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Church on the Other Side, The

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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.

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.

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.

Brian D. McLaren's, Church on the Other Side: Exploring the Radical Future of the Local Congregation, is a disturbing book. Sometimes disturbance is a bad thing. Sometimes disturbance is a good thing. Either way, disturbance almost always creates some sort of change. And change is, after all, what McLaren is advocating throughout the book. It is little exaggeration, in fact, to say that he is convinced that nearly everything the church has been doing over the last several decades (and even centuries) must be radically changed in order to minister with any effectiveness in the postmodern world.

The ways, for example, that we have been preaching, teaching, programming, structuring, theologizing and evangelizing must change. The premise is simple: Postmodernism simply has no place for Know-It-Alls. When we believe that we have God all figured out and can package that understanding and present it with certainty and clarity in any and all situations - with little or no room for mystery and ambiguity, then we are acting as know-it-alls. When we believe, furthermore, that our ways of planning and organizing, growing and maintaining, catalyzing and facilitating ministry and mission are engraved in stone (so to speak) and that our systems are virtually unalterable (why, after all would we ever want to or need to change them?!) then we are acting as know-it-alls. Postmodernism reminds us all that we do not know it all. To act as though we do is pitiable, if not deceitful.

Herein exists the only major problem I see with McLaren's work. In order to say that virtually everything about the church is now (or will very shortly be) outdated and outmoded and should, therefore, be tossed out-the-window and replaced with postmodern updates, assumes that one is able to effectively and authoritatively make those sort of sweeping and all-encompassing pronouncements. Although McLaren casts his vision of the changing times and changing church in terms of prediction (what he believes is happening and will surely continue to come to fruition), I could not help but step away from the book, at times, feeling that everything could not possibly be wrong and in need of fixing. In the end, I wonder, can McLaren or anybody, for that matter, credit or discredit an entire way of being and doing church in one fell swoop? Does not that sort of pronouncement, of necessity, require that one have it all figured out?

Is Church on the Other Side, then, right or wrong? Is it worthy of reading and considering, or not? It is certainly worthy of reading (and marking and highlighting and discussing, etc.). Is it right or wrong? I would propose that it is exaggeratingly right in what it proposes (both concerning the current state of society and church as well as potential solutions towards helping the church to be more effective in its mission and ministry).

For example, I believe McLaren is correct in desiring for all Christians to work towards "a common fund of essential Christian beliefs" (60). Yet I believe that it is a gross exaggeration (accompanied by an apparent misunderstanding - or at least a misrepresentation of the history of the formation of Christian doctrinal systems of belief) to suggest that, "In the new church, we gladly trade our doctrinal statements - some wispy, some flabby - for a well-toned body of common sense: time-tested doctrine, lean and muscular, stripped of its fat and scrubbed clean of its cosmetics" (60). Did any council of believing Christians ever sit down to hammer out anything other than what they honestly believed to be what McLaren describes here? Furthermore, will any of us (even on the other side) ever actually reach the place where we can say we have arrived at such doctrinal understanding and perfection? And does such a knowledgeable (know-it-all?) position on doctrinal essentiality that, by admission, no one has reached until we reach it, not make us less postmodern than we want to be?

There is little doubt left that the word in which we live is undergoing vast changes. The question is how we are to understand and respond to these changes. In The Church on the Other Side, Brian McLaren suggests that a new world requires a new church. McLaren provides thirteen strategies to guide church leaders through the transition from a modern to a postmodern world.

Especially helpful are chapters 12a, 12b, and 12c where McLaren equips readers to enter the postmodern world through understanding and engaging the postmodern world while leaving behind the problems of modernity.

This book is vital for any leader struggling to lead their church through changes in these times. Whether you agree or disagree with McLaren, his voice is one we must listen to.

