The Church on the Other Side [Hardcover]

Brian D. McLaren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

Tested strategies for pastors and churches that want to be somewhere else in the postmodern world and need reliable and practical help to get there. Now revised and expanded. Formerly titled Reinventing Your Church.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

If you are a sincere church leader or a committed church member, you’re probably tired of easy steps, easy answers, and facile formulas for church health, growth, and renewal. You know it’s not that easy. In The Church on the Other Side, you’ll find something different: honest, clear, and creative thinking about our churches, along with a passionate challenge to thoughtful action and profound, liberating change.

In understandable language, with an energetic and engaging writing style, and drawing from daily, down-to-earth pastoral experience, Brian McLaren offers thirteen strategies for navigating the modern/postmodern transition. You’ll learn the critical distinctions between renewed, restored, and reinvented churches. You’ll discover the importance of redefining your mission, of finding fresh ways to conceive of and communicate the Gospel, and of entering the postmodern world by understanding it, engaging it, and debugging your faith from modern "viruses."

McLaren believes we are in an epochal sea-change, perhaps even more significant than the last great cultural transition about 500 years ago, when the world crossed over from the medieval to the modern era. He believes that today’s breakthroughs in communications, education, travel, cultural diversity, science, economics, politics, and philosophy are combining to create a new matrix in which Christians will live, worship, work, and pursue our mission.

"We are exploring off the map," writes Brian McLaren, "looking into mysterious territory beyond our familiar world on this side of the boundary between modern and postmodern worlds." Even if you’ve read this book’s first edition, Reinventing Your Church, you’ll find enough new and revised material here to warrant a second purchase. And if you’re encountering these concepts for the first time, you’ll find wise guidance to help you and your church begin the journey toward the other side of the postmodern divide. You’ll learn to think differently, see church, life, and these revolutionary times in a new way, and act with courage, hope, and an adventurous spirit.

About the Author

His books include "Finding Faith", "The Church on the Other Side", and "More Ready Than You Realize".

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company; Rev Exp edition (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310237076
• ISBN-13: 978-0310237075
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,032,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among innovative Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists. His groundbreaking books include A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy, The Secret Message of Jesus, and Everything Must Change. Named by Time magazine as one of America's top twenty-five evangelicals, McLaren has appeared on Nightline and Larry King Live, and has been covered by The Washington Post and the New York Times.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Back to the Future, June 22, 2007

By 

John R. Miller (Owosso, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Church on the Other Side, The (Paperback)

I am a pastor approaching 60 years old. I have over 20 years of vocational ministry experience and nearly that much time as a lay leader. I remember my teens and twenties. How passionate my peers and I were for Christ. We fully expected to win the entire world for Christ in our lifetime and rather arrogantly published it to our congregations.
We were frustrated with the church. It was dead. It was comfortable. It was indifferent to the lost. Furthermore, we were not backwards in criticizing the church, its methods and its leaders.
We did not change the world. Under our leadership the church has gone into decline by almost all measures. There are times when the reality of our ineffectiveness mocks my youthful passion (which still remains) and I struggle with cynicism.
Today I have twenty-something children. My children are passionate about Christ and critical of the church - just like I was. At their urging I have read Blue Like Jazz and A New Kind of Christian. These are their heralds of the postmodern transition of the church - the church that will transform the world. More subtle in its arrogance. Perhaps a little more humble. Certainly more technologically savvy, but calling Christians to genuine authenticity and engagement with a hurting world. As I read their critiques of the church, Christians and Christianity I do not hear something new, but something old - a passionate love for Christ and a desire for the Church to live up to her ideals - just like we called for forty years ago.
In his book The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix Brian McLaren has helped the church at least begin to navigate its way into the future. It is well written and more understandable than some of the material on postmodernism. It is of use to any one who wishes to be effective in our world. But behind all of the practical advice is a centuries old passion for the Church to be the Church and live up to her ideals. John Huss would approve.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I am not crazy - I'm just in tune, August 14, 2005

By 

Harald Giesebrecht (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Church on the Other Side, The (Paperback)

Many of us younger Christians have this nagging feeling that something is very "sub-optimal" about the way most churches "do church". We watch Christian television and feel embarrassed, we go to church and feel awkward, and sometimes we wonder if we are rebellious individualists, about-to-be apostates or just too unspiritual to see the beauty of the awkwardness. Many of us just leave...

After reading Brian McLaren's: "Church on the other side", I feel a lot better. It turns out there is a healthy reason for my more or less subconscious and unproductive aggression. What is going on is that some of us, both Christians and others have made the paradigm shift into the post modern mindset, whereas quite a few... most Christians and a lot of others haven't. My rebellion, it turns out, is not against Christ or the church, but against the impossibility of communicating the gospel to post moderns within a modern framework. My rebellion is not against Christianity itself, but against parts of the modern mindset that has been confused with Christianity, but turns out to be just culture.

Anybody interested in understanding the future of Christianity will benefit greatly from reading some of McLarens books, and "Church on the other side" is not a bad place to start. His treatment of the seven modernist viruses from which the church must be "debugged" is it to prosper in the new millennium, is alone worth the price of the book.

28 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If I had to pick just one book..., December 30, 2003

By 

Bob Hyatt (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Church on the Other Side, The (Paperback)

If I had to pick just one book to recommend to a Christian leader who is finding that the "way we have always done it" just isn't working or even making sense anymore it would be this book. Absolutely revolutionary. Yes, there are things that Brian picks up that I may choose not to, but that's part of the point! We need to get back to majoring on the majors and allowing good, healthy dialogue and debate on other things. Wouldn't that be a great witness to a world that is wondering about Christianity to see us dialogue, disagree and still sit in the same pew (or row, or couch) with one another????
We have buried Jesus under a heap of trivialities, and the Church on the other side will begin to dig Him out. As regards betraying the Reformation (as one other reviewer accused McLaren)... In the words of Doug Pagitt, an Emergent leader from the Mid-west, "If you want to honor the Reformers, don't say what they said- do what they did!" McLaren starts us down that hard, but very exciting road.