EMERGING AUDACITY IN CHRISTIANITY

OK, so it’s not only non-Christian heathens who come out with outlandish stuff. Some Christians are very good at it. Hey, I might even be accused of audacious writing myself at times.

Today, I’m sharing a book review that I did back before Christmas last year. I have no doubt that the author is a very sincere Christian but… well, the review can speak for itself.

BOOK REVIEW – THY KINGDOM CONNECTED - Dwight J. Friesen

I understand that some people will love this book, especially those who are following in the footsteps of Emergent Village. The back cover contains the following gems of praise: "a treasure chest of insights" "for a unified and healthy body of Christ in a connected world", "the first contextual ecclesiology for a networked world."

But, to be honest, this book just annoyed me.

It didn't help that the author goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid using masculine pronouns for God. 'Godself' instead of 'himself' just seems too ridiculous to be cute. But this is only the beginning. A whole new vocabulary is invented to make subtle nuances seem like radical new thinking. Language becomes almost fluid. For the purpose of "reimagining the body of the institutional church" a local church becomes a "Christ-Common". For the purpose of "reimagining the soul of the local church", gatherings of Christians become "Christ-Clusters"."Chaordic life" is a strangely positive term for the interaction of chaos and order in the Kingdom of God. Pastors become "network ecologists", whose main task is "stewarding" a network of nodes and links. Even worse, relationships between different things are often described in terms of a "dance".

The occasional stories in this book that are intended to demonstrate the practicalities of these supposedly new paradigms are unconvincing. There are plenty of churches doing innovative things in their communities but they don't talk a foreign language amongst themselves.

Ultimately, I think the message of this book is that networks are everywhere in nature so the Kingdom of God is learning to function more connectively, with "flattened leadership".

Without its excessive verbosity, this book could have been much shorter, and possibly more helpful.