Brian D. McLaren is former pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, Spencerville, MD. He holds a doctorate of theology degree from Carey Theological College, Vancouver, BC. Author of nine books and co-author of two others, he devotes himself now to speaking, writing, and activism in a variety of causes.[1]

HIGHLIGHTS:

Mclaren lays out 13 practices for transforming the church as it "crosses over to the other side" into a postmodern world. They include (1) "maximizing discontinuity" to motivate the church for dramatic change; (2) "redefining the church's mission" in terms of more and better Christians joined together in a missional community for the good of the world; (3) "exercising systems thinking" in pursuit of the church's revised mission; (4) "trading up traditions for tradition" to escape narrow sectarianism in favor of the broader Christian heritage; (5) "resurrecting theology as art and science" as a discipline that is never really complete; (6) "designing a new apologetic" in terms of truth-seeking rather than truth-possessing; (7) "learning a new rhetoric" of softer, simpler language devoid of jargon and backed up by a lived faith; (8) "abandon structures" as permanent arrangements; (9) "saving the leaders" for their worth and work; (10) "subsuming missions in mission" in response to the crisis within missions; (11) "looking ahead, farther ahead" instead of the past; (12) "entering the postmodern world" to understand it, engage it, and exploit it for Christ; and (13) "adding to the list" as a community of life-long learners.

COMMENTS:

McLaren talks about four levels of change (knowledge, attitude, behavior, and organization) and then adds a fifth that comprehends the need for all four at one. In this respect and more, he often uses the language of enterprise transformation. Not surprisingly, all of McLaren's "practices" have analogs in secular literature on organizational change. McLaren's "maximize discontinuity," for example, is a transformation tactic. "Redefining mission" is another way of talking about vision. "Systems thinking" acknowledges the interdependency problem in transformation. "Trading up traditions" correlates well to the problem of globalization. Five of McLaren's practices address problems of organizational and market adaptation: (1) "resurrecting theology as art and science," (2) "abandoning structures," (3) "looking ahead," (4) "entering the postmodern world," and "adding to the list." "Designing a new apologetic" and "learning a new rhetoric" have overtones of marketing and sales. "Saving the leaders" preserves needed leadership. "Subsuming missions in mission" is itself a transformation initiative.

McLaren argues and illustrates the preceding "practices" strenuously but not always effectively. Even sympathetic readers will be "un-sold" or at least distracted by some of McLaren's illustrations and arguments. For example, McLaren associates the church with U.S. national guilt on one hand and then denies the U.S. was ever a Christian nation on the other. How can both be true? He argues humanity is interconnected -- "that aerosol spray can in Kansas can help rift the ozone layer in Antarctica" -- but the illustration fails. Chlorofluorocarbons were banned in the U.S. back in 1978. In general, McLaren's couches his concerns for social and economic justice in a liberal-sounding rhetoric that many readers will find off-putting and unconvincing.

Perhaps the most telling of McLaren's illustrations is the one about his conversation with a new Christian who was concerned her beliefs about Jesus were different from those of her fellow church members. The church members were saying those who do not believe in Jesus are lost. She, however, had close, non-Christian friends who would abandon her if she were to express that kind of opinion. The obvious observation was, "Jesus had the very same problem -- maybe here is a chance to really know Jesus" -- but McLaren implies the need for something more indirect, more sensitive.

In general, McLaren's arguments and illustrations draw heavily on what many would characterize as the "criminal histories" of Christianity, the church, and Western civilization. For example, McLaren disparages "my own country" for its "subjugation of another race," when a fairer interpretation would recognize Western civilization's remarkable record on slavery -- a record of ending slavery, not inventing it. He criticizes Columbus for bringing "conquistadors" to the New World, [2] but Columbus sailed west because Muslim conquests had shut Europeans out of the Mediterranean.

