If I understood the term a little better I may confess that I am what many call a neo-Calvinist.
That means of course that I love T4G, I have a life-size poster of Mark Dever in my room, I refuse to read approvingly of books unless they have the acceptance of the “big-guns” of Reformed theology on the back, I name my children and pets things like Calvin, Piper, and Jon Jon the Edwards.
I am also bigoted, closed-minded, and refuse to listen to other expressions of Christianity. I like to burn things. Like Servetus. But I’ll defend “my boys” (the Reformed All-Star Militia otherwise known as RAM) even if I know they are wrong. I exalt the Bible and the glory of God with my lips but truth be told I read more Piper, Packer, Platt, and the Puritans than I do my Bible.
Guys like me don’t read books like Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson’s latest offering: On the Verge.
That is, guys like me don’t read books like that unless God has convicted them deeply about the need to put people, books, ideas, etc. into their life that come from a different perspectives.
One thing my homeboy J-Newt has taught me is that I should hold my theology with grace…knowing that it’s always possible that I am wrong, and also because chances are I held a faulty theology just three days ago myself. So I know that I need to be challenged by those different than me—even those with a totally different paradigm and mindset than myself.
So how did this 9-Marks lovin’, Piper hand-shakin, “neo-Calvinist” read On the Verge?
Honestly, I read it with great joy. I learned a ton. At times I had a hard time putting the book down. I took several notes. It challenged my thinking in some areas and there are some aspects of the book that I will try to tweak and put into our local church.
Difficulties
But I’m a bigot, though, remember? So that means that I have to offer some critique before I get to the good stuff. And there were a few things in this book that gave me pause.
One of the difficulties that I had is that it does seem to follow the typical church growth formula. If I do X then, of course with prayer and stuff, Y will inevitably happen…do this, get that. We “neo-Calvinist” (again I’m not really sure who that is or what it means) follow that same formula too. But ours is different. We say preach the Word, be faithful in theology, expand peoples views of God and He will bring the results.
Books like On the Verge tend to add a few things to that equation. I am not saying they are necessarily wrong but it just causes a “neo-Calvinist” like me to pause. We can sometimes get so distracted by attempts to “grow the kingdom” that we end up losing the King who promised He’d grow His kingdom.
Another difficulty I had was the retelling of history. It’s a somewhat popular retelling—but as Peter Leithart has shown it may not be the most accurate. Hirsch and Ferguson repeat the common assumption that Christianity started going awry when it institutionalized under Constantine. My gut wants to agree with them. But I also felt that Leithart made pretty solid arguments in his book Rethinking Constantine. The history of movements may not be as black and white as Hirsch/Ferguson would have us believe.
In the hopes of being a good neo-Calvinist (what doest that mean again?) I have to tell you at least two more negative things. The first is the language; Not that they drop the F bomb or anything like that. It’s more like entering into a conversation half way through. You are a little lost about the context of some of the things they are discussing. Oh, and the people in this imaginary conversation are also speaking Martian. So you not only have to figure out the context of the discussion you have to try to understand what mDNA is, and apostolic genius, and verge-ination, and other words like that.
Perhaps the greatest critique that I would have is that it does not appear to be firmly rooted in Scripture. There are biblical arguments in a few places. Some mention is given to Ephesians 4, and there is a good amount of theology about Jesus but it does not seem to be backed up with Scripture. Of course that’s a shallow critique because things do not have to site Bible verses to be deeply biblical—look at some of the Apostle Paul’s writing.
Woohoo’s!
There are, then, a few important “pauses” that I have with this book. But there is also much to consider. I know that one critique that some other reviews had of this book is that it seemed like a formula to get your church bigger. Actually that is the opposite of this books intention. This book is a kingdom-focused book. It is about growing the kingdom. It’s fundamental idea is to combine a multiplication of church planting with putting people on mission in every sphere. To do such a thing will create an “apostolic movement”.
Given that fundamental point, I read this book with an attempt to an answer a key question: how do you lead people to embrace a more kingdom of Jesus mindset than a “let’s figure out how to make our church big” mindset.
With that key question in mind I found this book very helpful. Hirsch and Ferguson move the reader through 4 stages: Imagine, Shift, Innovate, and Move. Essentially they hope to help leaders dream, put that dream into place, tweak that dream, then begin living it out. But it’s not just some sort of get a vision statement and then have your people do it.
Their vision is much broader than that. Their vision is really that of following God on His mission of transforming the world through the gospel. Everything that we dream must be tempered by that fundamental mission. This is, in case you were curious, what mDNA is. They are the fundamental these-don’t change type of values that every church must have in some way.
I really hope that people like me do not dismiss this book out of hand. Hirsch and Ferguson are passionate about thinking theologically. I think my neo-Calvinist friends (whatever that means) will find quotes like this helpful and intriguing:
While it’s crucial to let the felt-needs and questions of our native culture inform our spirituality, if we aren’t deliberate about thinking theologically and systematically about beliefs, then we hand the systems story of the church over to pop culture, mere pragmatism, or the many other prevailing forces that simply co-opt our thinking and doing. (152)
That gets a hearty “Amen” from the Piperites in the room!
Furthermore, there are many practical ideas that real churches are doing to help their people plant churches and be on mission in every sphere. These are helpful examples and things that many churches can begin to implement.
Conclusion
For the most part this book is one to think through. There are questions after every chapter—that could easily be used with a small group to begin visioning and thinking through some of their points. The greatest benefit of this book will probably be in the conversations that it starts and seeing what the Spirit does through His people as they engage this book through the lens of Scripture.
This book is probably not written to be New York Times best seller, but simply to get into the hands of a few key people and watch it trickle. And that is probably okay. After all there were probably only a few people that held to Copernicus’ theories when he died…and he turned the world on its head…or would you say he set the world in orbit?
As for me I’m still trying to tweak some things in this book but mostly I’m allowing the many excellent things in this book to tweak me.
----
I got this book free from Zondervan in exchange for my review.
You’ll have to buy the book. And if you want to do that you can do it here. ($13.59 is a pretty inexpensive price for this book).
No comments:
Post a Comment