A New Kind of Christian

If you haven't read this incredible book yet, I encourage you to do so. It's in my media list to the left. Even if you have not made a decision to follow the teachings of Christ, I would still encourage you to read it. It is a life changing book.

Basically it is a story about a pastor who is having a "crisis of faith." He feels that there must be more to Christianity than going to church every Sunday and making people feel good. He meets a man that has had those same thoughts and many more. They enter into a conversation that lasts months and months about what a new kind of Christian would be like.

This story is molded around the idea that the "modern church" (that is, the religious structure my parents grew up in) has made several mistakes in presenting Christianity to others. One of those mistakes is watering down God's Message to us. Modern theology would like to break everything down into formulas, cliches, mottos, tradition, and 3-point analytical sermons.

What this book (and many people that believe as I do) is suggesting is that there is a different way to do things. A "post-modern" way to do things. Not that this way is better than that of the previous generation, but the idea that 1950's theology will be effective in 2004 is not only arrogant, it's asinine.

This new kind of Christianity emphasizes relationships, conversations, community. Not only among believers, but among non-believers. A big failure of modern Christianity was the idea of "friendship evangelism." The idea is that if you are someone's friend and show them that you are different because of Christ, then they will want to be a part of that. That was all fine and good in the 1950's, but people today are jaded, cynical, and skeptical when it comes to Christians.

So many horrible things have been done in the name of Christ, that people would rather find another form of spirituality. The problem with "friendship evangelism" is that the goal is to get that person "saved." The friendship is nothing more than a strategic maneuver in order to "help" that person.

What post-modern Christianity is proposing is that we enter into relationships with people, not in order to "get them saved," but in order to get to know them. Share their burdens, laugh with them, cry with them, become their friend. No conversion strings attached. Sure your faith will come up, sometime. But it isn't the priority. The priority is love.

These and many other ideas are discussed in the book. I recommend picking up a copy. And after you've read it, give it to someone else. There is another way to do things. And in this fast-paced, virtual world, American apple-pie theology might not be making that much of a difference anymore.

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