McLaren's prescriptions for transforming the church include some good points, but his overall program is incoherent. McLaren takes a prophetic stance in diagnosing and treating the church's problems while embracing a philosophy that denies such stances are even possible. The church, he claims, is dying because it is stuck decades or even centuries in the past. What is McLaren's solution? Focus on concerns that are decades or even centuries into the future. The church is allegedly irrelevant in its preoccupation with minutiae and esoterica. What is McLaren's solution? Focus on global concerns that are beyond the control and even understanding of most human beings. Christian apologetics are too defensive, too reactive McLaren says -- no, they are too combative he opines in the next paragraph.[3] He cautions about making sweeping and uncharitable generalizations about others, yet he makes his case against the church by doing just that. He says Christians must stop "comparing their worst with our best;" but again, that is one of his tactics in bashing the church. He assumes self-restraint by saying it is easy to bash the church -- but apparently without much self-awareness.

McLaren's vision of a model congregation would have it rotating through "Quaker-style spiritual enrichment" to "Brethren-style communion" to "Willow-Creek-style seeker service" to "charismatic Episcopalian healing service" to a "Benedictine Monastery" and on and on. But variety is not a substitute for substance. Rather, it exemplifies the problem of postmodern superficiality.[4] Yet ironically, it is one of McLaren's solutions to the alleged shallowness of the present-day church.

Systems theory provides an insightful way to avoid McLaren's incoherence. Culture is not neutral. Rather, it is the embodiment of humanity's alienation from God. Multiculturalism does not diminish the alienation. Instead, it turns up the volume.[5] McLaren rightly responds to the volume, but he does so uncritically. The result is a careless triangulation of the church into the alienated relationship between God and unrepentant humanity -- a careless triangulation that leaves important questions unanswered. How much anxiety, for example, is the church supposed to absorb in the triangulation. McLaren and postmodernists seem intent on pushing it all onto the church. Thus, the church is subjected to unrelenting criticisms and calls for sweeping change. A better alternative is for the church to give the anxiety back -- to exert a non-anxious presence -- to increase, rather than relieve, the tension between God and unbelieving humanity by upholding traditional biblical truth claims.

Postmodernism is best understood as the third stage of a downward spiral in humanity's alienation from God.

The church was triangled -- became the "identified patient" -- in the first two stages. It appears to be headed for the same fate with respect to postmodernism if key leaders, such as McLaren, insist on "privileging" rather than challenging postmodern defense mechanisms. Instead of enmeshing itself in a "stuck" relationship with postmodernism, a better alternative for the church would be to increase its differentiation from culture -- not reduce it.

-- Bill Brewer
[...]

NOTES

[1] From the back cover.

[2] Note that "New World" is Euro-centric and therefore offensive.

[3] In the latter case, an example is Christian preoccupation with school prayer, as if Christians are expanding their influence into new areas of life when the reality is just the opposite -- they are simply reacting to increasingly aggressive secularists and to an increasingly intrusive Central Government.

[4] The fruits of McLaren's vision would be much like people going to a series of ethnic restaurants on several evenings and then naively thinking they had really experienced authentic Chinese, Mexican, and Italian cultures at a significant level.

[5] The dark side of pluralism and diversity is moral confusion.

Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Potsmodern Matrix (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000)

Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw

McLaren is a pastor [...], strategic thinker, networker, and leader in the emergent community of missional leaders [...]. At home himself in a postmodern framework, McLaren offers to help leaders with strategies for navigating the modern/postmodern transition. He urges churches to get back to basics: `more Christians, better Christians, in authentic missional community, for the good of the world.' He urges breaking free from past models and fostering a culture of change and adaption: an `evolving organism capable of adjusting to environmental upheavals' (p21). Perhaps tending towards dualisms at times to make his point, he focuses on Tradition, urges theology be resurrected as a thing of truth and beauty not just technical training, and outlines a new apologetic to communicate the gospel to seekers - that life is a mystery to be explored, using faith (rather than a problem to be solved with easy answers or a paradox to be accepted with resignation). He further touches on systems thinking, nurturing leaders, global mission, and entering and engaging the postmodern world (and de-bugging modernity's viruses from faith!)

Originally appeared in Darren Cronshaw, `The Emerging Church: Introductory Reading Guide', Zadok Papers, S143 (Summer 2005).

