Him and each other. Only out of this radical change in our theology can we discover new, fresh methods (if needed) to experience this new life. I want to commend Dr. Webber for his excellent insight into this fresh move of God and for his heart to follow Him without compromise. But please read "The Younger Evangelicals" with discernment and eat the meat and spit out the bones. Younger evangelicals, please don't separate yourselves from the existing church. We need your energy and fresh way of looking at the Kingdom. Older evangelicals, don't marginalize younger evangelicals because some of the ways in which they express themselves threaten the existing order. Change may be threatening, but it's Kingdom. Younger evangelicals need mature mentors, and mentors need fresh expressions of the life of Jesus to continue to challenge them as lifelong learners. My plea is to dialog and learn from each other because we desperately need one another (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
Rating:
Summary: You need this book if you are over 30
Review: If you are under age 30 stop reading here-and go read something else. However, if you are over 30-especially if you are in my own "boomer" generation, this is probably the most important column I'll write this year. There is a book you need to buy. No, it isn't one of my own books-I don't use the Tuesday Column to promote books-not even my own. I review them sometimes (but that only makes it easier for you not to buy them-since my reviews are pretty complete.) I'm breaking my own rule today-I found a book every person over 30 interested in church ministries need to own. This book is about the twentysomthing crowd Well, not exactly them, but about an emerging movement in the church made up of mostly Twentysomethings. That crowd might not like this book because the book tells us boomers all their secrets. In fact they hate being labeled at all, and hate it doubly when Boomers do it. But since they are no longer reading this and are off reading something else by now, let me tell you over-30 folk why this book is so important. If you are a regular reader of my "Tuesday Columns" you already know I often knock us boomers for our generational arrogance. We think we are so cool, so "contemporary." We think our ways of doing church are so wonderful and we assume we've made something lasting. I often warn us that our churches are headed to becoming "Boomer nursing homes" where we continually congratulate ourselves on how cool we still are, while totally losing the next generations and the world and never noticing! Finally there is a book that explains what is happening in the massive generational shift. So far there have been bits and pieces here and there, but now Robert Webber has put together a book outlining the secrets of this enormous shift in thinking that involves younger people mostly, but many older folk as well. Using the term "Younger Evangelicals" instead of "post modern or some other silly term, he outlines in chapter 1 the recent history of evangelicalism since 1950 in the most concise way I've seen anywhere-take that Martin Marty! That chapter is worth the first ten dollars of the book's ...price tag. But the rest of the book outlines chapter by chapter the immense shifts in the world under our boomer feet. Most boomers reading this book will feel like they are still leading singing in a "praise team" in a church with mauve carpeting while using colorful sponge covers on their individual microphones. Be careful-this book will make you feelout of date out of touch and out of coolness. If you are a "successful pastor" you'll hate it more-because some of what is happening among the next generation are things you spent ten years overthrowing when you were younger. You'll say, "well, this is only a trend among the younger folk-they'll change eventually" (what they said about us!) In this book you'll discover in easy to read format how communication has changed, how the view of history has changed, how propositional theology is in total meltdown, how apologetics has shifted, how ecclesiology has shifted shockingly. And you'll find out how the view of the church as a marketed product has shifted, how the role of the pastor-CEO has become laughable, how youth ministry is switching from parties to prayer, [how] education is changing, the new way to see spiritual formation, how worship leadership has shifted, how art is being renewed, how evangelism is altered, and how activism happens in a new way. Boomers don't have to read this book. We've got our churches going nicely now, we've constructed our cool wraparound-the-stage worship centers and have a good giving base so we can essentially blow of the next generations and the world and happily sing our way into retirement bringing our "sacks of rice on trays" every Sunday. We can survive into retirement singing and preaching to ourselves. A few of our parent's churches did that-they are still around full of "the Greatest generation" wondering what happened in the 1970's that seems to change things. We can do that and survive. But if we are interested in the enormous shifts that are taking place in our children and their friends-and we seriously want to know why they think the way we do church stinks and they feel compelled to plan "authentic churches" then this book gives away their secrets.
