NEW BOOKS
I've made good progress ploughing through The Bible and Homosexual Practice by Robert Gagnon (It's a lot easier reading than I thought it would be). So I felt free to order some more books today. The most promising of the batch, however, will not be released until October.

The Post-Evangelical is by the creative Church of England priest, David Tomlinson.

I also ordered Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives by Andy Crouch, Michael S. Horton, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Brian D. McLaren, Erwin R. McManus, and Leonard Sweet.

The thing which intrigues me about this book is that these writers are not all on the same page. Most of the other titles in the growing "emerging-pomo" genre have:
1) been fairly narrow in their interpretation of the developments in Western culture,
2) pretty much the same spin, and
3) not engaged the church as a whole in the conversation (nor shown much interest in doing so). They're all pretty much talking to each other.

These books seem to occupy much the same niche as the church growth books in the 80's -- important but overly narrow in perspective and focus.

Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives looks like it will help move things toward a point of balance. There is a brief .pdf preview on the Zondervan website.

I am also looking forward to reading Community of Kindness by Steve Sjogren and Rob Lewin. They have a slightly different take on church planting. Someday I expect to be doing another new church start (or perhaps re-start). So this looks intriguing -- although not heavy reading. Community of Kindness is available now.