While much of McLaren's work has an aire of pluralism, his insight into culture and how the church should respond to it is tremendous. This book in particular is practical, accessable, and explores process rather than a cookie-cutter approach to how every church should look and act. Well worth reading for the contemporary church planter.

What a book. McLaren writes passionately and poignantly about the task we face today. "If you have a new world, you need a new church. You have a new world." McLaren moves quickly into a discussion of what is happening in the landscape of the church today: the earth moving under our feet . . . tectonic shifts . . . earthquakes . . . . "We can live for years quite unaware of how pressures are building, but then, seemingly out of nowhere, tremors start to occur with increasing frequency. Sometimes we encounter a "big one," and almost overnight our world changes so dramatically that old maps no longer fit the new reality." He continues: "Make no mistake -- a new world is bursting forth beneath our bands of concrete and asphalt, erupting under our miles of wire drooping between creosoted telephone poles, heaving its strength like tectonic plates to crack presumably solid foundations. If you are a Christian of any sort -- liberal, conservative, evangelical, mainline, Catholic, Protestant, hand-clapper, nonclapper, devotee of pipe organ or keyboard, of piano or guitar -- or even if you are not a Christian, you recognize that these gringing, shifting, transitional times have shaken the church. It is unsettled, imbalanced, nervous, reeling, sometimes oblivious but more often these days wide-eyed and openmouthed with speechless anxiety, wondering when the shaking will be over. Is the church a dinosaur at the end of the Jurassic? Will it survive the changes?" A few pages later he continues again: "Many old churches are being shaken half to death, barely surviving, too rarely thriving. And where they are thriving, it's for one of two reasons: Either they are creating time warps where the past will be preserved so reactionary folk can flock there for a safe -- temporary -- old familiar haven; or they are among the learners at the top who are surfing change into the new world and transitioning old churches of yesterday into the new churches of the other side. The point is, if you have a new world, you need a new church. You have a new world." This book, he says, "is for people who don't think we can go back to the old world -- and don't want to. It is for people who want to help define and shape the church of the future, under the guidance of God." "This is a book," he says, "about the hard work of fresh thinking -- innovative, bold, creative thinking." In the book, McLaren offers thirteen strategies for transitioning churches to a whole new way of being. "As incomplete and imperfect though these proposed strategies may be, God willing, they will get many of us thinking together and working together in what my be the most important, most revolutionary task of our generation -- planting and developing the church on the other side." There -- that's a whirlwind summary of the introduction to the book. Now go get yourself a copy and start reading the thirteen strategies! I found his strategy number nine -- "Save the Leaders" -- to be truly inspirational, and desperately needed.

McLaren sees us living on the edge of a major shift in the history of the Church, a shift that involves moving into new territory for Christians. Some are standing firmly on the shore, unwilling to move forward, while others are slowly wading into uncertain waters, and still a few others are swimming against the tide and trying to get across. Our current way of doing and being the church is equivalent to the Biblical example of old wineskins, and the postmodern culture in which we live and will continue to live into is the new wine. One will not fit into the other, and if we are to continue to be the church, we must reinvent ourselves as a new wineskin in order to welcome in the new wine of postmodernity. Instead of telling us what to believe, McLaren tells us how to believe - an important distinction. McLaren suggests a new apologetic, offering mysteries rather than answers, and dialogue rather than division. He does this while still respecting and upholding the Christian faith above others, showing the dangers of pluralism and relativism while still maintaining an openness to the mystery of not having all the answers. I am also inspired by his calling us to an eschatology of hope, rather than of despair. So often we want to live in the memory of the good old days, and call people to return to the church of yesteryear, or the 1st century Biblical model, as though our best days are behind us. McLaren inspires us to see that our best days are ahead of us, and we should look at life through that lens. We need a new way of thinking, while maintaining that all-important connection with the God of the Bible and the Jesus we are called to follow. This book gets us thinking in the right direction.