Rating:
Summary: You need this book if you are over 30
Review: If you are under age 30 stop reading here-and go read something else. However, if you are over 30-especially if you are in my own "boomer" generation, this is probably the most important column I'll write this year. There is a book you need to buy. No, it isn't one of my own books-I don't use the Tuesday Column to promote books-not even my own. I review them sometimes (but that only makes it easier for you not to buy them-since my reviews are pretty complete.) I'm breaking my own rule today-I found a book every person over 30 interested in church ministries need to own. This book is about the twentysomthing crowd Well, not exactly them, but about an emerging movement in the church made up of mostly Twentysomethings. That crowd might not like this book because the book tells us boomers all their secrets. In fact they hate being labeled at all, and hate it doubly when Boomers do it. But since they are no longer reading this and are off reading something else by now, let me tell you over-30 folk why this book is so important. If you are a regular reader of my "Tuesday Columns" you already know I often knock us boomers for our generational arrogance. We think we are so cool, so "contemporary." We think our ways of doing church are so wonderful and we assume we've made something lasting. I often warn us that our churches are headed to becoming "Boomer nursing homes" where we continually congratulate ourselves on how cool we still are, while totally losing the next generations and the world and never noticing! Finally there is a book that explains what is happening in the massive generational shift. So far there have been bits and pieces here and there, but now Robert Webber has put together a book outlining the secrets of this enormous shift in thinking that involves younger people mostly, but many older folk as well. Using the term "Younger Evangelicals" instead of "post modern or some other silly term, he outlines in chapter 1 the recent history of evangelicalism since 1950 in the most concise way I've seen anywhere-take that Martin Marty! That chapter is worth the first ten dollars of the book's ...price tag. But the rest of the book outlines chapter by chapter the immense shifts in the world under our boomer feet. Most boomers reading this book will feel like they are still leading singing in a "praise team" in a church with mauve carpeting while using colorful sponge covers on their individual microphones. Be careful-this book will make you feelout of date out of touch and out of coolness. If you are a "successful pastor" you'll hate it more-because some of what is happening among the next generation are things you spent ten years overthrowing when you were younger. You'll say, "well, this is only a trend among the younger folk-they'll change eventually" (what they said about us!) In this book you'll discover in easy to read format how communication has changed, how the view of history has changed, how propositional theology is in total meltdown, how apologetics has shifted, how ecclesiology has shifted shockingly. And you'll find out how the view of the church as a marketed product has shifted, how the role of the pastor-CEO has become laughable, how youth ministry is switching from parties to prayer, [how] education is changing, the new way to see spiritual formation, how worship leadership has shifted, how art is being renewed, how evangelism is altered, and how activism happens in a new way. Boomers don't have to read this book. We've got our churches going nicely now, we've constructed our cool wraparound-the-stage worship centers and have a good giving base so we can essentially blow of the next generations and the world and happily sing our way into retirement bringing our "sacks of rice on trays" every Sunday. We can survive into retirement singing and preaching to ourselves. A few of our parent's churches did that-they are still around full of "the Greatest generation" wondering what happened in the 1970's that seems to change things. We can do that and survive. But if we are interested in the enormous shifts that are taking place in our children and their friends-and we seriously want to know why they think the way we do church stinks and they feel compelled to plan "authentic churches" then this book gives away their secrets.
Rating: 
Summary: Slanted Research Yields Slanted Results
Review: My name is Aaron Long, and in December 2004 I will finish with my M.A. in Philosophy of Religion from Denver Seminary. With all of the four- and five-star reviews of this book, I'm sure that my one-star rating will turn some heads and provoke some angry reactions, but let me explain. 1. I have the unique privelege of having been at Wheaton College during the time that Joseph Clair, Joel Handy, et al., who have been repeatedly quoted by Webber, were there. Many of the students quoted were controversial idealists on campus, and I would not consider many, if any of them, to be representative of either the Wheaton College student body or the generation into which they were born. Webber has produced a work on the basis of the people that he chose to study, which were probably a vocal minority, but not a representative sample of the greater whole. 2. I have spoken with Dr. Webber personally in the last three months in order to determine whether he is 1) a proponent of postmodern Christianity (which is integrally related to the "emerging church movement"), or 2) merely a chronicler of a certain subcultural movement within Christianity that is taking place. He affirmed that he is the former, not the latter. It is important to remember that there are culturally-based movements like this within Christianity EVERY GENERATION, and often the result of these movements is the nuancing of Christian thought and lifestyles in such a way that a total cultural overhaul becomes necessary when the current wave breaks upon the shores of the public, yielding to the next crest that has been subtly rising behind the first one all along. One of the most convincing critiques of Webber, McLaren, Clapp, and other postmodern Evangelicals is that they are binding our faith to a cultural movement that will eventually peter out. 3. What I especially do not appreciate about this is that my generation is being labeled with a definition that is not even remotely close to being representative of our age bracket. There may be thousands of "younger evangelicals," as Webber defines the term, out there, but remember that our generation is MILLIONS big. Even thousands of younger evangelicals, no matter how vocal they are about it, are merely spit in the ocean of our generation. 4. I side with Sullivan in his review of the book: postmodernity (postmodern culture), while it has its strengths, has the (HUGE) weakness of having arisen from postmodernism (postmodern philosophy). Contra James E. Walter's review, postmodernism IS a philosophy, or more correctly, an anti-philosophy, but a worldview nonetheless. At its core are relativism, pluralism, subjectivism, a non-absolute view of truth, and worst of all, epistemic hopelessness (no idea of how anyone can know anything). None of these fit within a true Christian worldview. Life is not relative: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me." Thus there cannot be a plurality of spiritual or ideological options. While life is somewhat subjective, God exists and acts into His creation, which lends some objective quality to reality. Most of all, He has revealed Himself in His Son and His Word, and if we believe He is who He claims to be, we are not epistemically without hope, because a good God can place true truth in fallen human minds. Sorry Walter, but if you hold to postmodernism, you can't even talk about truth (the philosophy of postmodernism has no place for it), much less claim that postmodernism IS the truth--it's an absolute statement from a relativistic system. For a much better read on how the church should prepare to meet the challenges of our generation, I recommend to my peers "The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century" by Francis A. Schaeffer. Writing in the 1970's with a prophetic understanding of the twentieth century and where it was headed, he upholds the good things in Webber's work without the philosophical liabilities. Moreover, he had the postmodern movement pegged at a time when the word "postmodern" was merely an academic term. He has defined it very well, and has not even used the buzz word "postmodern." Check it out. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Slanted Research Yields Slanted Results
Review: My name is Aaron Long, and in December 2004 I will finish with my M.A. in Philosophy of Religion from Denver Seminary. With all of the four- and five-star reviews of this book, I'm sure that my one-star rating will turn some heads and provoke some angry reactions, but let me explain. 1. I have the unique privelege of having been at Wheaton College during the time that Joseph Clair, Joel Handy, et al., who have been repeatedly quoted by Webber, were there. Many of the students quoted were controversial idealists on campus, and I would not consider many, if any of them, to be representative of either the Wheaton College student body or the generation into which they were born. Webber has produced a work on the basis of the people that he chose to study, which were probably a vocal minority, but not a representative sample of the greater whole. 2. I have spoken with Dr. Webber personally in the last three months in order to determine whether he is 1) a proponent of postmodern Christianity (which is integrally related to the "emerging church movement"), or 2) merely a chronicler of a certain subcultural movement within Christianity that is taking place. He affirmed that he is the former, not the latter. It is important to remember that there are culturally-based movements like this within Christianity EVERY GENERATION, and often the result of these movements is the nuancing of Christian thought and lifestyles in such a way that a total cultural overhaul becomes necessary when the current wave breaks upon the shores of the public, yielding to the next crest that has been subtly rising behind the first one all along. One of the most convincing critiques of Webber, McLaren, Clapp, and other postmodern Evangelicals is that they are binding our faith to a cultural movement that will eventually peter out. 3. What I especially do not appreciate about this is that my generation is being labeled with a definition that is not even remotely close to being representative of our age bracket. There may be thousands of "younger evangelicals," as Webber defines the term, out there, but remember that our generation is MILLIONS big. Even thousands of younger evangelicals, no matter how vocal they are about it, are merely spit in the ocean of our generation. 4. I side with Sullivan in his review of the book: postmodernity (postmodern culture), while it has its strengths, has the (HUGE) weakness of having arisen from postmodernism (postmodern philosophy). Contra James E. Walter's review, postmodernism IS a philosophy, or more correctly, an anti-philosophy, but a worldview nonetheless. At its core are relativism, pluralism, subjectivism, a non-absolute view of truth, and worst of all, epistemic hopelessness (no idea of how anyone can know anything). None of these fit within a true Christian worldview. Life is not relative: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me." Thus there cannot be a plurality of spiritual or ideological options. While life is somewhat subjective, God exists and acts into His creation, which lends some objective quality to reality. Most of all, He has revealed Himself in His Son and His Word, and if we believe He is who He claims to be, we are not epistemically without hope, because a good God can place true truth in fallen human minds. Sorry Walter, but if you hold to postmodernism, you can't even talk about truth (the philosophy of postmodernism has no place for it), much less claim that postmodernism IS the truth--it's an absolute statement from a relativistic system. For a much better read on how the church should prepare to meet the challenges of our generation, I recommend to my peers "The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century" by Francis A. Schaeffer. Writing in the 1970's with a prophetic understanding of the twentieth century and where it was headed, he upholds the good things in Webber's work without the philosophical liabilities. Moreover, he had the postmodern movement pegged at a time when the word "postmodern" was merely an academic term. He has defined it very well, and has not even used the buzz word "postmodern." Check it out. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Post-modern thought is not a "philosophy"
Review: My reading of Foucault, Derrida, and especially Lyotard is that their thinking rejects "...isms" or ",,,ities" as in existentialISM or modernITY. Thought systems that offer a comprehensive or totalising world view are philosophies. Postmodern thought does not offer an alternative philosophy, rather it is a critique of such ways of thinking. It regects the assertion of a metanarrative, or big story. In Sullivan's excellent review of The Younger Evangelicals, he generally use the phrases "postmodern thought" or "postmodern thinking," but then in one instance use the phrase "postmodernism" (second to last paragraph). In that context, Sullivan and the other reviewers have done an excellent job of equipping the readers of The Younger Evangealicals with tools of discernment. The book has captured how the Younger Evangelicals have regected post modern thought by believing the metanarrative (big story) of God's Good News and at the same time understood the effects of modernity on the church, effects which could only have been grasped because post modern thought has provided some excellent tools for discerning where and how modernity can lead Christians slightly or way off course. If asserting the value of post modern thinking is troubling to some, then I would remind them that truth is God's truth because it is true regardless of who articulated it.
Rating:
Summary: Post-modern thought is not a "philosophy"
Review: My reading of Foucault, Derrida, and especially Lyotard is that their thinking rejects "...isms" or ",,,ities" as in existentialISM or modernITY. Thought systems that offer a comprehensive or totalising world view are philosophies. Postmodern thought does not offer an alternative philosophy, rather it is a critique of such ways of thinking. It regects the assertion of a metanarrative, or big story. In Sullivan's excellent review of The Younger Evangelicals, he generally use the phrases "postmodern thought" or "postmodern thinking," but then in one instance use the phrase "postmodernism" (second to last paragraph). In that context, Sullivan and the other reviewers have done an excellent job of equipping the readers of The Younger Evangealicals with tools of discernment. The book has captured how the Younger Evangelicals have regected post modern thought by believing the metanarrative (big story) of God's Good News and at the same time understood the effects of modernity on the church, effects which could only have been grasped because post modern thought has provided some excellent tools for discerning where and how modernity can lead Christians slightly or way off course. If asserting the value of post modern thinking is troubling to some, then I would remind them that truth is God's truth because it is true regardless of who articulated it.
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